The Emerging Scholars Blog

Jonathan Edwards, a theologian who knew a thing or two about the academy.

What is the place of theology in the secular academy? I don’t have hard data for this, but I think almost no secular colleges and universities still have “theology” departments. Rather, they have “religious studies” departments, of which theology may be a part. Even those universities that have well-respected schools of theology – Harvard, Yale, Duke – keep those schools in a separate line, and offer religious studies courses to undergraduates. We are all aware that religious beliefs have to be carefully articulated and nuanced to be taken seriously in the academy (that is, as something integral to scholarship and teaching, and not just a part of “student life”). Indeed, even the idea of religious ideas informing scholarship often has to be defended. It was not for no reason that Marsden titled his book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship.

Nonetheless, I was still taken aback by K. L. Noll’s suggestion in the Chronicle Review that it is actually unethical for theologians to claim to offer knowledge through their theological teaching and scholarship. Not “true knowledge,” mind you, but knowledge of any kind. Noll further argues that theologians have failed in their ethical responsibilities in the academy and in the wider world. Ethical theologians, Noll writes, will explicitly acknowledge that all theological claims are rooted in fiction. Read the rest of this entry »

Decline of the Secular University

C. John Sommerville is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Florida. In 2006, Oxford University Press published a little book of his called The Decline of the Secular University, a selection from which was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. He will also be the featured speaker at this summer’s Midwest Faculty Conference, so I thought I should read his book before spending a week with him in the cabins along Lake Huron.

Sommerville summarizes his book as follows:

My thesis in what follows is, first, that the secular university is increasingly marginal to American society and, second, that this is a result of its secularism. In effect, I mean that questions that might be central to the university’s mission are too religious for it to deal with. (4)

In particular, he points to universities’ inability to shape public opinion on such issues as politics, science, and business, and the overall anti-intellectualism of American society.

Read the rest of this entry »