Yes, Academics are Biased

The last post outlined one major reason that academics are biased - they remain true to the methods necessary to attain the goal of understanding reality. But that is only part of the story.

Another part, and a source of considerable misunderstanding even in academia, is that in the 20th century both the emerging social sciences and the established physical sciences became politicized. This doesn’t mean that they became partisan. Rather scientists recognized that maintaining a stance of neutral objectivity toward the subject of their research and its effects was fundamentally immoral. 

Bear in mind that the vast advances in chemistry and physics of the late nineteenth and early 20th century were almost immediately weaponized in two world wars. No scientist could escape the moral dilemmas posed by having their work used for the  destruction of human life on hitherto unimaginable scales - even if the ultimate goal was victory over tyranny or the defense of other human lives. 

Similarly social scientists gradually realized that their engagement with human subjects carried with it moral demands. Nor morally decent person can use human lives, individually or in groups, simply to write another research paper or get an advanced degree. And this is particularly true if one is observing humans and human groups suffering as a result of the prevailing political, economic, and social forces. 

And the same was true of the humanities. After all, the study of philosophy, history, law,  and literature began for the purpose of training leaders in society. They always had an intrinsically moral purpose, and teachers in the humanities could not ignore that moral purpose in their research and writing.

But note again that the politicization, the moral engagement with society found in the liberal arts university, was not based on partisanship but rather on commitment to moral purposes. The key value being perpetuated was the well-being of humans and humanity, not a particular political agenda.

One would imagine that exactly this human-centric morality would resonate with the commitments of religious people. And it did with many. However at least three forces mitigated against any easy alliance within the university. The first I mentioned the previous post: the accelerating exclusion of revelation and faith from the mainstream of academic life as across the disciplines as scholars sought to preserve the integrity of the scientific and critical method against attack. While there were religious scholars seeking to engage their colleagues around questions of epistemology without recourse to fundamentalism, in the post-WWII American context fundamentalism was the ascendent religious voice. 

As a result of systematic exclusion of their perspectives from academic life religious people felt, with some justification, that the particular way of knowing represented by revelation received and interpreted through faith was being expelled from academic life. Departments of religious studies are perhaps the best example. From the 1920’s onward scholars studying religion diligently sought to remove anything resembling “theology” or actual references to God from their field. And across the university it became doctrine then dogma that naturalism rather than supernaturalism, the study of the immanent rather than the study of the transcendent was the only legitimate framework for authentic scholarship.

It is anecdotal, but worth noting, that when I went to the University of Texas this major tier one university did not have and never had a department of religious studies. Religion was completely absent the curriculum unless it snuck in through philosophy, anthropology, or social sciences.  

The second force separating those with religious commitments from academic life arose from the necessary combination of moral commitment and a naturalistic framework for understanding reality. Quite naturally scientists concerned with moral questions would ground their reflections in a familiar naturalistic framework. They would look within humanity itself rather than in humanity’s relationship with God for a basis for morality. As a result, as much as religious people might agree on specific moral issues, they might well disagree on the basis by which decisions concerning morality were made. 

I want to stress that a morality based in immanence doesn’t of necessity oppose morality based in revelation and faith. On any moral issue from saving endangered species to abortion to LGBTQ rights immanence based morality can move in multiple directions depending on how the “good” for humans and humankind is understood. Religious and non-religious scholars may ultimately agree on many moral issues. 

The problem is that naturalism excludes and even denies moral reasoning based on revelation. It is hard for people to reason together about moral issues, and academic life is all about reasoning together, when they have no shared basis for advancing and critiquing arguments. 

The third force mitigating against inclusion of religious ways of knowing is the focus on value added in academic research and dialogue. The sciences and humanities could readily show progress in the 20th century across a range of positive human goods. They were advancing knowledge of the world and humanity and in many cases making human life longer, more fruitful, and happier. 

On other hand religious scholars do not seem to have articulated any distinctive contribution to academic discussions from their knowledge of revelation and faith. Indeed they have largely been on the defensive, protecting the credibility of their own discourse whether it is through analytical philosophy, the fulsome embrace of critical methods in the study of scripture, or the wholehearted application of the social sciences to understanding religious life and communities. 

After all, one substantial branch of Christian theology, evangelicalism or Neo-orthodoxy aggressively asserts that Christian theology has nothing new to say at a basic level about either God or humanity. If you haven't learned anything knew in your own field of study what do you have to offer that's new for other fields of study?

And even liberal or progressive theology would be hard pressed to articulate just what new revelations about God or humanity have emerged in a 20th century busy with new theologizing. Process theology? The Schleiermacher lineage? Not even the majority of Christians are particularly excited by these advances. They certainly haven't take philosophy and religious studies departments by storm. 

Given these three forces, systematic exclusion, lack of a common basis for discussions of morality, and an inability to show value added as understood in academic circles it isn’t surprising that revelation and faith as ways of knowing find themselves in a tenuous place in the academy. So there is some justification among religious people for feeling that their particular contribution to human knowledge, their particular way of perceiving reality through revelation and faith has been excluded from academic life. 

But again the problem isn’t bias in the negative sense. It is rather focus on achieving results through a set of proven methods.

Those of us who believe that attending to revelation and faith might in fact be enlightening need to recognize this, and realize that our obligation to the university is to show a view of reality through the lens of faith may well illuminate that which an excessive focus on immanence obscures. And there is a way forward to do this - if we will ask in new ways just what it means to be the recipients through faith of God's revelation. 

Are Academics Biased?

Of course they, just as pastors are biased, corporate leaders are biased, union organizers are biased and you, dear readers are biased. Any person or organization that is engaged in purposeful activity is biased, because purpose demands bias. It demands focusing on some things and ignoring or even putting aside other things.

A football player or a basketball player who is trying to win is biased against the views of sportswriters, fans in the stands, and possibly even his or her fellow teammates if they discourage him from staying focused on winning.

And what about the classroom? Well when I teach about cross-cultural communication in a MA seminar I’m biased against viewpoints that deny the existence of cultural difference or maintain naive views of language. A class focused on preparing leaders for complex cultural organizations isn’t going to waste its time on freshmen linguistics. Or, to use another example, a class on wastewater management engineering isn’t a likely place to raise the issue of privatization of government services. Water flow equations don’t mix with politics. 

But let’s go a little deeper, because the purpose of an institution isn’t limited to specific goals or subject matter. Virtually all institutions, but particularly colleges and universities, have the purpose of perpetuating certain core values. Let me repeat, perpetuating core values, not merely passing on information. No one ever founded a university or came to teach in one in order to fill students’ heads with knowledge. We’re here to impart the value of discovering the truth about reality and the value of using particular methods of discovering that truth. 

In every university or college both sets of values, the value of discovering the truth and the value of the particular methods for discovering the truth go hand in hand. And this is where the accusation of bias comes in. Because although everyone agrees, or pretends to, on the value of discovering the truth, there are serious disagreements concerning the methods for discovering the truth and thus the outcomes that we regard as “the truth.” 

In the West, or better the world of modernity created out of the North Atlantic world, a schism grew up from the time of the Enlightenment onward. It is relatively easy to characterize. Within the classical arts and sciences tradition revelation as a source of knowledge and faith as a means of knowing were gradually bracketed out as the search for truth, if not being outright rejected. Religion became an object of study rather than a means of discovering the truth. 

The initial pushback against this from American fundamentalists was a naive and ultimately futile effort to defend a Biblical understanding of a three tiered cosmos and a seven day creation of the earth. More moderate were efforts in the tradition of Schleiermacher and philosophical theology to support faith as a distinctive means of knowing reality, while bracketing out those aspects of reality better understood by science and critical studies.

Still, it is the pushback by the fundamentalists, played out in public from the Scopes trial onward that left a bitter combativeness against religion in the academy, and particularly religion deployed for political purposes among those seeking to break free from such nonsense. After all - it was precisely teachers that the fundamentalists were attacking.

That bitterness hasn’t disappeared even as science has triumphed in its creation of the world we live in and its methods for discovering the truth about it. The scientific method and critical inquiry in the liberal arts have been wildly successful in creating a better, more fruitful, more peaceful, and more prosperous world. To the extent that revelation and faith pit themselves against these accomplishments they remain for many academics an enemy of the core value of the university - free inquiry into the truth about reality. 

This bitterness has been exacerbated by the politicizing of religion against science and critical inquiry in the post-Moral Majority age. Given that the now dominant political party has become a staunch denier of the results of scientific inquiry and resister of scientific research, universities may justifiably fear that a combination of conservative Christian religion and pseudo-conservative politics are indeed an enemy to their core values.

The result is that the defense of the scientific method and critical inquiry has become one of the values perpetuated in the modern university. In the current political climate many academics believe that only by rejecting revelation and faith outright can the university defend its key methodology and thus pursue its goal of discovering the truth about reality. 

So yes, most academics are biased, but not because they are naturally political liberals. Nothing about the pursuit of scientific and critical truth favors political liberalism or political conservatism. The truth is non-partisan. But attacks on science and critical thinking have become partisan, lodged in the detritus of a Republican Party that has traded small government and fiscal responsibility for populist attacks on the perceived enemies of religion. And so long as self-identified political/religious conservatives attack both the results and methods of scientific and critical inquiry as “fake news” the university faculty will identify with political liberals who at least appear to protect their core values. 

And the future? I’ll offer this as a theologian in a church related university. We who believe in revelation as a source of knowledge and faith as a means grasping the truth could offer a great deal to the larger, and shared, value of pursing the truth. But if we seek short term gains in political power by attacking our peers in the academic world then we deserve to be rejected and our doom is as deserved as it is assured. 

Of course there is another side to this story - next post.

The Authenticity Impulse

Yesterday a Facebook post told the story of a United Methodist pastor whose license was revoked for performing a same sex marriage. http://wlos.com/news/offbeat/chattanooga-pastor-fired-for-officiating-same-sex-wedding

I quote the story directly "She said that her commitment to be their pastor meant that she should be with them through this day."

If you follow stories like these you’ll note that this theme “commitment to be their pastor” is quite common. Pastoral commitment to a same-sex couple demands being pastor at their wedding. 

Let’s look at another story. “Two big churches seek to leave denomination.” http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/2-big-churches-seek-exit-from-denomination

Again a quote, "Lead pastors of both churches expressed frustration with the denomination’s intensifying homosexuality debate, calling it a “distraction” from ministry.” And Rev. Bryan Collier, “we can reach even more people for Christ if we weren’t distracted by this argument.”

Although the pastor(s) performing same-sex marriage and those leading their congregations out of the denomination come from completely opposite sides of the current debates in the UMC they have something in common. They are essentially congregationalists, concerned with serving their congregations and leading a congregational mission undistracted by the larger denominational conflicts.

This focus on having a primary responsibility to congregation and its mission is at odds with the ecclesial tradition of which Methodism is a part. In the Methodist tradition, stretching to John Wesley’s refusal to be bound to a parish, serving a congregation is just an instance of serving the Methodist mission. And sometimes that mission means confronting rather than comforting a congregation and its members.

Similarly congregations are a missional outpost of the United Methodist church. They don’t exist for themselves, or for their sense of congregational mission, but to serve the mission of the larger church. And the pastor’s job is precisely to keep the congregation engaged in that larger church, not to lead it out.

In both cases responsibility to the larger church which creates both pastors and congregations for its purposes may mean that personal and congregational goals and purposes are thwarted. But of the many reasons that the UMC ordains clergy and creates congregations, self-realization isn’t one of them. 

Now I fully expect that a lot of folks across the spectrum don’t like this analysis of where they and their congregations stand in relation to the larger church. There is a difficult and sometimes painful balancing act when one is called to serve two competing goods. Neither pastors nor congregations, or anybody for that matter, likes to have their ministry or mission rendered less effective or even denigrated through guilt by association.

Yet in the end we humans are not individuals but social creatures. Every individual draws his or her identity from those with whom he or she has chosen to, or is even forced to associate. We don’t get to create ourselves. And every small society (and even mega-churches are small societies) is part of a much larger and more complex social context. It doesn’t get to create itself either. 

I think traditionally Methodists (and thus United Methodists) have understood this. But as the representative stories above show, we may be forgetting and thus join the individualist, and thus congregationalist, impulse that has always animated part of American culture. 

It remains an open question what will be the most effective form of witness in our present cultural context. Ours is a context that strongly associates ethical credibility with personal authenticity. And the quest for authenticity is manifest in everything from pastors who feel compelled to act against the teaching of the church to congregations whose authenticity is threatened by association with those pastors. 

No Context, No Knowledge

At a recent dialogue I again encountered a phenomena that one sees frequently in Christian circles. At issue was what Jews and Christians understand by the idea of God as Father. I was talking about Christianity and a well known Orthodox Rabbi was talking about Judaism. 

When time came for Q&A a person in the audience proceeded to read a text from the Christian Old Testament, the part the Jews call the Torah, and then told the Rabbi that because the text says that the children of Israel were afraid (the scene is at Sinai) then Jews must be afraid of God. 

No amount of persuasion could convince this person that Jews interpret the text differently, that the Talmud and not merely the Torah is a critical part of a Jewish consciousness, and that the rabbi wasn’t just being obstinate. If the rabbi's understanding of Judaism was different from what the scripture clearly said about Judaism then the rabbi must be wrong. God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

You’ll see what was going on here. The person questioning the rabbi believed that the information in the Bible is context-free. It could be derived simply by reading the words without asking about the history of Jewish interpretation and without recognizing the influence of Christian interpretation. (She was clearly unaware that she was reading through the lens of the Book of Hebrews) 

The idea that knowledge is context-free took on overwhelming cultural force in the Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment and the years that followed subjective human experience, as found in the old Ptolemaic universe, was replaced by objectivity. Through science and the language of mathematics humans step out of the center of the universe so they can observe it whole. They can, and I quote Stephen Hawking's introduction to A Brief History of Time know the mind of God. Because they have taken God's perspective on the universe.

What makes this idea sustainable in the face of our obviously limited powers of observation is the assumption that the laws that govern all the things we can’t see are identical to those we can see. Only this allows us to speak about the universe and not that limited perspective that Hawking (I believe) calls our "light cone;" the bounded area of space time accessible to us to observe. The assumption that there is a single structure and law makes the universe a uni-verse, a single thing about which we can meaningfully speak. Whether the observers' context is Earth or some planet circling Alpha Centuri the necessary assumption of modern science is that they will see the same thing. 

What the questioner of our rabbi, who claimed a PhD from Liberty University, was doing was applying this assumption to the Bible. The words of the Bible, if true, should mean the same thing at Sinai, in 1st century Palestine, in medieval Spain, and in a contemporary UMC chapel. Because truth must be context-free to be truth in an enlightenment epistemology.

Needless to say there are a some problems here. First, and lets be bold, the Enlightenment project of creating objective scientific knowledge turns out to have serious limits. All contemporary cosmological theories acknowledge not merely the possibility but the probability of multiple unobservable universes with differing structures and laws. The laws that govern our universe are in fact subjective in the sense that only we (as far as we know) are subject to them. It turns out the Ptolemy was kind of right. We are the center of our universe.

This doesn’t mean that the law of gravity is subjective, or that the results of scientific research are really just cultural framings of reality. But it does mean that gravity affects you more or less depending on where you are located in space-time and that human comprehension of the meaning of climate change will be shaped by culture. 

More importantly all efforts to gain and exchange knowledge about reality are caught up in the fundamental human enterprise of meaning-making and meaning-sharing. Science never was and never has been about simply exchanging information necessary to develop ever more sophisticated models of the universe. Scientists aren’t computers connected by high speed digital data busses. They are people. 

You can see this by the vast amount of energy scientists pour into writing popular books describing their work to lay audiences that cannot possibly grasp the information scientists go to such efforts to gather, or offer any useful information in return. Sagan, Weinberg, Hawking, DeGrasse Tyson, Frank, and hundreds of others have turned from their calculations to try and explain what they mean. I know, I have all those books. And in the end they wax philosophical rather than cosmological

And this observation about meaning-making and meaning-sharing is true of the Bible as a book. Because like all books it is intended to convey meanings and not merely information. Because human language is never simply an objective report of the truth in clear terms. Human language is always about the meaning of what is being reported for an intended audience. We don’t deploy language to merely share information. We deploy language to share meaning.

And that meaning is always determined by the context of the communicative act. If you don't know it, or you ignore it, you don't know what the Bible means - even if you have a PhD.