Getting rid of Religious Studies?
Preface
This interesting American article above arrived on my Google News feed, last week.
Cited article portions
My comments not in italics
As universities reopened this past fall, the educational landscape was significantly altered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In my humble opinion, since I started my academic trek in 1991, the amount of work available in my related academic fields has shrunk. I am content doing research, writing, editing and revising within the same disciplines on this website and Satire Und Theology, assisting at church, and having other sources of income.
Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., for instance, responded to its $20 million deficit with layoffs, salary cuts and the elimination of nine majors. Though Canisius is a 150-year-old Jesuit school, its eliminations included the religious studies major.
No shock. The financial feasibility of academic programs is very relevant. I accept that...
Canisius is not alone in this decision. Elmira College, Hiram College and Connecticut College have either eliminated or expect to eliminate their religious studies programs.
Religion and, more specifically, Christianity is not only expendable at universities but often actively excluded. From my personal experience in graduate school at the University of Chicago, professors derided religion, students readily signaled their lack of religious views, and I received surprised looks when I shared my Catholic faith. It was as though the study of English literature and Catholicism were incompatible.
Many within general western societies and within western academia, seemingly place little or no value on the academic disciplines within Religious Studies. To some extent, theistic Philosophy of Religion under the umbrella of Philosophy, may also be deemed less important than many academic fields.
Within Religious Studies and theistic Philosophy of Religion, there are often worldview tensions with aspects of modern secular views.
Christianity built upon this philosophy to develop the ethic that dominated Western thought for centuries. Thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm of Canterbury and St. Thomas More continued the Catholic intellectual tradition. Their writings shaped philosophy, politics and literature. During a time when the vast majority of the population was illiterate, Catholic monks and members of the clergy were the European literati.
I make uses of these types of sources in my MPhil and PhD theses work.
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Many hold the assumption that one cannot be religious and intellectual.
This is likely reasoned by many without significant academic training in Biblical Studies, Theology and Philosophy of Religion. Please see my archives for numerous related articles...
I did have to reference some scientific journals and philosophical sources that dealt with scientific issues for my PhD.
As an intellectual, academic accuracy requires that I intentionally take evidences from numerous academic disciplines objectively. Bias exists but it must be checked by reason, evidence and facts.
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While religion enjoyed a meager presence among Enlightenment intellectuals, late 19th and early 20th-century philosophers often completely excluded it. These philosophies, not coincidentally, were the most iconoclastic; they were devoted to undermining institutions. Karl Marx, for instance, called religion the “opium of the people.” There would be no place for religion, the nation-state or other traditional institutions in a communist social system.
I have noted previously edited from my MPhil...
Enlightenment bolstered the notion that a religious setting was no longer the best place for intellectual inquiry. Even those who invoked God to substantiate the rights of individuals (including some of the founding fathers of the United States) saw God more as a detached creator than the Christian God. Thus, in academic and intellectual circles, religion continued to wane in importance.
Today’s public intellectuals are a product of movements and philosophies, including the Enlightenment, nihilism and post-structuralism. As provocateurs who question every assumption from ethics to politics, many public intellectuals act as if institution-probing were their job description. For many contemporary scholars, institutions like marriage, the mainstream media, capitalism and, yes, organized religion are not to be trusted. Their probing of institutions, however, has gone so far that it is leading to their unraveling.
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The Enlightenment bolstered the notion that a religious setting was no longer the best place for intellectual inquiry.
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Enlightenment era thinking, which is still prominent in liberal circles today, believes that humanity has the ability to reason out who God is, whereas traditional Christianity believes that God must reveal himself in order for human beings to come to some understanding of who he is.
So the Enlightenment places greater emphasis on the human mind comprehending God, whereas traditional Christianity puts emphasis on Scripture inspired by God, which must teach human beings about God.
Two problems come to mind concerning the human mind’s ability to know God.
First, the human mind is finite, God is infinite. It could be said that human beings could only understand God in a limited way. This is not to say that the limited human understanding was in error or without logic, but simply limited. For this reason, I think in this relationship God would have to take the initiative in presenting himself to humanity for greater understanding, and this would lead to revelation.
Second, I believe there is significant evidence in Scripture and everyday life, that humanity is imperfect and sinful, and in a spiritual condition where they would have to be transformed in order to have a relationship with God. I am not saying that human beings cannot understand things about God without revelation, but I am stating that revelation is required for a changed spirit which could lead to a relationship with God. I, therefore, do not think that human reason outside of revelation should be our final authority in theology.
Science: the New Religion
Instead, in many circles, science has become the hallowed institution that will solve all problems (even moral ones). Though the vast majority of Christians embrace the study of science, a number of prominent scientists see Christianity as inimical to rational, scientific approaches to thinking. Steven Pinker, a psychologist and author of Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of Our Nature, warns against relying on “dogma” rather than trusting science to fill in the gaps of human understanding.
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A number of prominent scientists see Christianity as inimical to rational, scientific approaches to thinking.
Signaling a lack of religious views can be about more than just fitting in with fellow students and faculty; it can also be a way of avoiding ridicule.
But the bravery of students and faculty members is what will keep religious studies off the chopping block when times are tough. It is what will make intellectuals sit on a stage and express not lukewarm approval but exuberance for the possibilities of religion in scholarship.
Blackburn
Scientism: A pejorative term for the concept that only the methods of natural science and related categories form the elements for any philosophical or other enquiry. Blackburn (1996: 344).
From Oxford Dictionary Scientism: 1 a a method or doctrine regarded as characteristic of scientists b the use of practice of this. 2 often derogatory, an excessive belief in or application of scientific method. Oxford (1995: 1236).
A person holding to scientism may abandon the need for a contextual evaluation within Biblical Studies and the related academic research within Theology and Philosophy of Religion; instead embracing scientific explanations alone.
As a moderate conservative Christian of Reformed and Anabaptist traditions, I reason there is a need for openness to scientific truths, as in being open to inductive scientific evidences and the use of empiricism. For the sake of a reasonable, balanced academic approach, the entirety of worldview should be never be reasoned and accepted, at the expenses of considering reasonable, deduced, premises and conclusions within Religious Studies and Philosophy of Religion which also does produce truths.
BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
BROWN, C. (1996) The Enlightenment, in Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids, Baker Books.
McGRATH, A. (1992) Bridge-Building, Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press.
McGRATH, A. (1992) Suffering, London, Hodder and Stoughton Limited.
PAILIN, D.A. (1999) Enlightenment, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden (eds.), A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, Kent, SCM Press Limited.
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF SCIENCE (2010) Oxford, Oxford University Press.
THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY (1995) Della Thompson (ed.), Oxford, Clarendon Press.
