Religion and the liberal arts education.

NOT TOO LONG AGO one of my better students revealed to me that she was a born-again Christian who believed the Bible literally. Such a disclosure is not uncommon in my teaching experience, and I have heard many students both in and out of the classroom preface their beliefs on a particular issue with "I'm a Christian, so ..." I've had similar encounters with Jewish students who claim it is "God's will" that Israel exists and Islamic students who adamantly maintain that Israel is an affront to "the will of Allah." But since I also knew that this student was majoring in biology and wanted to be a doctor, I was curious as to how she reconciled her religious beliefs with scientific fact, particularly evolution and the scientific view of creation. "It's easy," she said. "I just give my professors what they want without believing any of it myself." When I tried to point out the schizophrenic nature of her rationale, I could sense her dogmatic defenses clicking into place. "My ministers told me that you professors would try to undermine my religion, but my faith is too strong." She refused further discussion and left my office.

Something's wrong here. A "liberal" education, by definition, should be a liberating experience, but when a student graduates from a liberal arts college with the same fundamentalist beliefs she had when she entered, her education has failed her. Granted there are now religion-affiliated colleges, especially those sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention, that tout a "Christian liberal arts education," but I maintain that the phrase is oxymoronic, and would be if we substituted the name of any of the world's religions.

The term "liberal arts," encompassing the humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences, has come to indicate study that develops knowledge and intellectual skills as opposed to vocational skills. I therefore use the term "liberal arts education" synonymously with "liberal education." As stated by the American Association of Colleges and Universities:

   The approach to higher learning that best serves
   individuals, our globally engaged democracy, and
   an innovating economy is liberal education. Liberal
   education comes in many shapes and forms in the
   contemporary academy, but in every one of those
   forms, its aims include:

* developing intellectual and ethical judgment;

* expanding cultural, societal, and scientific horizons;

* cultivating democratic and global knowledge and engagement; and

* preparing for work in a dynamic and rapidly evolving economy.

This definition is obviously generic enough to apply to virtually every liberal arts college in the country, including the very religious ones, and that's part of the problem. With an ever-increasing number of Americans identifying themselves as evangelical Christians (not to mention the roughly 50 percent who don't believe in evolution for religious reasons) and with much more competition for tuition-paying students, most schools don't want to risk alienating any of the students they are so desperately recruiting by saying anything that could possibly be construed as antireligious.

Indeed, many schools are going out of their way to stress the "spiritual" dimension of the education they offer. For example my own institution, Emory University's Oxford College, recently approved a statement defining the liberal arts intensive education that we hope to make our signature. That statement contains the following: "There must be places in the students' experiences to address affective and spiritual knowledge as well as cognitive knowledge."

Certainly Martha Nussbaum, in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, and others have made a strong case for affective cognition, but spiritual knowledge must refer to "revealed" knowledge conveyed by supernatural agency. I don't believe the modern university gives credence to such revelations, although we certainly do study them as they have found expression in the sacred texts of the world's religions, as well as in art and literature. The point is that liberal arts colleges and universities are being purposefully fuzzy about the role played by religion in the education they offer in order to avoid offending students, potential students, and their families. After all, the roughly one-third of Americans who claim to be born-again evangelical Christians is a demographic that admissions marketing finds difficult to ignore.

Part of the problem is that the majority of schools in the United States that now advertise themselves as liberal arts schools were founded by Protestant denominations in order to train ministers, lawyers, and teachers. And religion played a central role in the campus life of these schools well into the twentieth century, including mandatory chapel attendance and biblically-based codes of morality and conduct. Atheists and freethinkers weren't welcome as either faculty or students, and faculty were fired for "un-Christian" behavior or beliefs. However, the rise of science in the nineteenth century and the accompanying higher criticism of the Bible, along with an increasing secularization of public life, set in motion a process of institutional redefinition that included the spread of the German research based university model, the appearance of electives in the core curriculum, and the idea of academic freedom and free inquiry. Religion was increasingly marginalized and relegated to largely symbolic significance.

This sea change in higher education was also the result of a tacit agreement between science and mainstream Christianity that gave the former dominion in the natural world as long as it steered clear of the spiritual, a position made possible by the work of John Dewey, William James, and others associated with the quintessentially American philosophy of pragmatism and later articulated by Stephen Jay Gould in Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life.

Not everyone on the Christian side went along with the compromise, however. Convinced that biblical inerrancy and fierce evangelism were the only answers to the threat of modern secularism, they formed what we now know as the fundamentalist movement that has led ultimately to the creation of the religious right in U.S. politics. They countered the increasing secularization of American higher education with the establishment first of small denominational "Bible colleges" and then of full-fledged universities like Bob Jones University, Oral Roberts University, Liberty University, and many Southern Baptist institutions that demand orthodox beliefs from both students and faculty.

But the majority of Christian fundamentalists don't attend the most extreme Christian universities (those that refuse to teach evolution) because those schools aren't accredited and hence lack academic respectability. Instead they attend public and private institutions where they ignore teachings that threaten their beliefs. Likewise, the admissions push for ever-greater campus diversity means that many more Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu fundamentalists are taking advantage of higher education in the United States while shielding themselves from the evil influence of the liberal arts philosophy.

These fundamentalists also share one primary premise, and that is that their beliefs should be respected, thus giving them a defense against a full commitment to a true liberal arts education. Often this defense takes the form of demands for alternative writing and reading assignments, especially in the humanities and social sciences. My favorite example occurs in a sociology course taught by a colleague who takes the class to Amazonian Ecuador to study shamanic rituals firsthand. Almost invariably he encounters students who won't participate because they've been taught that shamans are satanic. And because most college administrations are loathe to give any appearance of religious "discrimination," students requesting religious exemptions or alternatives to course requirements are generally accommodated.

The roughly one-third of Americans who claim to be born-again evangelical Christians is a demographic that admissions marketing ends difficult to ignore.

But what we're dealing with here goes far beyond religious garb, dietary restrictions, and holiday observance. These kinds of religious beliefs are antithetical to the very foundation and purpose of the liberal arts education.

The liberating effect of a liberal arts education comes not from simply taking courses in a variety of academic disciplines but from observing and understanding how knowledge is arrived at in these disciplines. And in every case the acquisition of knowledge occurs as the result of objective, disinterested study followed by rational argument supported by convincing evidence that produces a consensus among those knowledgeable in the discipline. With that said, all such knowledge is still regarded as provisional, contingent, and subject to revision or rejection depending on new arguments and evidence.

Of course I am aware of the extent to which postmodern theory has attempted to undermine this particular "metanarrative," calling into question such key concepts as objectivity, reason, and the empirical, scientific method. However, such undermining occurs only at the theoretical level. In practice, the epistemology of the liberal arts continues to function as I have described, and science and reason remain the only practical means by which we can manipulate the natural world to our benefit. After all, even though Godel's theorem appears to indicate that the foundations of mathematics are unprovable, it doesn't mean that we stop using mathematics.

The point is the epistemological methodology central to all academic disciplines has no place for the supernatural. The only role that religion can play in the liberal arts education is as an object of study, as Daniel C. Dennett has pointed out in his provocative study, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. For Dennett, higher education has been far too sensitive to religious believers when religion is the focus of scholarly and scientific study. As he puts it, "It is high time that we subject religion as a global phenomenon to the most intensive multidisciplinary research we can muster, calling on the best minds of the planet." And further: "The spell that I say must be broken is the taboo against a forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many."

Let me say at this point that neither Dennett nor I wish to ban religion from liberal education. Students should have the freedom to practice their own faiths and their schools ought to make it possible for them to, with one caveat: because no liberal arts institution can privilege one religion over another, no evangelizing or proselytizing can be permitted.

However, in the classroom or laboratory religious belief should be set aside for the simple reason that the supernatural is an untestable hypothesis. In other words, we need to be clear and forthright in our articulation and description of a standard model for the epistemological methodology employed by scholarship and research in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, with the concomitant understanding that the standard model itself is always subject to question. We shall employ it as long as it works.

Sheldon Rothblatt, in The Living Arts: Comparative and Historical Reflections on Liberal Education, cites opponents of the standard model who claim that it institutes "established nonbelief" that fosters "a new kind of secular intolerance." But the standard model of epistemology in the liberal arts and sciences is simply a pragmatic, constantly skeptical scientific realism based on canons of rationality and evidence that has served us well thus far in at least partially lighting our way through the "mystery of being." It is the backbone of the liberal arts education and is the means by which one experiences the liberation for which that education is named. It ought to be emphasized in every course of the liberal arts curriculum.

Likewise, accrediting agencies must pay close attention to any school that uses the word "liberal" in its mission statement and admissions advertising to see if this is in fact the education to be found there. Especially suspect are institutions advertising a Christian liberal arts education. As I have already said, such terminology is oxymoronic no matter what kind of religious qualifier is used, because it imposes limits at the outset on what ought to be free and unfettered inquiry. But as things stand now, the less extreme schools--those that tout a Christian "environment" within which a liberal arts education is supposed to take place and that require a statement of faith from their faculty and students--can receive the same accreditation as schools that don't, thus giving at least the appearance of educational equivalence.

It is dishonest to allow religious institutions to benefit by attempting to ride the coattails of the liberal arts education, as Southern Baptist institutions have become adept at doing. In the corporate-speak of current higher education, consumers are entitled to know the differences among the educational products being offered for sale in the marketplace.

Furthermore, one of the most frequently mentioned purposes of the liberal arts education is to prepare students for their role as citizens in a participatory democracy. But as Rothblatt indicates, this involves "more than a skill or proficiency and more than general knowledge" because the objective is "a habit of mind that can only be acquired through long and hard exposure to the correct examples." This "habit of mind," of course, is the ability to think critically and employ reason and evidence to solve a problem or determine a course of action. It is, in short, what I have referred to as the backbone of the liberal arts education. In fact, it is so important in preparing citizens of a pluralistic society that it ought to have a prominent place in secondary school curricula as well.

Once again, the only role that religion should play in a liberal arts education is as an object of study, and what such study has determined to date is that religion, like art, is a form of symbolic cultural expression with its roots deep in our evolutionary development. Also like art, religion is subject to interpretation and analysis and can be studied through the lenses of history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and, if the hypothesis of a "god gene" bears out, biology as well. However, of most significance to the liberal arts education is the fact that religion and religious belief cannot be used to make or decide truth claims. What this means in the classroom is that faith-based beliefs and scriptural sanctions or prohibitions are not admissible evidence.

What I have described as the standard model of epistemology in the liberal arts and sciences is arguably humanity's greatest discovery. I say discovery because, even though it was developed and refined over centuries by philosophy which, like art and religion, is a human construct reflecting our compulsion to find meaning in our existence, it appears to be a real link to the world rather than a mythic or symbolic one, meaning that it is a reliable source for actionable knowledge.

Even though postmodern theorists have gone to great lengths to subvert this foundational metanarrative, they have been frustrated by the stubborn fact that, despite many loose ends, it still seems to be working. Being what it is, it constantly calls itself into question, something which would never be countenanced by religion. Only through a truly liberal education can a person achieve the disinterested universalism that has done so much to enrich and expand human existence.

Lucas Carpenter is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Humanities at Oxford College of Emory University in Oxford, Georgia. He is the author of John Gould Fletcher and Southern Modernism and two books of poetry, and has published in more than twenty-five periodicals, including Prairie Schooner, The Minnesota Review, Beloit Poetry, San Francisco Review of Books, and New York Newsday.