One Philosopher’s Reflections on Another Philosopher’s Memoirs

Review of Nicholas Wolterstorff, In This World of Wonders: Memoir of a life in Learning (Eerdmans, 2019)

There were several reasons why I was very keen to read Wolterstorff’s memoirs. First, I have always enjoyed reading autobiographies. We need to hear one another’s stories. Most often I find biographies and autobiographies inspiring as I reflect on someone else’s life experiences. Given my own background as a Christian philosopher, I was of course especially interested in reading the memoirs of a fellow Christian philosopher. Secondly, I have been very much influenced by Reformed philosophers like Wolterstorff. Indeed, I credit Reformed philosophers for my own philosophical salvation. So again, I wanted to read the memoirs of the man who wrote Reason within the Bounds of Religion, which so profoundly shaped my own thinking many years ago. Thirdly, I was in the middle of writing my own autobiography when I first read Wolterstorff’s memoirs, and so I was hoping that I might get a few tips on what a memoir by a philosopher should look like.

I was not disappointed on all counts. The Preface alone is worth the price of the book. Wolterstorff describes his reluctance in taking up the challenge of writing his memoirs. Who would want to read the story of a man whose life was rather “boring,” who spent most of his time reading books, thinking hard, and preparing and giving lectures? And isn’t it rather egotistical to write one’s memoirs? These were questions I was wrestling with in writing my own autobiography. It helped to have a fellow Christian philosopher give expression to these concerns.

There are other features of this book that encouraged me in my own writing project. Wolterstorff moves easily from personal family matters to academic politics to philosophical discussions. Philosophers are after all persons with lives that transcend the world of philosophy. What surprized me was how open Wolterstorff was in criticizing some of his professors, colleagues and students. I had been agonizing about this in writing my own autobiography. Wolterstorff’s memoir encouraged me to name the difficult persons I had encountered in my academic career and in the church. It certainly makes for more interesting reading.

In This World of Wonders includes a good review of Wolterstorff’s own philosophical writings. I was again reminded of the breadth of his writing. I loved his description of the writing process (pp. 292ff). Yes, new thoughts that come to mind as one is thinking and writing about a topic, is “truly mysterious.” And the “seesaw of emotional frustration and gratification” while writing is spot on (p. 294). I was also inspired by Wolterstorff’s description of his love of writing and the call to write in line with his abilities and opportunities (p. 296).

I especially appreciated Wolterstorff’s review of Reformed epistemology that he and Alvin Plantinga spearheaded (pp. 179ff). I was however a little puzzled about his comments that at Calvin College, they were not at all concerned about arguments for the existence of God (p. 56). Puzzled, because later he admits that Plantinga has been very concerned to show that it is not unreasonable to believe in God (p. 243). And earlier Wolterstorff himself expresses sympathy with the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God (p. 211). Now I realize that one important ingredient of Reformed epistemology is that belief in God might be a basic belief, and that arguments are therefore not necessary. But the argument that belief in God is a basic belief is still a kind of argument. I see both Wolterstorff and Plantinga very much involved in apologetics, though apologetics in a different key.

I also appreciated Wolterstorff’s moving account of the death of his son in Chapter 7. Here he explains why he became uninterested in theodicy, i.e. justifying the goodness of God in the face of evil and suffering. Yes, painful experiences have a way of making rational arguments seem rather futile. And yet, he couldn’t give up on God (p. 210). Again, he was forced to live with mystery. Yes, indeed.

 I was very interested in Wolterstorff’s reflections on teaching philosophy. I couldn’t help but take note of a comment about his experiences after he returned to Yale to teach in the Divinity School. He recalls that every once in a while a student would raise his hand and say something to the effect: “But as Jesus says in John 5 …” (p. 250). Wolterstorff goes on to say that this was always in indicator that this student was evangelical and he was speaking as if he were at an evangelical campfire. And then this: “I would take such a student aside afterwards and say that he could make approximately the same point he was trying to make, but that he had to learn to make it in a voice appropriate to a Yale philosophy classroom rather than in a voice appropriate to an evangelical campfire.”

Here I cannot resist engaging in some philosophical analysis. Why is quoting what Jesus says in John 5 distinctively evangelical? Wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) liberal Christians use this same kind of language? Or is Wolterstorff indulging in a liberal bias against evangelicals? Another question: Exactly what is the difference between camp-fire talk and talk within a philosophy classroom? Is philosophical talk superior to camp-fire talk? And if this is what is implied, is this not rather patronizing and condescending? Or does the making of this contrast reveal the dark side of intellectual embarrassment about any talk about Jesus? Surely at a divinity school it should be appropriate to quote Jesus. Or, must all such quoting be done in a “critical” fashion as befits a philosophy classroom? Maybe, just maybe, there are problems with the critical approaches to theology that are in vogue today. I would further suggest that Wolterstorff’s contrast and implicit critique of Jesus talk goes counter to his own critique of John Rawls and Rawls’s argument that in the public sphere only rational “neutral” arguments are allowed, only appeals to “public reason” (p. 271ff). Is this not what Wolterstorff is doing when he demands of his evangelical students that they not argue from within their own tradition?

But there is more. “Evangelicals often interpret the hostility they experience in academic settings as hostility to Christianity, or more specifically, as hostility to evangelical Christianity. Sometimes it is that, but not always. Sometimes it’s a reaction to the fact that the voice in which the evangelical is speaking is inappropriate to the situation” (p. 250). Again, all the questions I have raised in the previous paragraph apply. I’m glad that Wolterstorff at least added the word “sometimes.” I have certainly experienced hostility to Christianity and evangelical Christianity in the secular academic world. I still remember giving a paper at a conference at the University of Toronto where I was defending the possibility of an ethical form of evangelism, and where I experienced obvious and open hostility to my philosophical defense of the possibility of ethical forms of evangelism. And I didn’t quote John 5! I have to wonder whether Wolterstorff has not experienced more hostility because his is the voice of a liberal Christianity, which is more acceptable at a liberal university. Perhaps also his reputation is such that colleagues are more circumspect in expressing their opposition to Wolterstorff’s arguments.

I hope that the above critical reflections will not detract from all that is good and inspiring about Wolterstorff’s memoirs. Philosopher’s simply can’t help but engage in critical reflection! Much more could be said about In This World of Wonders, but my intent in this blog is just to share a few of my reflections on this superb autobiography. I am thankful that Wolterstorff overcame his initial reluctance in writing his memoirs. His vignettes and many stories were indeed inspiring. I gained a deeper understanding of the man who has shaped my own thinking over the years. And I learned a few lessons about how to write a philosopher’s autobiography. For those interested in another autobiography/memoir of a philosopher, see my Stumbling Heavenward: One Philosopher’s Journey (Mill Lake Books, 2021).

Sofia Samatar and Modern Mennonites

A review of Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque: A Memoir (New York, Catapult, 2022)

This is a rather complex book. Although it is sub-titled a memoir, it’s running thread is a report of a tour of Mennonites to Central Asia in 2016. Why were they on this pilgrimage? They were retracing some of the steps of a group of Mennonites who left Russia/Ukraine in the late 19th. century to follow the vision of a charismatic leader, Claas Epp Jr., who predicted that Christ’s return was immanent and would be located in Central Asia. A description of this original trek is another thread running through The White Mosque. Interspersed in all this are other topics which the author has obviously spent a good deal of time researching – a treatment of 125 years of Uzbek photography, a review of Central Asian films, and an exploration of the dominance of Martyr’s Mirror in Mennonite life.

A theme running throughout the book is the question of identity. I want to use this theme to summarize and evaluate the book. Yes, this book is in part a personal memoir of the author born to a Swiss Mennonite woman and a Somali Muslim man and raised as a Mennonite of color in America. As such, Samatar explores her own struggle with a mixed identity, which “might make someone feel like a mistake, a cosmic gaffe” (p. 12). She describes meeting with a group of students of color at Goshen College in 2016 where they gave expression to feelings of isolation as they faced what they called “the Mennonite wall” – an exclusive white group identity (p. 129). It would seem that Samatar has come to terms with her complex identity, in that she describes herself as “a graceful, pale yellow, good looking, attractive negress, a little mysterious sometimes in my ways, and always good and pleasant and always ready to do things for people” (p. 15). And yet, the book begins with Samatar describing her mixed identity as an “electric storm” (p. 9). “I stand amid this lightning which, here in the twenty-first century, only seems to be growing more intense” (p. 9).

Samatar’s complex identity is further complicated by the fact that she marries a Swiss-American, “the grandson of Mennonite missionaries, raised in Nairobi, multilingual, a total rootless cosmopolitan” who has become “a staunch atheist” (p. 17). She and her husband have become “secular Mennonites,” though Samatar herself still attends church, sort of. She admits that while she loves the music, she drifts and doodles and writes while at worship services (p. 17). Strangely, Samatar later criticizes Mennonites who have given up the faith but still go to church (p. 292).

So this book is also about a confused religious identity. Samatar is very much a modern North American Mennonite. As such, she revels in skepticism, though she does worry at times about being congenitally “bent on finding the cracks in any position whatever” (p. 83). For example, she draws attention to the disparities in the four gospels which seem like “some fantastic postmodern novel” (p. 157). Their children are being raised with no religious tradition, but the parents are “scared they’ll be cultural nitwits” (p. 17). So they do teach their children some biblical stories, “not for religious reasons, but so they’ll be able to understand Western literature” (p. 18). I can imagine that Samatar and her husband would say that they want to free their children to make up their own minds with respect to religion. What they forget is that they are indoctrinating their children into secular Mennonitism – see my Teaching for Commitment (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).

The main thread of the book is a detailed description of Samatar’s participation in a Mennonite and Uzbekistan history tour in 2016, retracing some of the steps of the pilgrimage described in the book, The Great Trek of of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884, by Fred Belk (Herald Press, 1976). The reader is made to see and feel the surrounding landscape, the weather, the dust and the memorable visit to Ak Metchet, meaning “the White Mosque.” It is here where a group that had split off from Claas Epp settled and built a church/mosque which they had white-washed. They lived here for some 50 years, learning to live together with Muslims in peace. Sadly, they were eventually deported in 1935 when they refused the collectivization required by the new Bolshevik government. It was a picture of this church taken by the Swiss photographer and adventurer Ella Maillart in 1932 that captured the imagination of Samatar and that drew her to participate in this tour. At one point she reflects on the members of the tour group and how “preposterous” they seem to her – “All of us, with our bizarre investments in the past, our naïve susceptibility to narrative” (p. 57).

Then there is the thread of the book that deals with the original trek from Ukraine to Central Asia by Claas Epp and his followers. Epp somehow managed to recruit a good number of followers after reading a novel and then writing his own book, The Unsealed Prophecy of the Prophet Daniel and the Meaning of the Revelation of Jesus. He predicted March 8, 1889 as the day of Christ’s return which would be located in Uzbekestan. When this didn’t happen Epp was forced to revise the date to a few years later, but yet again, there was disappointment. Amazingly, some of the families remained loyal to him to the very end.

Samatar wrestles with the likes of charismatic fanatics like Claas Epp. Do they have anything to teach us? Yes and no. Epp’s group had a misguided goal. “They thought they were pilgrims, but they were wanderers” (p. 39). Samatar refers to a history book which calls this sort of thing “a monument of warning” – a “wild desire for something that can’t be true” (p. 57). She quotes Ross Bender who argues, “The Mennonite story is not a narrative but a sort of consensual hallucination” (p. 103). I would have liked to have seen Samatar wrestle with some additional questions. What is the difference between fanatical and healthy religious commitment? Are we as modern Mennonites in danger of being misled by fanatics like Claas Epp? Have we ourselves strayed from orthodox Christian belief? Is it possible for us to be so obsessed with peace and justice and inclusion that we miss out on other essentials of the Christian faith? And is this not another expression of fanaticism?

Samatar makes much of the interactions between Muslims and Mennonites and their occasional cooperation in Central Asia. Indeed, Samatar holds this up as a liberal ideal, even suggesting that this is the heart of Mennonite faith – diversity, tolerance and respect for the other. She worries about monoculture – “it chokes variety out” (p. 194). Indeed, she is “terrified of monoculture” (p. 197). This leads her to identify the strength of the Mennonite church as being “the patchwork of people brought together in such different ways, by birth and faith and thirst, to build a house of effort and care. I would say our strength is that we can’t get everyone on the same page. I would say my church almost looks like my idea of utopia” (p. 292). But I have to wonder whether this emphasis on diversity is not itself a monoculture of ideas within modern Mennonitism. And, whatever happened to Paul’s reminder that we are called to one hope, and that there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:3-6).

Samatar’s commitment to diversity and tolerance leads her to object to evangelism and missionary activity. Indeed, she comes back to this theme again and again. If only Christians and Muslims could live “without forcing their views on one another, without the rage for conversion, without the need to make others think and worship like themselves,” then we could live in peace (p. 209). She argues that “Mennonites would never have tried to bring Somalis to Christ had they been capable of true religious tolerance” (pp. 166-7, 170). She berates mission websites like “Somalis for Jesus” (p.166). She objects to glorifying missionary martyrs in Muslim countries (p. 166). Samatar also devotes a few pages to testimonies of the difficulties faced by Somali converts (pp. 168-9). But isn’t the notion of “forcing” one’s religious beliefs on someone else rather vague? And what does “tolerance” really mean? And what of her own evangelistic fervor in spreading the gospel of liberal progressive ideas? Indeed, are not human beings by nature persuading animals, crusading for what they believe to be true and right? So instead of condemning evangelism outright, what is needed is an articulation of the criteria of ethical evangelism which I have attempted elsewhere – The Ethics of Evangelism (IVP Academic, 2011), and The Scandal of Evangelism (Cascade Books, 2018).

To her credit, Samatar does engage in some critique of Mennonites, past and present. She exposes the sense of superiority held by Mennonite missionaries, the feeling that they had something to contribute to primitive natives (p. 76f). Even Mennonite wagons were viewed as superior to those built by the Cossacks (p. 76). She describes how a modern progressive Mennonite who has given up church planting for work in a non-governmental organization like MCC is now seen as “transformed overnight into a very clever and virtuous person,” and as “an extremely modern person, cutting edge” (p. 77). “Mennonites think they’re literally God’s gift to humankind” (p.141). Yes, there is a danger of self-righteousness in Mennonite do-goodism. And as is noted by Samatar, it is simply dishonest to fail to admit that we ourselves gain in our giving (p. 143).

But Samatar is proud of one Mennonite core belief – non-violence. The followers of Claas Epp left Russia because of their refusal of violence. “In this shining absolutism lies the great honor and dignity of Anabaptist life” (p. 52). Again, there is a worrying self-righteousness here. Indeed, as Samatar notes, there are other traditions, Muslim and Somali, who also have peace traditions (p. 134). We are not alone in our “shining absolutism” regarding non-violence. And let’s not forget Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector which Jesus gave “to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else” (Luke 18:9-14). I wonder, would Jesus condemn us for being Mennonite Pharisees?
Towards the end of the book there is a reminder of how Claas Epp and his followers were shaped by a German novel, “Das Heimweh,” or home-ache, a “longing for at-homeness,” a “driving homesickness” (pp. 96, 294). Samatar applies this to herself. Perhaps the longing for at-homeness affects all of us. If only we could find this in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, rather than in human invented visions that so often go awry.

Samatar concludes the book: “And how I love their wrongness. Their beautiful error. The collapse of their intent. It’s failure that saves these wanderers from the old lines, the known gestures, the missionary effect” (p. 297). Surely there is something very wrong here. Loving the errors and wrongness of others? Is not mercy and forgiveness the more appropriate response to the errors of others? And being saved from old lines? Is the new necessarily better than the old? And then a final comment about what drew Samatar to this pilgrimage – it gave her “a sense of the fragmented nature of others; of everyone” (p. 304). Yes, everyone! Here, a glimmer of humility.

This book is not an easy read. I skimmed parts, but I did keep reading to the end. If readers would like a more positive take on this book, see a review written by Shirley Hershey Showalter, in Anabaptist World, and in the Canadian Mennonite, Jan 16, 2023.

Epistemology and the Old Testament

Review of Richard L Smith’s,

Such a Mind as This: A Biblical-Theological Study of Thinking in the Old Testament

(Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2021), xxvi + 418 pp.

Does the Bible have anything to say about epistemology?  This is a question that I have pondered for quite some time. Until quite recently, little attention had been paid to this question by biblical scholars, with some even rejecting the idea of the Bible yielding a coherent theory of knowledge. Richard Smith’s Such a Mind as This, is a significant contribution to the recent spate of serious work that has been done by way of articulating a biblical epistemology. Smith is an international citizen and scholar, having received his Doctorate from Westminster Theological Seminary, then serving for a while in Prague, and now living in Argentina where he is involved in writing, teaching, and mentoring  students.

In Such a Mind as This, Smith limits himself to the Old Testament which he says calls us repeatedly to what he delightfully labels “intellectual piety” – loving God with our minds (xxiii).  “The Old Testament shows that we are built for intellectual curiosity. God wants us to ask questions – and to find answers in his communication to us.  Indeed, God created the whole world as a school in which every experience is an invitation to think and learn” (xxii). This is a good summary of the book.

The book is organized around three questions (xxiv). The first:  How did Adam and Eve think before the fall?  Chapters 1 & 2 give us a careful exposition of an Edenic epistemology as found in Genesis 1 & 2. God created a world and situated Adam and Eve in his creation as thinkers. Smith introduces a theme that runs throughout the book – God’s covenantal relation with his creation, including humankind. God modelled for Adam and Even how to represent his interests in the garden as apprentice rulers, builders, investors and thinkers. This covenant also relates to epistemology. There is no knowledge apart from the covenantal bond between the Creator and creation. Adam and Eve were called to listen to God in order to understand the world they lived in. God taught them through nature, guided pedagogy and speech (23). Adam and Eve were “embedded within a web of meaning and infrastructure imposed by the Creator” (41). They were not “epistemologically autonomous” but were called to humbly submit to God and the world that he had created (41-2).

Sadly, the biblical story continues with a description of the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3-11, which leads to their banishment from Eden. This brings us to the second question of Old Testament epistemology.  How does mankind think after the fall?  Smith describes the resulting “exilic epistemology” in Chapters 3-7 of his book.  Here he follows Dru Johnson in highlighting the basic question raised in Genesis 3-11: Who we are listening to? Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve listened to God. They then made the tragic mistake of listening to the crafty serpent and trusting their own eyes and their own understanding when they looked at the forbidden tree and saw “that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes” (Gen 3:6). “They set themselves up as the final arbiters of truth, the judges of good and evil, and the ultimate interpreters of reality” (63). God is now deemed to be “epistemologically irrelevant” (72).

Smith goes on to illustrate exilic epistemology in three different ways.  Chapter 4 describes intellectual sinfulness as embodied in the worldview of Egypt and the mentality of Pharoah. Both Moses and Pharoah witness the same dramatic plagues, but they don’t evaluate them from an epistemologically neutral position. Pharoah is guided by his religious worldview and self-identity as a son of Re.  Moses interprets the wonders of God in terms of Hebrew cosmology, Yahweh’s counsel, and the covenant with Abraham (88).   Chapter 5 examines the self-directed quest for knowledge related by Qohelet (the Preacher) in the book of Ecclesiastes, resulting in confused and contradictory depictions of reality. Lesson to be drawn from Ecclesiastes: “be ever vigilant about mixed-bag epistemologies and worldviews” (117).  Chapter 6 provides a helpful analysis of the book of Proverbs which is organized “almost entirely around the theme of two ‘ways’: two life paths (wisdom and folly), two worldviews (Yahweh and other gods), and two guides (Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly)” (121). This double perspective is summarized in Proverbs 1:7. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Chapter 7 examines exilic epistemology as described by the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Isaiah begins with an expression of God’s yearning for his people to truly understand. “Come now, let us reason together” (Isa 1:18).  Instead we get one of the most poignant summary explanations of unbelief found in the Old Testament, where Israel is described as hearing but not really understanding, seeing, but not really perceiving, and as having hearts that have become dull (Isa 6:9-10). Jeremiah too is called to address a “foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but see not, who have ears but hear not” (Jer 5:21). Chapter 7 concludes with what are perhaps the most alarming verses in the Bible: “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels” (Ps 81:11-12).  What an accurate description of contemporary epistemological relativism.

There is a third epistemological question that is addressed in the Old Testament and that is highlighted by Smith in the remaining half of Such a Mind as This: How does a sinner learn to love God with the mind? Chapters 8-14 describe a “redemptive epistemology,” a penultimate stage in God’s story of creation, fall into sin, redemption, and restoration (217). These chapters begin with a call to repentance as a first step in escaping the ravaging effects of sin. Here we are given an exposition of themes in Isaiah and Psalm 94 which highlight the need for repentance.  A redemptive epistemology starts by affirming two essential truths about human knowing: finitude and fallenness (214). We need to repent of our lust for autonomy. Noah and Abraham are described as examples of a humble epistemology which reverses the sin of Adam and Eve in that they really listen to God’s voice.

The next two chapters are devoted to the book of Deuteronomy which Smith describes as “the Rosetta stone of redemptive epistemology” (219). Here we learn that a redemptive epistemology recognizes that Yahweh Elohim demands absolute and universal adoration, as expressed in six covenantal announcements using the formula “Hear O Israel,” known as  Shemas, the best known of which is found in Deuteronomy 6:5. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Deuteronomy also gives us a pedagogical infrastructure which is devoted to nurturing intellectual piety, or “such a mind as this,” a heart and mind that fears God and keeps all his commandments (Deut 5:29).

Chapters 11 & 12 examine the book of Job as “a real-world test of redemptive epistemology under extreme pressure” (291). It is not often that the book of Job is treated from an epistemological point of view, but the result is a fascinating and insightful interpretation of this story. “The book of Job shows that our epistemological context is very complex. We often imagine ourselves as self-directed and self-sufficient thinkers” (315). Job learned otherwise when in the end he encounters God who asks him, “Who is this who darkens knowledge by words without knowledge” (Job 38:2). What an assault on the modern ideal of autonomy. Smith describes Job as “an Old Testament epistemic hero” (344).  “He demonstrated how to love God with the mind in the real world of sin and enigma” (344).

The final two chapters wrestle with the problem of practicing a redemptive epistemology within a context that is hostile to God and his revelation.  Chapter 13 examines Jeremiah’s advice about discerning God’s voice in the midst of the disorientation that would be part of impending exile. The chapter concludes with a brief meditation on Psalm 137. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps 137:4). The final chapter provides a more positive answer to the plaintive question raised in Psalm 137 by looking at how Daniel and his three friends navigated loving God with their minds in a foreign land.

While these final chapters include brief hints about discerning truth in a cacophony of competing voices in our time, I would have liked to see more application to our contemporary world. What does redemptive epistemology look like for Christian scholars in our universities today? How do Christian scholars redeem “secular” scholarship?  And what help is there for laypeople struggling with foreign ideologies that permeate medicine, economics, politics and race relations?  Smith refers a number of times to the sons of Issachar  who possessed understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chron 12:32). Smith has certainly given us the theological grounding for understanding our times. But I would have liked more by way of applying his careful and instructive analysis of the epistemology in the Old Testament to the challenges that we face in our contemporary world.

 Of course, addressing these questions would require many more pages in an already long book. I would recommend that Smith write a sequel to his Such a Mind as This. But he is to be commended for giving us a lucid and inspiring account of the biblical and theological foundations for an epistemology that has huge implications for us as Christians living in a world of competing and polarizing opinions.

The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching

Review essay on The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching, by Perry L. Glanzer and Nathan F. Alleman (Oxford University Press, 2019)

This book is a welcome companion to George Marsden’s The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (OUP, 1997). Authors Perry Glanzer and Nathan Alleman (henceforth G&A) are both professors at Baylor University, a Baptist university with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship.

G&A frame the challenge of Christian teaching in terms of a relationship between two identities – being a Christian and being a teacher within the college and university context. After an initial chapter exploring the historical origins of widespread concerns about teachers’ religious identity, there are four chapters devoted to an empirical study of 2,300 teachers at 49 Christian colleges and universities. These chapters are not only descriptive in nature. The data is used to draw some conclusions as to how being a Christian should change one’s teaching.

Chapters 6 and 7 are devoted to the topic of teaching at secular and pluralistic universities. A final chapter reviews the strengths and limitations of three types of colleges and universities – church-related, interdenominational and pluralistic. In this chapter G&A also argue for a pluralistic system of higher education, citing the American university system as “the most pluralistic in the world” (p. 175).
This review essay will focus mainly on chapters 6 & 7, in part because I have spent most of my career teaching philosophy at Medicine Hat College, a state-funded secular college in Alberta, Canada. My interest in these chapters is also prompted by my having written a chapter on the topic of evangelism in the academy – see Chapter 9 of The Scandal of Evangelism: A Biblical Study of the Ethics of Evangelism (Cascade Books, 2018). Although G&A don’t frame the challenge of teaching in secular and pluralistic universities in terms of evangelism, this is really an underlying issue in their deliberations.

The introductory chapter is titled, “The Challenge of Identity-Influenced Teaching.” In chapters 6 & 7 this challenge gets translated into asking whether a Christian teacher’s own personal convictions can be shared in a secular and pluralistic university classroom, and if so, to what extent. Already in the introduction G&A draw on two writers to illustrate two contrasting positions that can be taken on this question. Stanley Fish has argued that it is inappropriate for a faculty member to “advocate personal, political, moral, or any other kind of views except academic views” in the classroom (p.7; Fish, Save the World on your Own Time, OUP, 2008). By contrast, Parker Palmer has argued that good teachers join the self and the subject. They are transparent about what they believe. They trust their own selfhood and “make it available and vulnerable in the service of learning” (pp. 8-9; Palmer, To Know As We Are Known. HarperOne,1983; The Courage to Teach, Jossey-Bass, 2007).

These two contrasting positions appear again in chapters 6 & 7 which deal with Christians teaching in the pluralistic university (pp. 134-8). G&A argue that both views are too simple. Fish’s assumption of neutrality on the part of the teaching is impossible, and it assumes a sharp distinction between the personal and the academic. Palmer’s transparent approach to teaching fails to address the need for some boundaries between personal identity and what is taught in the classroom. What is needed is a more nuanced approach to teaching that balances the personal and professional identities of the Christian teacher.

While G&A make some important contributions to providing a more nuanced answer to the question as to whether and to what extent a Christian teacher’s own identity can shape his or her teaching in the classroom of a pluralistic university, I believe their analysis is also very wrong in places. A problem already emerges in their definition of a pluralistic university. They argue that in theory, a pluralistic university “uses only academic requirements and identities to exclude students or faculty,” and it “does not espouse a particular religious or ideological identity, among other identities, and only educates with common human identities [or] ends in mind (e.g. enhancing our flourishing as human beings by discovering truth) or academic/vocational identities (e.g. fashion good biologists, sociologists, or economists” (p. 129).

The problem here is that this is a very idealistic view of the pluralistic university, and G&A are forced to admit that in practice, there are other identities and ideologies shaping the modern university. For example, in a footnote they admit that gender studies departments have become “feminist seminaries” (p. 230, n27). Indeed, I would argue that the idea of a university not espousing a particular ideological identity is not even possible in theory. Religious and ideological neutrality is impossible, as John Rawls discovered when wrestling with the problem of defining justice, and hence his later focus on “comprehensive doctrines” which are inescapable in liberal societies and institutions (p. 137).

There are also problems with defining our “common human identities” and assuming that today’s universities are committed to searching for truth, goodness and beauty (pp. 129, 147). The very notion of truth is hotly contested in all universities today. And do we really have common moral virtues (pp. 144, 146, 147)? Indeed, should “culturally agreed-upon views” even be the standard for what is taught at a university (p. 147)? So the problem Christian teachers face at a pluralistic university is perhaps better described in terms of how to interact with a competing and often hostile ideology that underlies the university. Although G&A do sometimes acknowledge the existence of hostility towards Christianity at pluralistic universities (p.196), they tend to underplay this. I have experienced this hostility in various academic contexts, and I know I am not alone. For some of the challenges I have faced as a Christian in a secular academic world, see my recently published autobiography, Stumbling Heavenward: One Philosopher’s Journey (Mill Lake Books, 2021, chs. 8,9,10).

Of course, there is still something to be said for defining the university in terms of plurality. Thankfully there is still a good deal of plurality at universities, reflecting also the plurality of our societies. And somehow we have to learn how to be an academic community despite our differences. So we need to find some common ground. I wonder sometimes whether the pragmatic need to get along is in fact the only common ground that we have. G&A go on to suggest that the moral basis of their analysis is both the Christian tradition and the liberal moral tradition of the contemporary pluralistic university, claiming that there is some commonality between these two traditions (p. 130). This too can and has been challenged, though I have argued the same elsewhere and will concede this point here (see my Teaching for Commitment, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993, pp. 54-6; and In Defence of Religious Schools and Colleges, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001, ch. 12).

My central concern with the position that G&A take with regard to the boundary-markers that Christian professors need to adhere to at a pluralistic university has to do with the “no unwanted identity conversion rule” that they adopt, drawing on Stanley Fish (p. 138). According to this rule it is wrong for “teachers to try to convert (students) to a particular ideology or political or religious identity, or to follow a particular vision of the good life” (p. 136). The pluralistic university is “a context in which identity conversion is not anticipated, stated, or desired” (p. 136). Indeed, seeking identity conversions is a violation of “students’ human dignity and the implicit social contract between teachers and students functioning in a liberal democratic society” (p.137).

There are a number of significant problems here. First, what is the basis for this “implicit social contract”? Who determines that identity conversion is “unwanted” at universities? I believe a pluralistic university could just as well be defined as a place where each professor tries to convert students to his or her position. Indeed, G&A quote Stanley Hauerwas who has argued that he wants students to think just like him (p.147). I happen to believe that this would make for a much more interesting university experience for students than the frequently assumed posture taken by professors who try to pretend that they are neutral.

Secondly, G&A wrongly assume that seeking identity conversions will necessarily be a violation of the dignity of students. Not necessarily. It is quite possible for this to be done in such a way that the dignity of students is protected. If students are alerted to this possibility and if persuasion is done in such a way that they are free to reject the professor’s position, then there has been no violation of student dignity. Sadly, today, the very idea of persuasion receives a lot of bad press, and is often seen as coercive in and of itself. I have argued elsewhere that ethical persuasion is possible. Indeed, my trying to persuade you about something that I view as important is in fact a way to honor you (see my The Ethics of Evangelism: A Philosophical Defence of Ethical Proselytizing and Persuasion, Paternoster, 2011, pp. 55-9, 146-7).

Thirdly, G&A assume that seeking non-academic identity conversion on the part of a teacher will necessarily conflict with student expectations “to be initiated into what it means to be excellent in particular academic identities” (p. 136). But what if there is an overlap between these two identities? As a Christian I believe that to become a really good philosopher my students should become Christian philosophers. After all, if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, then seeking religious identity conversion is the most academic aim that I could have. Here I concur with Jeff Astley who has boldly claimed that: “Education and evangelism may be closer neighbours than many suspect.” (Astley, “Evangelism in Education,” International Journal of Education and Religion, 2002, p. 190).

I find it interesting that G&A give a different label to their rule later in chapter 6. They suddenly call it the “no nonacademic identity conversion rule” (p.142). The reason for this change is that they recognize that all professors do in fact seek identity conversion with regard to their own academic discipline. We want our students to think like us. But, why not extend this to our whole identity? The distinction between seeking non-academic identity conversion and academic identity conversion is an arbitrary distinction.

Fourth, it seems to me that there is a contradiction in the position taken by G&A. Already in chapter 6 they suggest that it is acceptable for Christian teachers to advance their own particular justifications for common moral principles (p. 146). A few pages later they argue that we shouldn’t downplay our particular identities in the classroom, and should expose students to “a wide range of identity commitments including religious identity commitments” (p. 149). At the end of this chapter they argue that it is appropriate for a professor to “confess” his or her religious identity in the classroom (pp. 150, 151). They expand on this theme in chapter 7, where they argue that it is appropriate for teachers “to start their courses with a confession of how their primary identity influences their teaching” (p. 155). To do so “is simply the practice of intellectual honesty” (p. 154). Now I agree with this entirely. But to do so is to introduce non-academic identity influence into the classroom. Indeed, for a Christian to start a class with a confession of faith is surely a kind of advocacy, which violates the “no nonacademic identity conversion rule” held by Fish and G&A. It is a form of Christian witness and can even be called evangelism.

Finally, there is another worry underlying the discussion of identity conversion, which tends to be down-played by G&A. It has to do with indoctrination. While G&A do at one point acknowledge the importance of this topic, they clearly prefer their own focus on identity-formed teaching (p. 174). But the notion of indoctrination does come up explicitly a few times in the chapters I am focussing on (p.139, 140, 145). And Fish is worried about professors using their power to “impose” their own views on “contested ethical” matters, which is “indoctrination if anything is” (p. 144). Ah yes, here we have the real worry underlying the “no nonacademic identity conversion rule.” It has to do with “imposition” (p. 136; cf. p. 155), “pressure” (p. 145), “oppressive opinion pushing” (p. 156), and indoctrination. The problem here is that all of these terms are rather vague, and “indoctrination” is notoriously difficult to define, as I have argued in Teaching for Commitment. I suggest that a more nuanced description of how religious and academic identities should intersect in pluralistic universities, requires a careful treatment of the problem of indoctrination. And we should also avoid all loaded and vague terms like “imposition,” “pressure” and “oppressive opinion pushing.”

I conclude that the “no unwanted identity conversion rule” is fundamentally flawed. Is there anything that can be salvaged in this rule? I believe there is. The teacher in a pluralistic university is primarily an educator, not an evangelist. Here I have introduced the notion of priorities. Indeed, at several points G&A talk about the need for teachers to sort out what they “prioritize” when they are teaching (pp. 138, 154). I quite agree that the primary purpose of the teacher at a pluralistic university is to teach philosophy or history or mathematics. While I don’t think we can exclude the introduction of nonacademic identities in the classroom, this should always hold secondary place. The classroom cannot be changed into an evangelistic rally. A philosophy of religion class cannot be changed into a course in Christian apologetics. Academic subject matter must remain the primary focus of the teacher. Of course, the notion of priorities is still rather vague.

G&A make a number of other helpful suggestions in overcoming this vagueness and in defining the boundaries between the professional and religious identities of a Christian at a pluralistic university. I have already touched on their suggestion of transparency on the part of the Christian teacher. “Teachers need to be both conscious and honest about how their identities and accompanying stories influence their approach to classroom objectives, curricular construction and pedagogy” (p. 155). I quite agree. Towards the end of my teaching career, I usually made it a point at the start of a new course to tell my students with a smile that they were stuck with a Christian philosopher and that my Christian worldview would colour everything I would say in the course. I also added that they could disagree with me and doing so would not at all preclude their getting an “A” grade in the course. Very seldom did I have a student object to what I was doing. G&A provide another illustration of this approach to teaching as per George Marsden (p. 156), and also deal with the topic of grading (pp. 170-2).

G&A also argue for justice in presenting varying viewpoints in the classroom (pp. 139, 158-64). Here they draw on Stephen Cahn’s Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). Cahn defends the introduction of personal opinions in the university classroom but argues that this must be done in such a way as to follow what he calls “an academic golden rule,” grounded in a general concept of fairness or justice (p. 158). Alternative viewpoints on any subject must be presented and these need to be treated fairly. I would add that in order to be fair the Christian teacher must also raise objections to his or her own perspective.

G&A also argue that the religious identity of teachers can be allowed to shape the way they design a course (pp.164-7). But again this must be done in accordance with the principle of fairness. For example, in teaching foundational ethics courses I included a section on religious ethics and would try to find texts that had some readings on Christian ethics, given that this was the religion most students would be familiar with. Then in the interest of fairness I encouraged students to raise objections to Christian ethics and would also do this myself. I also concluded my introductory ethics courses with what I told my students was a “philosophical sermon” – how scandalous! I issued a very personal challenge to students to live the moral life. In doing so, I also explored the difficulties inherent in accepting this challenge, including the problem of moral failure. And then, very briefly, I would mention the need for forgiveness when we experience guilt as a result of moral failure. I would then review a variety of options in dealing with forgiveness, including the idea of a super-cosmic Forgiver. You could usually hear a pin drop during this final lecture in my ethics courses (see The Scandal of Evangelism, p. 160).

One student, in an evaluation of one of my ethics courses wrote, “This was a great class, Dr. Thiessen. Unfortunately, you opened (up) my conscience; is there another class I could take so I can shut it off!” Unfortunately, I didn’t offer such a course, because I believe in teaching from and for commitment.

Until quite recently, little has been written about Christian teaching. Much of the focus has been on the nature of Christian scholarship. The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching is a welcome addition to the recent interest in the notion in Christian teaching. Much of past writing on Christian scholarship and the more recent work on Christian teaching has focussed on the Christian college and university. G&A are to be commended for including a treatment of Christians teaching at pluralistic universities in the volume under review. However, I think there is still more to be done by way of nuancing the discussion of the extent to which a Christian teacher’s identity can shape what he or she does while teaching at pluralistic colleges and universities.

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A Philosopher Examines Jonathan Haidt

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt.  New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2013. 500 pages, Paperback

The title of Jonathan Haidt’s book is well chosen. This is a book that touches on ethical reasoning, political analysis, and religious faith. There is, however, an ambiguity in the main title. The “righteous mind” can refer either to a mind that thinks about that which is right, or it can refer to a self-righteous or dogmatic mind. Haidt intends both meanings. The overall thrust of this book is to explain how and why liberals and conservatives are so divided about politics and religion, and also how this divide can be overcome. What is missing from title of this book is that it is written from the perspective of evolutionary social psychology.

As a philosopher, I found Part I of this book most intriguing – “Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second.” Haidt is here challenging much of the history of philosophy that presumes that we are fundamentally rational creatures. For example, Plato assumed that reason ought to control the passions. This kind of thinking was reinforced during the Enlightenment which postulated a universal and objective reason. According to Haidt, we are not as rational as we think we are. We are governed more by intuition and instinct than by reason. Here we must be careful not to see intuition and instinct as inferior to reason. Both are “cognitive” according to Haidt. There are two kinds of cognition, intuition and reasoning. Intuition refers to the hundreds of rapid, effortless decisions and moral judgments that we all make every day (p.53). Many of these are automatic. Only some of them surface as full-blown emotional responses.

Haidt provides a useful illustration to help us understand these two kinds of cognition. He first used this analogy his earlier book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Basic Books, 2006). Try to imagine a rider on a huge elephant. The rider symbolizes the rational part of human nature, our controlled processes, including “reasoning-why.” The large and lumbering elephant stands for the automatic processes of human nature, including emotion, intuition and all forms of “seeing-that” (p. 53). For Haidt, it is our automatic processes that run the human mind, just as they have been running animal minds for 500 million years (p. 53).

The rider can do several useful things. It can see further into the future and can therefore help the elephant make better decisions. More importantly, the rider acts as the spokesman for the elephant, even though it doesn’t necessarily know what the elephant is really thinking. “The rider is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants to do next” (p.54). In evolutionary terms, once human beings developed language and began to communicate with each other, “it became extremely valuable for elephants to carry around on their backs a full-time public relations firm” (p. 54). So, the rider serves the elephant. Reason is the servant of intuition. “Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president” (p.106).

I think Haidt has got it right. We are not as rational as we think we are. We approach many new situations or new ideas with our minds already made up. This has huge implications for how we think about education, or how we think about influencing or persuading others, a subject that I have been preoccupied with for much of my career. We need to pay much more attention to the way in which our thinking is shaped by non-rational influences – social media, movies, culture, propaganda. We seldom change our minds because of rational persuasion. As Haidt puts it, “if you want to change people’s minds, you’ve got to talk to their elephants” (p. 57). At a personal level, we influence people more by displaying warmth and empathy than by rational argument.

Haidt’s analysis is also helpful in understanding churches. Every church has a distinctive culture that is simply a given. It is this pervasive church culture that determines not only the atmosphere of the church but also the decisions it makes. Decisions are largely made automatically in light of the culture of the church. It is very hard to challenge the culture of the church and the decisions that come out of such a culture. Rational persuasion is really of little value. Here again, one needs to learn how to talk to the large and lumbering elephant. Contrary positions need to be expressed with gentleness, and love, and prayer, and with lots of patience. Maybe over time, over a long period of time, one might bring about a small shift in church culture.

Our moral judgments too are not fundamentally rational in nature, according to Haidt. Here he draws on eighteenth century philosopher, David Hume, who argues that morality is grounded in the emotions, though Haidt prefers to talk about social intuition rather than individual emotions. Emotions are only one type of intuition. Here again, the bulk of our moral judgments are intuitive, automatic, and elephant-like. Moral reasoning comes mainly after the initial intuitive moral judgments have already been made, and has the purpose of rationalizing our intuitions, and communicating them to others, particularly in terms of enhancing our reputation. Haidt comes very close to talking about moral intuitions as innate (pp. 153, 178, 325). Here his evolutionary theory gets in the way. As a Christian, I maintain that God has implanted in us certain moral intuitions, so that we instinctively know that some things are right or wrong (cf. Romans 2:14-15). Of course Haidt can’t admit this because he doesn’t believe in God. Further, he deals with morality at a descriptive level, and tries very hard to avoid prescription.

In Part II Haidt goes on to critique the dominant moral theories of a very small subset of the human population – Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic Western societies (forming the acronym WEIRD). WEIRD societies favor the values of utilitarianism and justice. Haidt argues that there is more to morality than harm and fairness, the values favored by liberals. Other important values include care, loyalty, authority, sanctity and liberty. These are values that tend to be emphasized by conservatives. Chapter 7 attempts to justify these values as part of an evolutionary process – adaptations for human flourishing. The value of care evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. The value of fairness evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited. The value of loyalty evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. The value of authority evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. The value of sanctity evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of facing threats of various kinds, and has the effect of binding groups together. The value of liberty evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of resisting bullies and tyrants.

Part III involves an extended treatment of the groupish tendencies of human nature. Evolutionary theory has more recently accepted the notion that natural selection can work at multiple levels, and can include both individuals and groups. Religion plays a key role in creating community, an essential component for human survival. Contrary to the current crusading atheists, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens, Haidt is quite sympathetic with religion.

The book ends with a final look at the increasing polarity between liberals and conservatives, arguing that in part these polarities are genetically based. “People whose genes gave them brains that get a special pleasure from novelty, variety, and diversity, while simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat are predisposed (but not predestined) to become liberals. They tend to develop certain ‘characteristic adaptations’ and ‘life narratives’ that make them resonate – unconsciously and intuitively – with the grand narratives told by political movements on the left” (p. 365). People whose genes have given them brains with the opposite settings are predisposed, for the same reasons, to resonate with grand narratives of the right. What to do about this polarity? Haidt pleads with both sides to listen and learn from each other. In fact the two sides compliment each other. A healthy society needs both liberals and conservatives. But he especially urges liberals to recognize that conservatives are better at creating and preserving moral and social capital that are essential to any society. “Moral communities are fragile things, hard to build and easy to destroy” (p.342). I admire Haidt, a former liberal, for having the courage to say this. I also appreciated his observation that liberals tend to be more dogmatic and narrow-minded than conservatives. So true, but all too often denied by liberals!

I conclude with some comments about the evolutionary perspective from which this book is written. As a Christian I am not entirely hostile to evolutionary theory. I am quite willing to go where the evidence leads me. I believe scientific evidence and biblical revelation point to a position of theistic evolution. Haidt, though more sympathetic to religion than most atheists, in the end interprets religion from an evolutionary perspective. Religion gives expression to our social nature (ch. 11), and captures the sacred (higher than I) dimension of our value system (pp. 173-4). At times Haidt is very careful to provide empirical support for his evolutionary theory. But especially when dealing with religion as a means of creating community, his analysis becomes increasingly speculative. It seems his evolutionary framework drives his interpretation, with or without empirical evidence.

This book provides a good example of how scientific theory relates to empirical evidence. Ultimately, theory needs to be grounded in the empirical. But we can never approach the empirical without some theoretical framework. Hence, the hermeneutical circle. How do we get out of this circle? First, by admitting that there is a problem. Further, a good scientist will always be open to having his/her interpretive framework challenged by empirical data that don’t quite fit the interpretative framework. The danger for a scientist who adopts an evolutionary theory, is that he interprets empirical data from the perspective of his assumed evolutionary perspective, and then lets nothing change his interpretive framework.

Let me give one example. Haidt is very careful to ground his interpretation of moral cognition as intuition in examples. So far, so good. Intuitions are then interpreted as adaptations of the human animal that have evolved over time, and that then become entrenched as automatic moral responses to certain situations. Again, this conclusion seems to be grounded in evidence. But there is a bit of an interpretive leap of faith here. As a Christian I interpret these moral intuitions as innate, as instincts that God has implanted into human nature. This interpretation is surely as plausible as an evolutionary interpretation. Indeed, as I have already pointed out, Haidt at times flirts with the notion of innateness. All that is needed to convert his interpretative theory into a Christian theory is to add the notion of God. Of course, I need to provide some additional evidence for preferring my interpretative framework, but that would take us far beyond the scope of this paper. Haidt clearly doesn’t want to adopt my Christian interpretive framework, because he is so thoroughly committed to his evolutionary interpretive framework. What would change Haidt’s mind? As we have already seen, rational argument will not be of much help. But perhaps the rider might look into the distant future, and entertain alternate scenarios, and this might eventually nudge the elephant closer to a genuinely religious interpretative framework.

Let me say a bit more about Haidt’s approach to morality. I find his position with regard to the nature of morality rather confusing. As an evolutionary social psychologist he is operating primarily at a descriptive level. His six foundational moral matrixes are descriptions of the values that people in fact do appeal to. As already noted, liberals tend to focus on liberty and equality. While conservatives have a broader moral matrix that includes loyalty, authority, and the sacred as importance values. But, as is the tendency of social scientists, Haidt doesn’t limit himself to description. He flirts with prescription. For example, Haidt argues (at least implicitly) that we ought to think in terms of all six moral foundations. He argues that liberals, especially, ought to be more open to conservative values. He decries the ideological divide between liberals and conservatives. The book concludes: “We’re all stuck here for a while, so let’s try to work it out” (p. 371). Yes indeed, but this comes very close to being a prescriptive conclusion. Haidt is saying that we ought to get along. Here again I believe Haidt needs to draw on Christian insights to overcome his confusion with regard to the descriptive/prescriptive divide. In the Christian canon of Scripture, God clearly issues prescriptions, the best example of which are the giving of the 10 commandments. But these commandments are not given arbitrarily. They are in fact given to us for our own good (Deut 6:3, 18). They work. If you want a healthy society, follow God’s laws. Or to draw on Haidt’s evolutionary perspective, God created man and society so that they have evolved in such a way that following the six moral matrixes will in fact lead to a healthy, well functioning society.

And what about the issue of moral relativism. Haidt is in fact very confusing here. At times he quite specifically adopts a relativistic stance (p.368). At other times, he quite specifically says he is not a relativist (pp.132-3). He wants to say that his six pillars of moral values are in fact the right way to make decisions. He comes very close to saying that these are objective moral values that all human beings should adopt. He correctly suggests that while these values are objective and universal, the way they are applied to different cultures will in fact be different (p.31). Here again I agree. There is some truth to situational relativism. But let’s not be so hesitant to admit that there are some core values that are built into nature that all people everywhere ought to follow. Again, I prefer a Christian interpretive framework which maintains that God created the world in such a way that the following of certain norms will in fact lead to flourishing societies.

As a philosopher, I often have difficulties appreciating books written by social scientists. As a Christian I also frequently have problems with overly dogmatic assertions of evolutionary scientists. I did not encounter these problems in reading Jonathan Haidt. Despite its confusions, this book deserves to be read.

Some Stories about Religious Upbringing and the Costs of Freedom

Review of
Religious Upbringing and the Costs of Freedom: Personal and Philosophical Essays.
Edited by Peter Caws & Stefani Jones, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

Many years ago Oxford philosopher, Richard Hare, suggested “that many of the dark places in ethics might be illuminated if philosophers would address themselves to considering the question, ‘How should I bring up my children?'” Religious Upbringing and the Costs of Freedom represents an interesting and unique attempt to address this question. Eleven philosophers share stories of their religious upbringing, and then reflect on this and draw some moral lessons. Each of the philosophers was brought up religiously, though in varying degrees of narrowness and strictness – Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Mormon, Mennonite, and Muslim. Each of them also broke free, in one way or another, from the religious upbringing that was “imposed” on them as children.

Some of the stories are sad. A few of the contributors describe actually being beaten by their parents as they showed signs of growing apostasy (pp. 72, 201). The co-editors of this volume, one growing up in a family which belonged to the Exclusive Brethren, a nineteenth-century offshoot of the Church of England” (p. 214), and the other as a Mormon in Provo, Utah, each highlight the withholding of love and affection as a means of discouraging their growing skepticism about the religion into which they were nurtured (pp. 207, 210, 234). The path to freedom for many of the contributors to this volume was a long and painful process. A few of the stories in this anthology describe less severe religious upbringings, with less painful journeys to greater freedom. The journey of Glen Pettigrove, for example, “was not a sudden, acrimonious rejection of religion or even of Christianity,” but rather a gradual shift from a fundamentalist Wesleyan and Baptist upbringing, to a more liberal Presbyterianism (135-6). This shift was hardly noticed by most of those who were responsible for his upbringing, and when noticed, was met with a loving and supportive response. Interestingly, Pettigrove’s contribution to this anthology is the only one that gives “a qualified defense” of religious indoctrination (p. 136).

Nearly all of the essays use the term “religious indoctrination” to describe their upbringing. But what does this term mean? Sometimes indoctrination is described simply as the passing on of religious beliefs from parent to child, or from one generation to the next (p. 217). The editors consider such “limited indoctrination” as not necessarily posing a moral problem (p.4). But most of the essays consider any sort of indoctrination, however mild, to be morally blameworthy (cf. Hirst, p. 174). Tasia Persson even equates indoctrination with brainwashing (Ch. 6, p. 112). Another odd usage of the term is introduced by Irfan Khawaja, brought up as a Muslim, who talks about “self-indoctrination” (Ch. 2, pp. 27, 32).

Clearly there is some confusion surrounding the meaning of religious indoctrination, as the editors themselves admit in their introduction (p.3). It is unfortunate that nearly all of the writers completely ignore the extensive literature on the concept of indoctrination that has emerged over the years in the philosophy of education. (see, for example, my Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination, and Christian Nurture. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Co-published by Gracewing, Leominster, U.K.) 1993.) Only Glen Pettigrove’s essay draws on this literature, and in my opinion this essay gives the most insightful analysis of the meaning and moral assessment of indoctrination.

Though not always entirely consistent, several writers astutely point to a fundamental problem with viewing all indoctrination as morally blameworthy. Children are by their very nature dependant, vulnerable, and impressionable. Stefani Jones, draws on Simone de Beauvior, and her use of the term “impinging” to describe the influence of parents on children who are dependent and vulnerable (208). Such “parental impinging” is not only inevitable, but also “absolutely necessary” for a child’s healthy development towards maturity, according to Jones. Indeed, as various philosophers of education have argued, children need to grow up in a secure and stable primary culture in order to develop into autonomous individuals. And, as is conceded by Raymond Bradley, despite his objections to growing up in a fundamentalist Christian environment, it nonetheless “gave me something tough to chew on, something to cut my teeth on intellectually (p.50). So maybe a narrow religious upbringing is an asset rather than a liability. Initiation into a primary culture is not itself a rational process, as Pettigrove argues, drawing on Wittgenstein, Gadamer and Mead, and this does not make such initiation morally problematic (p. 143). Growth towards rational autonomy is necessarily parasitic on children first being initiated into particular language-games and traditions typically given to them by their parents. It is therefore wrongheaded to characterize such initiation as morally problematic, or to label it indoctrination, understood in a pejorative sense.

But we still need to distinguish between justified and unjustified ‘impinging’ in parent-child relationships. Jones goes on to argue that “the degree to which parental impinging is justifiable is directly correlated to whether or not the impinging is aimed towards opening future possibilities for children or shutting them off” (208; cf. Hirst pp.169-75). I would only add that this is a gradual process and that it must also include the gradual enabling of children to critically evaluate their past upbringing, and the increasing release of parental control so that children can exercise their growing autonomy. On this account, religious indoctrination, understood as a pejorative term, involves the failure of parents and their religious community to combine the initiation of their children into a religious tradition with encouraging and facilitating the growth of their children towards autonomy. Clearly, on this account, the sad stories referred to earlier are indeed cases of religious indoctrination, understood in its pejorative sense.

Another confusion in these essays concerns the status of children with regard to autonomy. Tasia Persson, for example, describes even the child as having a right to autonomy, or as reaching, at some point, a “minimal rational capacity” (pp. 121, 127; cf. 149, 209). But, children are simply not adults. Nor do they suddenly achieve a minimal level of autonomy. Children grow towards autonomy. Interestingly, Persson gets beyond the either-or characterization of childrens’ autonomy in her conclusion when she asks whether it is possible for evangelical parents to fulfill their obligations to nurture their children in the faith and at the same time to respect their autonomy. She answers this question in the affirmative, reminding evangelicals that in a biblical worldview, choice for God is intended to be a free one. Hence evangelical parents “would do well to ensure that their children are given the chance to make autonomous choices by allowing them to develop the capacity for rational decision-making” (p. 131). Here you have a developmental approach to autonomy, which makes it possible to parents to give their children a religious upbringing and at the same time to gradually free them to make up their own minds about the faith into which they were nurtured. On this account, some of the critiques of the religious upbringing the authors received are unjustified, or at least softened

Such a combination of nurturing faith and nurturing autonomy at the same time is indeed possible, and is perhaps more achievable than most of the contributors to the book under review acknowledge. This collection of essays would have been stronger if it would have included a few more stories that would have illustrated this possibility. In the Introduction, the editors claim that they selected “a good representation of the variety of personal experiences, philosophical analyses, and religious orientations we encountered” (p.3). I believe a few stories of religiously committed philosophers who retained the faith into which they were nurtured should have been included in this anthology. Occasionally I felt the contributors to this volume were a little too preoccupied with giving vent to all their objections to the religion within which they were brought up (e.g. Bradley, Ch.3). Several writers also hint at another question that could have received more attention (Overall p.22; Dupont, p.93; Enns, p. 184): Is growing up in a skeptical home or a liberal university environment indoctrinatory? Nevertheless, this volume is a valuable contribution to answering the question, “How should we bring up our children?” and should be of interest to philosophers and practitioners of education, teachers in religious education, ethicists, and scholars in the religious studies.

(A condensed version of this review was first published in Studies in Religion, June, 2013, 42:262-4)

Indoctrination

To accuse someone of indoctrination is generally considered to be a serious accusation, especially in educational circles.  In fact, for most educators today, indoctrination is considered to be the very antithesis of what our schools are all about – educating in accordance with principles of rationality, freedom, and respect for individuals.

Religious instruction is particularly singled out as falling prey to the sin of indoctrination.  Not only the church, but church-related schools and colleges are often criticized because they are indoctrinate.  Christian parents are also frequently charged with indoctrination because they seek to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

How can those of us who are concerned about Christian nurture and education reply to the charge of indoctrination?  I want to suggest three possible responses.

There is first of all a problem in understanding what is meant by the term “indoctrination”.  Educational philosophers are particular concerned about clarifying the meanings of words, and much has been written about the concept of indoctrination in the last few decades.  But, as yet there is far from general agreement as to the exact meaning of “indoctrination”.  This disagreement is significant in that it indicates that the concept of indoctrination used by critics is itself vague and incoherent.

Thus, in defending oneself against the charge of indoctrination, one strategy is to ask the person making the charge to define the term “indoctrination”.  One will invariably uncover much confusion and many inconsistencies.  None of the critics of Christian education, to my knowledge, have as yet come up with a clear and defensible definition of this term.  The charge of indoctrination is therefore really vacuous.

When critics accuse Christians of indoctrinating, they are really only giving vent to their feelings of disapproval.  They are doing no more than shouting “Boo.”  Rational defense against such expressions of emotion is not only futile but unnecessary.

One of the major problems in defining indoctrination is that most, if not all proposed examples of indoctrinative teaching methods turn out to be unavoidable.  Thus another way in which to respond to the charge of indoctrination is to ask for specific examples of what are considered to be indoctrinative teaching methods.  One can then show that these very same methods also arise in what are generally considered to be acceptable educational endeavours.

For example, Christian parents are often criticized for imposing a specific religious tradition on their children.  The problem with this charge is that imposition is unavoidable in teaching children anything.  Parents, teachers, or society at large necessarily determine which traditions children are initiated into.  It is simply unfair to single out religion as uniquely susceptible to this supposed “problem.”

The final response has to do with the frequently made assumption that indoctrination is necessarily limited to doctrines or ideologies.  It is further assumed that such doctrines or ideologies are only found in religion, and that indoctrination is therefore impossible in accepted areas of knowledge such as history or science.

Against this it can be argued first of all that there are no good reasons to limit indoctrination to doctrines.  But, even if this connection is allowed, it can be shown that doctrines, however defined, are found in all areas of knowledge.  Thus, indoctrination can also occur in all areas of knowledge.

Therefore another way to defend oneself against the charge of religious indoctrination is to ask the person making the charge what he/she considers to be a characteristic of doctrines.  Then show how this characteristic is also found in history or science.

For example, the late British philosopher Antony Flew described doctrines as beliefs which are “either false or not known to be true.”  However, a study of the history of science shows that there have been and still are many beliefs held by scientists which have been shown to be false.  Science also rests on basic presuppositions like the uniformity of nature or the principle of causality that are simply assumed to be true and hence are not really known to be true.  Thus, indoctrination can also occur in science,  given Flew’s definition of doctrines.

There are some, in fact, who argue that indoctrination is very common in science.  Malcolm Muggeridge, for example, wrote:  “The dogmatism of science has become a new orthodoxy disseminated by the Media and a State educational system with a thoroughness and subtlety far exceeding anything of the kind achieved by the Inquisition.”

Of course many would reject Muggeridge’s put-down of science.  But it can be shown that science shares many, if not most of the supposedly negative features that lead some to call religious beliefs “doctrines”.  If therefore these “negative” features do not lead us to make the charge of indoctrination in the teaching of science, then I would suggest that we should also not use these same features to make the charge of indoctrination in the area of religious instruction.

This does not at all entail that indoctrination never occurs with respect to Christian nurture.  I do not want to dismiss entirely the charges of indoctrination made by critics against Christian education in homes and schools and colleges.  But what is needed first of all is a philosophically defensible and consistent concept of indoctrination.  Elsewhere I have argued that indoctrination should be defined as the curtailment of a person’s growth towards normal rational autonomy (Teaching for Commitment:  Liberal Education, Indoctrination & Christian Nurture (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).  The aim of all education, including Christian education, is to help children to grow towards intellectual maturity, and that includes helping them to become independent, rational, and critical thinkers.  There are limits to our being independent and rational, and hence my qualification of rational autonomy with the word “normal”.

There is research showing that initiating children into a primary culture is a key to helping children to grow towards normal rational autonomy.  So it is a mistake to think that parents who initiate their children into a particular Christian tradition are indoctrinating their children. As I have already argued, initiating into a particular and primary culture is inescapable.  It is only if parents or Christian schools fail, at the same time, to encourage children to become independent, rational, and critical thinkers (each qualified with “normal”) that they can legitimately be charged with indoctrination.  Sadly, that doesn’t always happens.  But I would suggest that it happens much less often than critics assume.

(This blog is a revised version of an article that first appeared in “A Christian Mind” column, in the Mennonite Brethren Herald, July 16, 1982)

 

 

Doing God in Education

Review of

Doing God in Education, by Trevor Cooling, London, Theos, 2010, 74pp., ₤ 10 (paperback), ISBN 13 978-0-9562182-3-0, Open access, www.theothinktank.co.uk

This short and lively report examines the controversial question of how religious beliefs should be dealt with in schools in Britain today.  Trevor Cooling proposes an alternative to the widely accepted approach of objectivity and religious neutrality in education.

Chapter 1 begins with a reference to Paul Hirst’s influential 1972 article entitled, “Christian Education: a contradiction in terms.”  Hirst’s assumptions about the secularization of knowledge, and universal rationality permitted only an objective study about religion(s).  Religious belief was also not allowed to provide a basis for “an educational ethos,” nor was it permitted “to have a shaping influence on the curriculum” (17).  The reader of Doing God in Education is quickly brought to current expressions of this position as found, for example, in the writings of the British Humanist Association.  Humanists have partnered with other minority religious groups in Britain, insisting on fairness in education in a religiously pluralistic democracy.  They view religious belief as a private matter and therefore maintain that schools should “be strictly neutral with regard to religious matters” (22).  Children should be informed about the various religions, so that they can make up their own minds, but they should not be indoctrinated into any one religious belief system.

Cooling objects to this approach because it is not neutral and is in fact unfair.  It treats religion as irrelevant, irrational, “toxic clutter” which hampers growth towards autonomy. Ultimately, it privileges a secular and humanist set of beliefs.  He argues in chapter 2 that the very notion of a neutral curriculum is in fact an impossible one.  All thinking rests finally on “beliefs,” interpretative frameworks, worldviews, or faith.  Even “shared values,” which are commonly thought to be a key to binding communities together, are not neutral, but subject to differing interpretations.

Cooling goes on to provide a detailed case study in chapter 3, showing how even the teaching of modern foreign languages is not neutral.  Drawing on the work of David I. Smith and Barbara Carvill (The Gift of the Stranger, Eerdmans, 2000), Cooling shows how teaching the German language can (and should) move beyond teaching the technicalities of German grammar, vocabulary, and linguistic skills, to helping students to reflect on their own values, attitudes and behaviors as they interact with a native speaker in spiritually and morally significant ways (47).

What does the rejection of neutral knowledge and the embracing of the idea that interpretive worldviews underlie all knowledge entail for education?  Religious beliefs will now not be seen to be irrelevant clutter.  Rather, beliefs and worldviews will be seen to “constitute the heart of education” (32). Education now becomes “a process where we each learn to reflect on the interpretations we make and the beliefs we hold as we construct our own understanding of the meaning and purpose of life” (32).  With this approach both religious and non-religious worldviews are “treated as resources to be tapped in the cause of pupil well-being and flourishing, not as problems to be confronted and marginalized” (44).

In common schools, with a diverse student population, fairness will demand that students will encounter various religious and non-religious interpretations of all subjects taught.  Even mathematics instruction can (and should) move beyond learning that 2 + 3 = 5.  For example, teaching pie-graphs can include the teaching of empathy and gratitude as students wrestle with constructing a time pie-chart of the activities of a mother in an African village (44).  Science too will be taught in such a way as to put it into “its social, historical, philosophical, ethical and religious context (49).  This is because even science is not worldview neutral.  An atheistic worldview is not the only rational understanding of the relation between religion and science. This will further entail that creationism cannot simply be dismissed as a religious theory which doesn’t belong in the classroom (48-50).

Cooling’s argument also has implications for the long-standing and controversial requirement of compulsory worship in state education in the UK.  In 1988 attempts were made to revise the English and Welsh law to make school worship more acceptable in light of the growing pluralism within British society. But the proposed compromise, suggesting that all pupils take part in a daily act of worship that is “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character,” resulted in a “complex and bewildering cacophony of legislation and guidance” which busy head teachers found impossible “either to understand or to implement” (51).  After some consultative conferences held in 1997, a more inclusive approach has been proposed.  Instead of compulsory worship, regular assemblies are to be held to promote “reflection on values, beliefs and the spiritual dimension of life” (52).  Cooling finds this approach problematic, arguing that there is still an underlying bias against religious worship as “by definition an inappropriate activity in any educational context” (52).

Cooling prefers the approach taken in Scotland since 2005, but it is difficult to understand why this is the preferred approach because here too you have school worship defined in terms of promoting a vague kind of spirituality (52).  I would suggest that there is no adequate solution to compulsory worship in state common schools within a religiously pluralistic society.  The secularization of compulsory assembly times is inevitable – Scotland may simply be just a bit further behind in this process than England and Wales.  The underlying problem here is the notion of education being shaped by an established state church or by a Christendom model of the church. (Disclosure: I write as a Canadian and an Anabaptist Christian, who finds the notions of a state church or Christendom to be outdated relics.)

What about moral education (chapter 4)?.  Cooling correctly highlights the problem of trying to reach a pragmatic consensus about moral values.  We simply cannot come to agreement as to what constitutes human well-being (58).  Further, even the values that we might agree on are interpreted differently in differing worldviews or religions (29).  What is needed therefore, according to Cooling, is to see differing worldviews/religions “as a potential resource that contributes social capital through promoting the common good” (58).  He goes on to talk about “harnessing the power of public theology,” drawing on Miroslav Volf who brings theological insights into situations of conflict (59).  Other religious or non-religious traditions could be similarly encouraged to do public theology. One slight worry I have here has to do with the notion of a common good, because Cooling has earlier underscored the difficulty of coming to agreement on common values.  Can we, or can we not agree on the common good?  This needs a clearer answer.

How do teachers operate within the context of modern pluralistic common schools, given Cooling’s worldviewish approach to education?   Cooling provides some helpful suggestions in the section on “professional conduct” (61-3).  Teachers cannot pretend to be neutral, given Cooling’s approach.  “Neutrality amounts to practical atheism” (61).  Instead, the teacher’s faith needs to be seen as an educational resource, but, and this is a big but, the expression of that faith needs to be “carefully managed in light of the sensitive and complex context of the modern school” (61).  For one thing, proselytizing must be ruled out as inappropriate in “an inclusive and fair classroom” (61).  While there is something right about this, I believe this needs more careful nuancing.  After all, if neutral teaching is impossible, is not proselytizing somehow inescapable for humanist and religious teachers alike?

Cooling draws on some principles found in the Code of Practice published by the RE Council of England and Wales in 2009.  First teachers need to practice reciprocity, behaving in relation to other people’s beliefs as they would hope others would behave towards their own beliefs (61-2).  There also needs to be “a clear understanding of and commitment to the shared goal that is being pursued” (62).  Teachers as professionals will display dispositions such as “integrity, openness, authenticity, empathy, honesty and trustworthiness” (63).  Cooling also highlights the concept of “courageous restraint.”  The practice of courageous restraint requires that teachers be willing to stand back from what is naturally their first priority in order to respect the integrity of other people.  It further involves being willing to let fairness temper their advocacy of truth, being willing to accept that the truth they personally hold dear is contestable in wider society, and also welcoming the expression of points of view by pupils that they might even think to be wrong-headed (63).   This is not the same as neutrality, according to Cooling, because courageous restraint does not treat personal beliefs as private and irrelevant, but as a resource that needs to be openly and professionally used in the classroom. While I found this discussion refreshing, there are problems lurking in the background.  How much restraint should be exercised?  And again, can teachers agree on a “shared goal” in education, and will all teachers actually accept the list of dispositions that Cooling identifies as essential to professional conduct with regard to sharing beliefs and worldviews in the classroom?

Chapter 4 concludes with a brief treatment of faith schools.  Clearly, one implication of the central argument of this book is that faith schools have a place in a pluralistic society (64). If beliefs and worldviews “constitute the heart of education” (32), then faith schools cannot simply be dismissed because they are defined by a particular religious worldview.  All education and all schools are colored by a worldview.  Cooling goes on to defend faith schools adopting policies of student admission and teacher recruitment that favour those committed to the particular religious worldview of the school.  Against humanist objections to faith schools on the grounds that they are discriminatory, Cooling argues, “There is a ring of absurdity to a position which maintains that faith is integral to the school’s ethos and then insisting that the community cannot recruit the people who understand and can create that ethos” (65).  However, Cooling does concede that faith schools should try to become more inclusive, adopting selection criteria for students and teachers that balance the need to create a distinctive religious ethos with the need to ensure diversity in the school.  Creating a faith-inspired hospitable culture in such schools will again require courageous restraint. But, how much restraint will be required?  At what point will policies of inclusivity undermine the distinctive religious ethos of faith schools?  Will not the adoption of selection criteria that ensure diversity within a faith school not eventually lead to the school simply becoming another common school?  These are not easy questions to answer.

Doing God in Education is a fine example of academic scholarship being applied to current debates in the public realm.  Theos is to be commended for publishing works like this, which provide commentary on social and political arrangements from a distinctively Christian theological framework.

[This review was first published in Journal of Beliefs and Values, 2012, 33(1):134-8]

God in the Classroom: a Review Article

God in the Classroom:  The Controversial Issue of Religion in Canada’s Schools

Lois Sweet

Toronto:  McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1997, ISBN 0-7710-8319-X

pp.xv + 272,  $29.99

This is an important book which is bound to prompt much fruitful dialogue on the relation between religion and schooling in Canada.  The author, a journalist by profession, won an Atkinson fellowship in 1995-6, which gave her the opportunity to travel across the country (and to Europe) in order to gain first hand experience as to how religion is handled in our schools.  As well she was able to discuss the matter with a wide variety of Canadians of many beliefs and backgrounds.  The publication of this book was preceded with a five-part series in the Toronto Star as well as a two-part documentary on CBC-TV’s “The National Magazine.”  Both drew a huge response, a sign that Canadians are hungry for more discussion of this issue.

Sweet admits that she would never have dreamed that she would write a book like this a decade ago (p.9).  She describes herself as a secularist, but one who has come to recognize the significance of the religious experience (pp.213, 11).  Her book is prompted by a concern about our society which has somehow lost sight of the spiritual dimension to life (p.6).  And religion is denied and/or ignored in our schools (p. 239).  Sweet describes her son, now at university, discovering for the first time that Western civilization was based on religion.  “Nothing in his previous thirteen years of study had given him an inkling of that” (p.213).  A tragedy, indeed, and somewhat odd, given that schooling in Canada evolved from a decidedly Christian bias, as Sweet explores in Chapter 2.

It is this neglect of religion in our state-maintained public schools that has prompted a growing number of religious groups to set up their own schools – there are about 1,200 religiously-based schools that belong to the Federation of Independent Schools in Canada (pp. 6, 27).  Clearly the formation of religious schools is one way to address the problem of the neglect of religion in education, which is the overriding concern of the book.  But a major thrust of the book is to reject this option.  What Sweet proposes instead is a serious overhaul of our public school system.  Her central thesis is that given the pluralism that now characterizes Canada, we need, somehow, to accommodate religion in our public (common) schools.

Sweet defends her two-pronged thesis by drawing on the anecdotal experience of students, teachers, parents and educators.  The many stories are fascinating and at times moving.  This book will therefore appeal to a lay-readership.  But I would hope that academics will still read the book, even though there is little here by way of drawing on theoretical treatments of the problem.  Even when referring to experts in the field such as John Hull and Will Kymlicka, preference is given to comments made while interviewing them in person.  And there are no footnotes.

What reasons lie behind Sweet’s rejection of religious schooling as a way to bring religion back into education?  Chapters 4 & 5 record her impressions from visits to a number of religious schools (Sikh, Jewish, Islamic, Catholic, Protestant and evangelical).  A primary concern is that such schools are socially divisive and foster intolerance (ch.1).  Sweet also worries about the indoctrination that occurs in religious schools.  She is also very concerned about the lack respect for children’s and teacher’s rights in such schools (ch.9).   “[P]arents don’t have the ultimate authority over their children,” according to Sweet, “there is a need for the State to act in the interests of children” (p.178).

Sweet is further concerned that these religious schools will destroy our state-maintained system of public schools. Indeed, she also rejects the separate school system, i.e. Roman Catholic schools which are fully funded in several Canadian provinces (pp. 48, 103, 108f, 122f, 248, 252).  The ideal for Sweet is one, and only one system of state-maintained public schools.  But this will require a radical overhaul of the secular orientation that now pervades these public schools. We need somehow to bring religion back into the classroom.  If this is done, Sweet maintains, many religiously moderate parents would be much less motivated to put their children into independent religious schools (p.239)

However, according to Sweet, reintroducing religion into the classroom cannot involve the initiation of children into a particular religious dogma – an approach that was in fact rejected as unconstitutional in a 1988 Elgin County court case (pp. 13, 33).  Instead of indoctrination, we need multi-faith education about religion, along the lines of a 1994 memo from Ontario Ministry of Education (pp. 218ff.).  Sweet also recommends that a certain limited number of holy days of each Canada’s recognized religious groups be recognized through school closings where numbers warrent, using them as points of discussion (ch.10).

And above all, schools must take seriously the cultivation of religious literacy (pp. 10, 228, 239).  We need to acknowledge religious difference, and actually educate children about those differences in the classroom.  Here Sweet draws on comments made by John Hull in an interview in which he describes the approach of religious education in Great Britain (pp.224-8).

The journalistic approach taken in this book has its dangers.  While every effort is made to be fair, and the generalizations made are most often accurate, biases do emerge.  For example, much is made of the supposed denial of rights of children in religious schools in a chapter which begins with an emotively laden description of a spanking of a first-grader at an Alberta school (ch.9).   But, to link this episode with ritual genital mutilation, and to suggest that such physical abuse is responsible for violent criminal behavior in later life is simply absurd (p.170).  Contrary to Sweet, children at religious schools are generally loved for and cared for, and are viewed as having all the basic rights that she so much prizes.  Clearly there are different understandings of what is required to bring up children to be moral citizens, and we must be careful not discount the approach taken by religious schools, when, by her own admission, a major concern of many parents is precisely the failure of our public schools in this area (pp. 6, 64, 98).

A fundamental weakness arises from Sweet’s reliance on a traditional distinction between indoctrination and education.  She admits there is controversy regarding proper definitions of these terms (pp.149f), but unfortunately she rather dogmatically trots out the usual mantras concerning what these terms means. Indoctrination involves narrow initiation into a particular religious tradition.  Genuine education, by contrast, involves tolerance of dissent, autonomous thinking and behaving, and the celebration of diversity (pp.102, 159).  But, Sweet is forced to admit that the graduates from religious schools which she interviewed have become confident, critical and open citizens, who actively contribute to society at large.  The basic problem with her analysis is that she fails to do justice to the fact that nurture into a particular tradition is a necessary foundation for growth toward autonomy.  Narrowness necessarily precedes openness (see my Teaching for Commitment, Gracewing & McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).

Interestingly, Sweet implicitly acknowledges this point in other contexts.  She is very sensitive to “the politics of recognition,” which Charles Taylor sees as the key to living in a multicultural society (p.14).  She tells a moving story of a Jewish mother who clearly identifies the seeming paradox – the more she helps her daughter to understand who she is, the better she will be able to live with others (pp.110f).  She is quite frank in acknowledging that we might have something to learn from the structure of schooling in the Netherlands where over 80% of all the schools are publicly funded religious schools (ch. 7; p.128).  Here it seems that recognizing differences has facilitated healthy integration as well as tolerance.

Sweet is also very cognizant of recent developments in epistemology.  She acknowledges that neutrality is impossible (p.7).  She realizes that there is an element of faith in every area of human study (p.212).  She approvingly refers to Postman’s End of Education in which he argues that schools have to serve some god – some story or narrative that provides a sense of meaning, continuity and purpose to life (p.150).  A secular system of education is still a value system that competes with those that are religious (p. 113).

But, these epistemological considerations as well as her sympathies with the politics of recognition support a system of educational pluralism.  However, as we have seen, Sweet is strongly opposed to religiously based schools.  And this makes the overall thrust of the book somewhat puzzling, because much of her analysis would seem to point in the direction of religious schools as a way of accommodating the interplay between religion and education

Even in the final chapter she gives us a glowing account of a unique Logos Alternative Program in Edmonton, Alberta, where five Christian schools operate under the public school umbrella.  But Sweet speaks favourably of this approach only because these schools are part of the public system of education and are housed in existing public schools which allows the children to interact with other children in the regular public program (pp.241-4).  In the end, she is still worried about their promoting “a limited kind of one-sided learning” (p.244).

What Sweet fails to realize is that the multi-religious approach to cultivating an appreciation for religion is not without its own problems.  Knowledge of other religious traditions does not in and of itself foster tolerance.  And she fails to face up to the fact that public (common) schools cannot ever make up for, or overcome, the lack of religious literacy and the religious intolerance that is fostered in the home.  The multi-faith approach to religious literacy, I would suggest is yet another expression of Enlightenment faith in universal reason. It rests on the assumption that it is possible to get an understanding of religion generally without becoming committed to a particular religion.  It allows us to participate in “the religious quest” while keeping religion at a distance (p. 8).  But this will hardly do justice to the concern of many religious adherents who value the importance of particular religious commitments.  And it is a fundamental error to associate all particular religious commitments with excessive sectarianism (pp. 17, 36, 165).

In the end, it would seem that Sweet is still captive to a secular faith-story which makes it impossible for her to go where the wind of her argument really carries her. And while she worries about the indoctrination that occurs in our public schools when religion is systematically avoided (pp. 211ff., 222), she fails to worry enough about the liberal educational tyranny that is still inherent in her multi-faith approach to religious education, and which she wants to impose on all citizens via a monolithic state-maintained system of education.

This is a preprint of an article in  the Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 19, #2, Oct. 1998, pp. 251-4. [copyright Taylor & Francis]; the article in  the Journal of Beliefs & Values  is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1361767980190211

Christians in Academia and the Call to Suffer

Christians in the academic world necessarily suffer.

Jesus described his followers as cross-bearers.  Suffering is seen as an integral part of Christian experience.  “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” (Matt. 5:11).  We are to remember that no servant is greater than his master.  “If they persecuted me they will persecute you also…. If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15: 20, 18).

There is a dimension of Christian suffering which we tend to overlook because we think of persecution and suffering primarily in physical terms.  Suffering also includes mental suffering – hate, insults, and false accusations.  Although all Christians experience (or, at least should experience) this kind of mental suffering, there are some of us who are called to endure this kind of suffering in a particular way.  Mental suffering is especially the lot of Christians involved in academic pursuits.  Christian students, teachers, and university scholars are called to serve God especially with their minds.  They seek to affirm Christ as the source of all truth.  They seek to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (II Cor. 10:5).

But Christ and the cross are foolishness to the worldly-wise, and thus Christian academics often experience contempt, ridicule and even hatred from their secular colleagues.

Sensitive Christian academics suffer when they read an attack on the Christian faith. They suffer when their secular colleagues reject or even ignore Christian answers to the problems of society. They may also suffer in terms of failure to achieve academic promotions or in getting their work published.

There is another aspect of the suffering of the Christian mind that is most often not seen in this light.  Thinking Christians are peculiarly vulnerable to the problem of doubt.  They hold a minority position and this isn’t easy.  Most of their secular colleagues disagree with many of their cherished beliefs, and often vigorously so.  And thus arises the agony, the anguish, and the mental torture of doubt.

This kind of doubt needs to be interpreted as a kind of suffering, and not as a sin, as is so often done in Christian circles.  The young Christian student experiencing doubt in a hostile university environment should not be condemned, but rather encouraged to endure this kind of suffering for Christ’s sake.

C.S. Lewis, well-known Cambridge literary scholar, and one of the greatest Christian apologists of his time, once described what it had cost him to be a Christian while at Oxford University: “His liberal and rational friends, he explained, did not object to his intellectual interest in Christianity; it was, they agreed, a proper subject for academic argument and debate; but to insist on seriously practicing it – that was going too far.  He did not mind being accused of religious mania, that familiar gibe of the natural man; what he was unprepared for was the intense hostility and animosity of his professional colleagues. Within the academic community, he unexpectedly found himself an object of ostracism and abuse” (in C.S. Lewis: Speaker and Teacher, by Carolyn Keefe, Zondervan, 1979).

Lewis related those hurtful personal memories as part of a sermon he gave, in which he was trying to encourage those who were finding living the Christian life difficult.  In this sermon he also spoke of what Jesus endured on our behalf: misunderstanding, loneliness and finally betrayal and death.

The Easter message can also serve as a source of encouragement to the Christian student and scholar as they endure suffering for Christ’s sake.  We are called to share Christ’s sufferings (I Peter 2:21). Suffering for Christ is a privilege.  We are to rejoice and be glad when we suffer for Christ (Matt. 5:12).

(This blog first appeared as an article in “A Christian Mind” column, in the Mennonite Brethren Herald, April 9, 1982, and is here slightly revised.)