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Christianity Today, September (Web-only), 2007 |

Evangelical Minds

Christian Smith on Why Christianity 'Works'

Plus: Baylor publishing woes, and other news from the higher education world.

Hunter Baker | posted 9/13/2007 08:31AM

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In the world of First Amendment law, one often analyzes whether various measures have a "chilling effect" on speech. Mention Intelligent Design and chill winds start blowing. Getting too close to the idea without adequate job security is career suicide and can be extraordinarily damaging to one's academic reputation. The question is, Are scholars who want to work within the area of Intelligent Design being treated fairly? There's more than a hint of McCarthyism in the air. "Are you now or have you ever been interested in investigating Intelligent Design?"

It's no wonder Baylor is nervous about Marks's website. Critics of Intelligent Design have worked to create exactly this kind of climate. Administrators at Baylor are forced to weigh their regular academic priorities against a likely backlash from any perceived resurgence of Intelligent Design on campus.

At the same time, one wonders whether some advocates of Intelligent Design have contributed something to the nearly intolerable climate that now persists. Had the debate remained at the university level and had advocates made no move to take I.D. to the high schools, one wonders whether researchers might have more freedom and would now be working under less suspicion.

Regrettably, the debate has been far too full of politics. It would be nice if members of the academy could discuss Intelligent Design without making a career-check before so doing. We might all learn something about civility, collegiality, freedom of inquiry, and, oh, maybe human origins, too.

Speaking of Baylor, The Baylor Project: Can a Protestant University Be a First-Class Research Institution and Preserve Its Soul? (to which I've contributed a chapter) is soon to be published by St. Augustine Press after originally being planned as a Baylor University publication.

Stanley Fish on secularism
Stanley Fish was long a poster boy for the type of left-wing professors considered a danger to the minds of young people by conservatives. More recently, though, the anti-foundationalist scholar has sacrificed a different brand of sacred cow by arguing that secularism is anything but neutral and merely represents one group of persons enforcing their preferences for social arrangements on other groups.

Academic freedom bears unexpected fruit, sometimes.

More News

Hillsdale College has bounced back from scandal seven years ago (National Review Online)
Ave Maria school of law has accreditation hiccup over move to Florida (The Wall Street Journal)
Creighton University Revises Speaker Policy after Anne Lamott Controversy (Omaha.com)
Student Activism and Calling Out Profs on Biases (MindingTheCampus.com)
Top-Ranked Liberal-Arts Institutions Express Concern with U.S. News Rankings (Amherst College)

About that title
We're a few posts into this biweekly column, and it's probably worth mentioning that the standing title of the column is a reference to Mark Noll's influential book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. This column discusses research, higher education, and news of interest to evangelicals interested in the life of the mind. It does not mean that everyone discussed or quoted in it is an evangelical Christian.

Hunter Baker is special assistant to the president and director of strategic planning at Houston Baptist University. Got a tip regarding academic research or higher education? E-mail him at hunterbaker@gmail.com.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous Evangelical Minds columns include:

David Dockery on Christian Higher Ed's Key Challenges | Plus: Fearing secularization and "fundamentalization" and whether "Christian economics" exist. (August 30, 2007)

Why College Doesn't Turn Kids Secular | Also: Richard Land on the footbath controversy, Falwell's big Liberty gift, and other stories about higher education and research. (August 16, 2007)

Christian Higher Education Goes to Russia | Plus: One more argument against U.S. News rankings, and Silver Ring Thing goes to Harvard. (August 2, 2007)

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September (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51

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Carlene Byron

Posted: September 17, 2007 1:22 PM

Psychologist of religion Kenneth Pargament spoke a couple weeks ago at Duke and like Christian Smith suggested that people are drawn to religious faith in significant part because we are drawn to experiences of the transcendent. Churchgoers live, on average, 7 years longer than non-attenders and he seemed to consider it reductionist to ascribe the difference to the social benefits of group membership. He even dared to suggest that, especially since black churchgoers have a significantly greater difference in longevity, maybe great preaching and great worship really matter ... and then, tongue in cheek, that maybe bad sermons and bad church music can kill you!

George

Posted: September 14, 2007 2:15 PM

You write: "Isn't it the case that many Christians embrace the faith, not for its effects but for what they believe is its truthfulness?" And Smith responds: "Sure. But those are not mutually exclusive things. Both can be true. In most cases people really do believe it. But believing it may also have certain often-positive effects for people emotionally." Does Christianity work because I believe and enjoy its effects, or does it work because Christ lives and works? If no person chose to believe, if no one enjoyed the effects, would Christ be ineffective? To say that Christianity works because of what we do sounds like Christ is an idea rather than the living and effective God.

Raymond Takashi Swenson

Posted: September 13, 2007 6:53 PM

Like Stephen Jay Gould, people who are outside a religion find it baffling why anyone would choose to stay there. Outsiders think that people who have faith suffer from cognitive dissonance, holding beliefs contradicted by their own understanding of reality, and that "faith" consists of accepting ideas that are plainly contrary to reality. In some cases, outsiders assume that the "faithful" must either be extremely ignorant of the modern secular and "scientific" world view or are subject to some kind of emotional or mental or physical intimidation. Outsiders hold these views about the "faithful" as a deduction, but never scientifically test their claim about the ignorance or thralldom of the "faithful". Yet the Epistles of Paul, Peter, John and James demonstrate that those early Christians were men who had devoted a great deal of rational thought to their beliefs, anchored in vivid and life-changing experiences of the miraculous, and wanted the saints to do likewise.

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