 Religion is often perceived as an intrusive presence in the academy.
Since neutrality and objectivity are values alien to the community
of the faithful, religion is frequently thought to inhibit intellectual
inquiries. Students are informed that they must join Galileo outside
the religious sanctuary if they are to acquire the fruits of a
modern education. Indeed, the dominant voices in American education
over the last century have insisted that textbooks be purged of
religious content, that theological questions be banished from
classrooms, and that faith be identified as a private affair that
has no recognizable place in the life of the school.
Most of us are well aware of the dangers and excesses that emerge
when religion enters the classroom. We are less aware of the negative
consequences that arise when religion is pushed to the margins.
According to Doug Sloan, a central obstacle in understanding the
place of religion is derived from a worldview shaped by a "two-realm
theory of truth." On the one hand, there is knowledge that emerges
from scientific methods of inquiry, from the discursive, empirical
exercise of reason. This knowledge is open to the public. It is
discovered within a quantitative, mechanical, and instrumental
domain accessible to all rational investigators. In contrast to
this realm of knowledge stand the truths of faith, religious experience,
morality, meaning, and value. This domain is hopelessly subjective,
being bound to the passions and the imagination. And only the
initiated have access to the truths and the mysteries of faith.
This dichotomy between the realms of knowledge and faith frames
much of our thinking.
I have found three books particularly helpful in exploring the
difficulties that result from this conceptual division. All three
volumes are written by Christians, but the issues they raise and
the sensitivities they express transcend denominational allegiances.
Each maintains that to inhabit a world that has been so dramatically
split in two we must pay a very high cost. Schools after all cannot
disseminate information without the support of virtues that undergird
the educational endeavor. What learning can take place without
honesty, without humility, without compassion, without trust?
How do students come to know and own these virtues? What is the
relation between religion and public morality? Are there realms
of knowledge that are excluded when religion is expelled from
the academy? How can teachers open these domains without simultaneously
indoctrinating those who must live under their charge? Can religion
find its way into the academy without treading on the toes of
minorities?
Warren A. Nord's Religion and American Education (The University
of North Carolina Press, 1995, pp.481), Douglas Sloan's Faith
and Knowledge (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, pp. 252) and
Mark R. Schwehn's Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic
Vocation in America (Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 143) sharpen
the edges of these questions, cutting open the prevailing assumptions
about the nature of education in contemporary America. While these
volumes are not breezy reads for the beach, they provide a fresh
angle from which to ponder the character of the modern academy.
Dr. Rosann M. Catalano, ICJS, recommends three authors who speak
eloquently about the experience of grave illness and the particular
wisdom that emerged out of their suffering: Intoxicated by My
Illness (Fawcett Press, 1993), by the late literary critic Anatole
Broyard; A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing (Atheneum,
1994), by the novelist Reynolds Price; and Cancer and Faith: Reflections
on Living with a Terminal Illness (Twenty-Third Publ., 1994),
by the Roman Catholic theologian John Carmody. On a completely
different, yet equally compelling, note are two volumes by African-American
feminist theologians: A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives
on Evil & Suffering (Orbis, 1993), edited by Emilie M. Townes;
and Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk
(Orbis, 1993), by Delores S. Williams. |