Elder Oaks speaks at Harvard.

[UtahDan]

Why do you think this matters? Things aren't allowed to change? As science and scholarship have become more serious endeavors, of course spiritual beliefs and their truth claims have been filtered out. I support philosophy and world religions classes as much as anyone, but preaching religion in any class should be frowned upon. I'm simply surprised that Oaks would suggest otherwise.

I think it is almost always a problem when an institution loses sight of its roots. For example, there are many, many police forces in this country where no one on the payroll remembers that the department was founded to catch runaway slaves.

[I.J. Reilly]

I think it is almost always a problem when an institution loses sight of its roots. For example, there are many, many police forces in this country where no one on the payroll remembers that the department was founded to catch runaway slaves.

Somehow, even without this historical knowledge, some are still attempting to achieve this historical goal.

[woot]

Wait, is this a claim that spiritual belief is not a "serious endeavor?"

I'm tempted to just say "yes" here, but I'll qualify it a bit. Many people have spiritual beliefs, and the study of those beliefs and how they affect society are serious endeavors.

The study of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or its equivalents (how to save people's souls from hell, etc.) are not serious endeavors. Thus, theology and sociology are serious endeavors for the most part; divinity is not. The former are evidence-based fields of scholarship, while the latter is either the art of making shit up, or more often, the art of figuring how to defend the shit that other people made up a long time ago.

I think it is almost always a problem when an institution loses sight of its roots. For example, there are many, many police forces in this country where no one on the payroll remembers that the department was founded to catch runaway slaves.

[Sleeping in EQ]

Elder Oaks would be more straightforward to blame modernity itself. Religion has persisted in the curriculum at colleges and universities in a manner consistent with its viability as a career option.

When some students arrive in the halls of higher ed, they can't read, write, or count their way out of a paper bag. We try to teach them to do that, and then get them on a career track.

Statistically, college and university professors are about 1/2 as likely as other Americans to be "religious" or "spiritual." In my experience, those academics who are religious are not often orthodox. You don't have to know too many academics to run into the intellectual Catholic or Muslim, the postmodernist humanities prof who is into Native American spirituality, the practicing reformed Jew, the Sunstone Mormon, the Lutheran music prof who runs the choir at her church, the Hindu who teaches at the medical school, or the Buddhist math prof. These are not uncommon characters in the academy, although they share space with more agnostics and atheists than do those who work in most other institutions. Consistent with the modern academy, though, most of these people say little about their spirituality in class. They aren't being paid to do so.

I think Elder Oaks has a valid point when he's talking about a general lack of religious literacy. Stephen Prothero, the chair of the religion department at Boston University, has been banging the religious literacy drum at least since his book came out in 2007.

[wuapinmon]

Theology cannot be a Liberal Art because you cannot truly apply philological principles to its study. The faith side of things complicates any study of it other than from an anthropo- or socio-logical angle. Surely the study of ethics and morals, in humanist terms, can be accomplished in the academy, and I wish that every college had a required course in Aristotelian ethics. I also think any 100-level English series should spend a couple of classes on the Bible as Literature.

Therefore, if people aren't going to major in religion as a career goal (especially given the rise of the Bible College/Divinity School route as the path to a pastorship), then the Academy isn't going to keep offering classes that no one will take. Therefore, fewer people go into studying religion at the higher level, fewer professors, fewer classes offered. Poof! We're at 2010.

I don't think it's my job to teach faith to my students at a secular Liberal Arts college. While at BYU, I taught them to pray in Spanish and to think about the gift of tongues as the ability to speak another language and not shake and lurch all over the Church floor. Mmmmm? Now, I can teach ethics and morality via literature and film and music, but not faith. It's not appropriate for me to bear my testimony in class at Coker College.

I'm not sure that DHO is asking me to do that, but he seems to be taking the same shots at my profession as his ilk in the leadership of other religions who have chosen professors as the new big thing to fear.

My gastroenterologist had this magazine on his table while I waited. Read this little gem:

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6956.5488.122.0

Way to base most of your argument on a 29-year-old editorial.

[woot]

I think is a very interesting take on why professors tend to be liberal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html

A bit of commentary:

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2010/01/why_professors_are_liberal.php

[Donuthole]

Theology cannot be a Liberal Art because you cannot truly apply philological principles to its study. The faith side of things complicates any study of it other than from an anthropo- or socio-logical angle. Surely the study of ethics and morals, in humanist terms, can be accomplished in the academy, and I wish that every college had a required course in Aristotelian ethics. I also think any 100-level English series should spend a couple of classes on the Bible as Literature.

Therefore, if people aren't going to major in religion as a career goal (especially given the rise of the Bible College/Divinity School route as the path to a pastorship), then the Academy isn't going to keep offering classes that no one will take. Therefore, fewer people go into studying religion at the higher level, fewer professors, fewer classes offered. Poof! We're at 2010.

I don't think it's my job to teach faith to my students at a secular Liberal Arts college. While at BYU, I taught them to pray in Spanish and to think about the gift of tongues as the ability to speak another language and not shake and lurch all over the Church floor. Mmmmm? Now, I can teach ethics and morality via literature and film and music, but not faith. It's not appropriate for me to bear my testimony in class at Coker College.

I'm not sure that DHO is asking me to do that, but he seems to be taking the same shots at my profession as his ilk in the leadership of other religions who have chosen professors as the new big thing to fear.

My gastroenterologist had this magazine on his table while I waited. Read this little gem:

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6956.5488.122.0

Way to base most of your argument on a 29-year-old editorial.

Did you counsel your students to go directly home right after class?

[wuapinmon]

From my blog (September 24, 2007):

Websites and articles like these, make this post necessary:

http://collegeuniversity.suite101.com/article.cfm/fighting_bias_in_higher_education

http://www.nonindoctrination.org

http://www.foxnews.com

http://www.johnbirchsociety.org

I grew up without religion. When I turned 17, I had a spiritual awakening and began to modify my behavior accordingly. I quit drinking alcohol completely. I gave up iced tea and coffee, which in the Southeastern United States is akin to giving up water. I decided to be chaste (not that I had any experience otherwise). I also began to see the world in very black and white ways. Suddenly, I felt that anyone that didn’t want to live the same standards as myself was wrong. I judged people. When I was 19, I decided to become a Mormon missionary, and I was called to serve in Costa Rica for two years (1993-1995). During this time, as a lay volunteer, all I did, all day every day, was go around and talk to people about my beliefs. This experience had the effect of allowing me to see the world in something besides black and white, or shades of gray. I saw the world in color, and realized that there was more than one way of doing something--that many people, most people in fact, were able to be moral and ethical without identifying with a certain religion, or any religion for that matter--what Kant might have called an autonomous morality.

This awakened me to the realization, that in trying to live my life according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, I was doing the exact opposite, and essentially ignoring his warning in John, Chapter 8, that the first stone be cast by one who was spotless. I was judging unrighteously, blissfully ignoring my own sins. And also, while a missionary, I realized that I might be wrong, that my spiritual awakening might be a farce, that this is all there is to our existence. I do not believe that it is, but I have no way of proving that it isn’t. I believe in God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and modern-day revelation by prophets. I cannot prove that they are right, but it is what I believe; it is my hope and faith. All I could do, as a missionary, was share what I believed, bare and bear my testimony of what I believed, and then invite others to do the same. If they felt the same as I did, great. If not, then they have every right to not live according to the same precepts that I hold dear.

I am in a small minority however. I’m not claiming to be enlightened, but I do realize that tolerance of others' culture, practices, and habits come from peeling back the layers of ignorance that we allow to crust over our eyes when we cling to a belief that we have not fully examined. I still believe in my religion; I most likely always will, and I also believe that each and every person has the right to live their life according to the dictates of his/her conscience. I feel that most people who claim to follow Christ, do not feel this way, especially in the United States. This causes problems.

And, I get the feeling (to overuse that word), with the increase in Protestant private secondary schools, homeschooling, and the like, many people are trying to shield their children from the world. I find this most disturbing. Children need to be taught correct principles, and then be allowed to govern themselves, provided there are consequences for poor behavior. Part of this is allowing them to experience the diversity of the world. And a huge part of this is the experience of a rigorous liberal arts education.

How boring would it be to grow up and never have any of your beliefs and ideals questioned? You would be woefully unprepared for the 21st Century. So, when I hear politicians and pundits rail against the liberal, nay leftist, and by association in the United States, “godless pinko Communists,” in higher education, I think to myself, “How scared do you have to be in your own influence over your child, that some professor might make them abandon all they’ve ever known.” I’d hope that conservative parents would want their children to have their beliefs questioned, that much like the Amish allowing their children to go out into the “lone and dreary world” that they would see the value in questioning their own values to make them stronger and more refined. How do you know if you really believe in something until after the trial of your faith?

In my experience, there is no liberal bias in higher education. What does bias even mean in that context anyway? Higher education is a process by which we turn children into adults, capable of thinking for themselves, and not just parroting back what their parents have told them. To use conservative religious terminology, Adam and Eve had to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil so that they might know the bad from the good (with “bad” and “good” left up to interpretation).

Not once have I ever had my beliefs mocked by anyone in authority over me. I have never had anyone look down on my degrees from Brigham Young University, save conservative religious schools like Baylor who told me, in an email that I still have, that hiring Mormons was "against current Baylor policy."

The most important thing to remember in all of this, is that as much as another’s beliefs might annoy us, maturity and civility demand that we respect them and recognize their right to hold them as dearly as we hold our own. I hate politics in the US right now. It’s all “if you’re not with us, you’re against” rhetoric engendered by egg-headed politicians stumping for votes, and pundits desperate for ratings.

I mean someone actually published a book called Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder. Seriously, how does that help? The right needs to just calm their asses down. To all right-wing Christians, what Jesus said in Mark 12:31-33 wasn’t a suggestion; it was a commandment.

I am not a conservative. I am not a liberal. I am rational moderate that wishes we could all just get along.

[wuapinmon]

Did you counsel your students to go directly home right after class?

Yes, this one kid's hair had turned from black into bright white after I told them. I couldn't quite explain it. I think that it was from when I slammed the door so hard.

[woot]

From my blog (September 24, 2007):

[Katy Lied]

Did you counsel your students to go directly home right after class?

nice.

[Katy Lied]

It sounds like he's wishing the academy would do his job for him. It's quite silly that he seems pissed about academics being "neutral at best" toward religion. I assume this means he'd be in support of Wiccans and Muslims and Heaven's Gaters preaching to students? Did he think for 5 minutes about his talk before he gave it?

Dear Woot:

Your contempt is quite jarring. Kneejerk reactionary that I am, sometimes your contempt makes it hard for me to see the glimmer of (or fecund) truth in your posts. Jeff Lebowski or Solon or Pelle or Jarid or even SIEQ are examples of posters who make their disagreement known without being disagreeable. PS. I bet youre a really nice guy in real life.

[Sleeping in EQ]

I think is a very interesting take on why professors tend to be liberal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html

That's a great article, woot.

[woot]

Dear Woot:

Your contempt is quite jarring. Kneejerk reactionary that I am, sometimes your contempt makes it hard for me to see the glimmer of (or fecund) truth in your posts. Jeff Lebowski or Solon or Pelle or Jarid or even SIEQ are examples of posters who make their disagreement known without being disagreeable. PS. I bet youre a really nice guy in real life.

Indeed, I was responding to a stupid argument given by a smart man. It was jarring for me to hear the standard "creationist mom" argument from a man I used to respect so much. I understand that many here still respect him. I apologize for any offense.

[LA Ute]

Thanks for finding this, UD. I have a long plane ride tomorrow and this will be my gospel study for the day.