Deciding in advance
Wheaton College has a ‘statement of faith’ that everyone at Wheaton has to ‘follow.’ The statement is long, and specific, and detailed. It’s not a mere cloud of benevolent sentiments, it’s a list of concrete factual assertions prefaced by ‘we believe that,’ and agreeing to the whole thing is, as I understand it, a condition of employment and attendance. It includes (and ends with) ‘WE BELIEVE in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting punishment of the lost.’
Yet Wheaton College considers itself an academic institution of some kind. Wheaton College considers itself a place of higher education, yet a condition of getting the putative higher education that Wheaton College offers is agreement with a long list of inherently absurd factual claims.
Those two facts don’t go together. They don’t belong together. Education is pretty much the opposite of swearing an oath to a particular set of unquestioned and unquestionable ‘faith-based’ assertions. Swearing such an oath amounts to swearing not to be educated in anything except the narrowest technical sense.
I’m sure their ‘Experimental Theology’ department is top notch…that’s “academic”, isn’t it?
;-)
There’s a university here (it only this year became a university- it was a college before that) that has a very similar “statement of faith.” They had an open position in my field once, and, although I knew that I would never be comfortable teaching at a religious school, I checked out the application and the “statement of faith,” and, good lord, like Wheaton’s, it’s elaborate and demanding. The sad thing is, at least at the university here, you have to sign it even if you’re just working in the mail room, or temping, or cleaning the facilities on the weekends, etc. That’s just creepy to me.
It makes sorry reading of course, as do most things religious. Of course, there is a rich store of precedents, and Christians were, after all, the founder of all the great universities of Europe, and probably of North America and the Antipodes as well. Staff and students at Oxford and Cambridge at one time were required to sign The Thirty Nine Articles of Religion (which finally achieved a stable form in 1571, during the reign of the first Elizabeth), which was required also of teachers and students at the first university in British North America, Kings University College, first of Windsor (where it burnt to the ground in 1920, a stone’s throw from where I am sitting), now of Halifax, Nova Scotia. (It is now a satellite of Dalhousie which was founded by Presbyterians, I believe.) This, of course, kept the Catholics and the Dissenters (everyone else) out. Pope Pius X (Saint) issued, in 1910, The Oath Against Modernism, “To be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries.” Of course, Pius IX had already issued his Syllabus of Errors in 1864, though I do not know whether anyone was required officialy to endorse them. And, of course, all clergy at the time of ordination have to swear their belief in the historic creeds, or, in the case of protestant bodies, statements of faith like that of Wheaton College.
There are always some strange features of contemporary evangelical creeds. The Wheaton one takes the Bible in the original writings (which I assume means the original manuscripts straight from the hands of the ‘inspired’ writer) to be verbally inerrant, but they have no access to them, so they have no way of telling whether they have their ‘facts’ straight or not. Besides, most of the so-called ‘facts’ are arguably not biblical, or, where they are, would be disputed by other biblical ‘facts’. And to say that “These doctrines of the church [when they say ‘church’, are they thinking of one, single institution, I wonder?] cast light on the study of nature [Adam and Eve the parents of the whole human race, and that sort of insightful thing] and man [privileged over women, who are not to speak in church, but must ask their husbands at home, if they have questions], [so it will obviously cast light] as well … on man’s culture.”
And, then, at the end it says: “WE BELIEVE in the blessed hope that Jesus Christ will soon return to this earth, personally, visibly, and unexpectedly …”, which sounds a bit odd. The word ‘soon’ after 2000 years of waiting is a bit strange, but they actually think he is coming soon unexpectedly, with every sign of expectation!
Education at a religious academy is clearly not academic! But strangely, I think, the early test documents were not designed so much for governing the curriculum, as for expressing religious belief. Many earlier religious academics thought they were leaning more about god when they learned about nature and culture and being human. It’s strange that so many religious think that they really already know it all. Education is just a matter of riding shotgun along the boundaries.
Great pity. For all their limitations, Aquinas, Scotus, even Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor and John Donne, even William Paley, were intelligent engaged people, who sought to know more, and understand as much as they could. Now, all the religious seem able to do is to put up fences, and top them with barbed wire. Of course, what else can they do? Religion can only try desperately to try to plug the holes in the front line, which caved in a long time ago, and is no longer there.
Yes I liked the ‘unexpectedly’ too – I picture him jumping out of a birthday cake. Surprise!
(But which birthday cake? Where? And if unexpectedly, the media won’t be there, so what good is it? Dear oh dear.)
Brian Leiter recently linked to some articles surrounding the controversy over Wheaton’s statement of faith. Apparently, Wheaton has gotten stricter in recent years in enforcing ideological conformity. Basically, gay-hating biblical literalists appear to be gaining power in the college.
I guess they’re not impressed by the apophatic tradition.
Once ‘pon a time there was a great local band here in Athens (Georgia) named The Fountains who had a terrific song about the, uhm, *difficulty* of anticipating the return of Jesus. Sample lyric: “When Jesus Christ returns to Earth/she’s gonna be a five-foot-three Samoan”
G Felis
Are you sure He won’t be wearing bunny print pyjamas in a local superstore?
When Jesus Christ returns to Earth/she’s gonna be a five-foot-three Samoan in bunny print pyjamas at the Piggly Wiggly.
The University of California has made employees sign loyalty oaths since the McCarthy era. The only people who freely sign these odious things are either true believers or subversives. If one truly wanted to overthrow the government, he or she would sign without question. How could the university know what one believes? What better way to undermine an institution than from within?
Really? UC still has the McCarthy era loyalty oaths?! I thought it had gotten rid of them decades ago.
The University of Georgia still has them as well – but since an oath signed under duress is ethically and legally meaningless, I gritted my teeth in annoyance and signed the damned thing. Besides, I only advocate overthrow of the government the old-fashioned way – by voters.