Academic freedom is a valuable and quite fragile characteristic of our society that, like other forms of liberty, requires eternal vigilance to preserve it. It is difficult to define in the abstract, but one who has been deprived of it knows it. In totalitarian societies such as the Communist countries, academic freedom is unknown. It is noteworthy, therefore, that academic freedom is often denounced by those who, in other contexts, wish to be considered strongly anti-Communist. One might even say that to attack academic freedom is to take the Communist line.

Briefly, academic freedom may be defined as the protection from pressures that would inhibit scholars from freely investigating whatever they are interested in and responsibly discussing, teaching, and publishing their conclusions. A Johns Hopkins professor has ably argued that “so-called abuses are the only proofs that the freedom really exists; as long as the professors do not say things that impress those who have power to interfere as dangerous or loathsome, there is no way of telling whether academic freedom is only a sham.… Only when the university authorities or others in power are sorely tempted to silence a professor, to … ‘go after’ him in any way, and when they resist the temptation out of respect for academic freedom—only then can one see that such freedom exists.”

Academic freedom is needed at least as much to protect professors from one another as to protect them from politicians or the public. The tendency is very great to create uniformity in an academic department through support of one or another of the various ways of approaching philosophy, sociology, literature, or whatever the discipline may be. Recently we have seen professors violating the principles of academic freedom by forcing faculties and learned societies to take sides, as a body, on various political and military issues of our day. It is one thing for scholars to indicate their personal opposition to the war in Indochina. It is something else for a group to go on record against the war and in other ways to exert pressures, however subtle, upon their colleagues (few though they may be) who support the general directions of the government’s Southeast Asia policies. If professors cannot resist the temptation to compromise academic freedom, how can they expect politicians and the public to stand firm?

Another way in which professors themselves are compromising academic freedom, though indirectly, to be sure, is a recent action of the American Association of University Professors, in which about one-third of all college teachers hold membership. In its widely supported statement on academic freedom issued in 1940, the AAUP recognized the multiplicity of sponsorship of higher education in this country. Here private secular, public secular, and private religious groups have colleges existing side by side. In most countries, the government alone sponsors higher education. In the 1940 statement the AAUP asserted that a teacher’s freedom to conduct research and to teach without jeopardizing his employment could be limited by the aims of the institution, provided, of course, that “limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.”

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This clause granted freedom to religious institutions to hire and retain teachers who not only were competent academically but also shared the religious faith that undergirded the school. If a teacher changed his mind on those religious tenets and practices that had been specified at the time of his employment, then he was expected to sever his relationship with the school. Presumably, he would want to anyway, but if he didn’t, the institution was free to discharge him, after due process, since he was now violating the institution’s freedom to advocate a particular world view among the many competing options in our society.

For years a committee of the AAUP has been reconsidering this clause, taking into account comments by spokesmen for several church-related institutions and other opinions. Now it has decided that “most church-related institutions no longer need or desire the departure from the principle of academic freedom implied in the 1940 statement, and we do not now endorse such a departure.” The association as a whole has accepted this committee’s conclusion.

In view of the rapid changes in the Roman Catholic Church along with the well-known and long occurring secularization of the colleges of most of the older, larger Protestant denominations, it is indeed conceivable that most church-related schools now do wish to be considered secular, and do not wish to have the right to discharge a teacher because he has switched from being a Catholic to a Protestant or from a Protestant to an agnostic. But since when does the AAUP believe that the majority opinion determines such issues? What about protecting the freedom of a minority of church-related institutions to go against the prevailing currents of secularization? This freedom is especially important if the secularism is itself, even though it may seldom admit it, a kind of faith commitment that is “religious” in its own unconventional way.

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The AAUP heartily endorses a Supreme Court decision of 1967 affirming that “our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom.… That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” Yet the AAUP is doing what it can to make secularity or diversity of religious commitment the “orthodoxy” to which all academic institutions should conform.

We must defend not only the right of teachers to be different within a secular institution, which academic freedom protects, but also the right of institutions to be different (by virtue of their religious commitment) within an increasingly secularized educational establishment. Freedom to dissent needs to be affirmed for the religiously committed institution as much as for the individual professor.

We do not necessarily endorse the assertion of many Christians that Christian young people should be educated only in Christian institutions. But we do defend the right of Christian institutions to exist for those who want them and to be full participants in the community of higher education.

The Responsibilities Of Denominational Publishers

Broadman Press is the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention through its Sunday School Board. The press is not an independent entity, as is CHRISTIANITY TODAY, but is responsible to and in some sense represents the convention in what it publishes. Recently the convention decided at its annual meeting that a book issued by Broadman Press was advocating certain views that were erroneous enough to warrant withdrawal of the book. The action was not unlike that which a local congregation might take in deciding that its pastor’s sermons were not in accord with what his people believed and so removing him.

Whether the convention was correct or incorrect in its evaluation of the statements in the book is a worthwhile question, but a distinct matter that we are here considering is whether the convention has the right to do what it did. The Religious Publishers Group, which includes the major general and denominational houses in its membership, has through its executive committee deplored the convention’s action in very strong language. The group argues that “as publishers of religious books, we are committed to the proposition that it is our responsibility to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions including those whch are unorthodox or unpopular.”

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Of course the publishing industry as a whole makes the widest diversity of views available, and we are glad that we live in a country where this is possible. But members of the Religious Publishers Group evidently believe that each individual publisher should also make the widest diversity available. In their estimation, it seems, a religious publishing house should promote, not one particular religion, but all kinds of religion.

Should Baptist denominational publishers produce books advocating infant baptism? Must Pentecostal houses offer books denouncing speaking in tongues? Do publishers owned by ecumenically minded denominations propagate books attacking cooperative enterprise, or urging laymen to withhold their contributions when their denominations do things of which they disapprove? Does the Religious Publishers Group really believe that each publishing house should make available the “widest diversity” (not just some diversity) of views?

Not content with slamming the Southern Baptists because they believe that their publishing house should stay within certain bounds, the Religious Publishers Group goes on to wrap itself in the American flag and say that Southern Baptists “threaten our democracy by limiting the freedom of citizens to change society by exercising their right to choose widely from conflicting opinions offered freely to them.” The convention decision has nothing to do with our democracy, nor does it in any way limit the freedom of American citizens. To do this, the Southern Baptists would have had to try to get legislation passed that would forbid anyone to publish views unpalatable to them. Instead, their action was limited solely to the publication of views under their own name.

We suggest that the Religious Publishers Group, representing the influential publishers that it does, would be a much greater threat to freedom of choice if it should try to pressure the government to hinder religious groups that believe in a particular message from publishing only what accords with the message. The group is doubtless not quite ready to do that, but we do urge its members to broaden their understanding of religion enough to welcome the presence in America of denominations with particular convictions as well as those with widely diversified ones.

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Sweet Genes

Contrary to Mother Goose, genes—not sugar or snails—determine the characteristics of little girls and little boys, and of their parents as well. Now science has a newborn ability to make genes and, theoretically, to determine those characteristics.

Dr. Har Gobind Khorana, the University of Wisconsin chemist who succeeded in synthesizing the gene, recognizes that ahead of that infant ability lie both salutary and sinister possibilities. Manmade genes may cure or prevent genetic diseases like diabetes and viral diseases like cancer, and many forms of mental retardation, but “in the long distance future,” he believes, they may also provide the means for “genetic planning of individuals, tailoring people to fit patterns.”

The potentially dangerous maturity of genetic research is only the latest topic in a long ethical discussion (see April 10 issue, page 50). Like other scientific achievements, it requires ethical reflection not only among scientists and doctors but also among writers and speakers tempted to over-sensationalize successes and among politicians tempted to tyrannize nations through legal guidelines they establish. And perhaps Christians who have long shunned science should stop trembling at the prospects and become well enough informed to join the discussion—or even become scientists. Christians can offer a unique contribution to what future little girls and little boys are made of.

Frank C. Laubach

“The ability to read is the key to the doors of the world, and through them, to a world of understanding, instead of fear, hate, and superstition,” Frank C. Laubach once said. Last month, the man who handed that key to millions of illiterates died at the age of eighty-five in Syracuse, New York.

Frank Laubach’s fight against illiteracy began with his missionary zeal for the savage Moros, Muslim tribesmen on Mindanao Island in the Philippines. By learning their dialect, reducing it to writing, and teaching the Moros to read, the Congregational minister succeeded in breaking through their hostility and winning their attention to the Gospel. Falling financial support during the depression threatened to end the popular literacy classes—until a Moro sultan warned that everyone who knew how to read had to teach someone else or face death. “Teach or be killed” was not an appealing slogan to Laubach, but the concept of “Each One Teach One” was. By that means, Laubach’s methods have reached perhaps 100 million people around the world.

Laubach never considered his work finished, though he traveled to some 100 countries to develop, in more than 300 languages and dialects, word-syllable charts that are still being used by scores of secular as well as religious organizations. “I haven’t even kept up with the birth rate,” he lamented, “and besides, about 20 million or more who’ve learned to read have lapsed back into illiteracy for lack of reading materials.”

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Frank Laubach’s goal was to dispel illiteracy so that the light of the Gospel could illuminate hearts. His literacy campaign proved to be a key not only “to the doors of the world” for illiterates but also to the doors of hearts for the Christian message. The key is still in those doors.

Henry Cabot Lodge Goes To The Vatican

The principle of separation of church and state has served our country well, and we fail to see that principle upheld in President Nixon’s appointment of Henry Cabot Lodge as personal representative to the Vatican.

There is nothing Mr. Lodge can do in an official capacity that could not be done in an unofficial way. This decision grants to the State of Vatican City a quasi-ambassador, a defacto ambassadorship. It offends millions of Americans who have strongly opposed an official or quasi-official representative to the papal see. Many Roman Catholics, including former president John F. Kennedy, have concurred that any such appointment would be contrary to historic practice and tradition and would only serve to divide the citizenry. Moreover, ambassadors are not appointed to churches, and the State of Vatican City with 108.7 acres of land and little more than a thousand inhabitants can hardly be used to justify a claim to statehood and sovereignty.

If the World Council of Churches sets up a hundred-acre sovereignty in Bossey, Switzerland, will the President make a similar appointment?

Mr. Nixon has been ill advised in taking this step, and any ostensible or temporary gain will be more than offset by the disappointment and antagonism the appointment will engender. It is an action that will help neither the United States of America nor the Roman Catholic Church, and he ought to reverse it quickly.

Who Cries For These?

One of the most tragic but least known aspects of the war in Viet Nam is the suffering inflicted upon Christian workers there.

On March 8 of this year, one of the country’s leading Protestant pastors was murdered. He had preached in his own church in the Central Highlands that Sunday morning and was on his way to another service when he was overtaken by five armed men clad in black Viet Cong garb. He was killed on the spot, leaving his pregnant wife and eight children.

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Three weeks later, in an attack on a military school at Dalat, seventeen chaplains were killed, including three young Protestants. One of the Protestant chaplains also left eight children and his wife. Another left a wife, a daughter, and a month-old son. The third was survived by three children—his wife and an unborn child had been killed by a rocket a year before.

Prolonged anguish has been the lot of the families of men and women held captive by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. Three American missionaries were seized at a leprosarium near Ban Me Thuot on May 30, 1962 (before the American military buildup began). One of the three was a young man who does not believe in war; he worked at the leprosarium as an alternative to military service. Two other missionaries were taken prisoner in 1968. Communist authorities have ignored repeated requests made through neutral countries and international organizations for information about the captives. More than eight years have gone by without so much as a word of acknowledgment that the missionaries are still alive.

If such cruelties are committed in the face of American military might, what can be expected when forces of restraint are withdrawn and the brutal aggressors are left to their own devices? To compound our distress we have but to think of world opinion with its seemingly increasing insensitivity toward this kind of evil—unless it is perpetrated by “American imperialists.”

Seasonal Catechism

Johnny may not get his usual summer vacation from public school next year. Some 600 school districts around the country are said to be considering year-round classes.

Parents may panic at this news. So may pastors, when they think about the future of Vacation Bible School programs under the revised calendar. Millions of children are reached with the Gospel through VBS each year who otherwise would never be evangelized.

Actually, however, the extended school year may provide new opportunities for alert churches. All school districts must make provisions for vacation time, and many probably will do this by scheduling three or four breaks during the year, each of one or two weeks’ duration. Some may shorten school days. Christian-education directors in local churches need to gear up for this possibility by exploring new church-oriented educational experiences for children on short-term bases. These could add up to better access to the minds of children than the churches now have.

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Ballplayers As Communicators

Boys will be boys, Jim Bouton seems to be saying, even when they become professional baseball players. In his new book, Ball Four, the Houston Astros pitcher discloses that a number of our major-league heroes are something less than saints off the field. If the book serves to embarrass at least some of them out of their bent for mischief, it will have performed a service to baseball. The trouble is that the reader gets the feeling Bouton isn’t knocking it, just exposing it.

A much sounder antidote for evil is offered on a regular basis by relief pitcher Lindy McDaniel of the New York Yankees, whose earned-run average has been the best in the American League this year (1.14 after thirty-nine innings). This devout Christian writes a monthly paper called Pitching for the Master. His home congregation, a Church of Christ in Baytown, Texas, sends it free of charge to about 4,500 persons, including all major-league baseball players. Its evangelistic impact reaches far and wide and stands as a tribute to McDaniel’s Christian initiative.

Did You Call Me A Liar?

Nobody likes to be called a liar. And it is especially risky to call a man a liar when he’s talking about his religious beliefs. After all, how can anyone know what is in the heart of another man? Yet John in his first epistle four times refers to certain kinds of professing Christians as “liars” (he uses the word twice and twice it is clearly implied). Although he avoids pinning this label on anyone in particular, in effect he is saying to every Christian, “If the shoe fits, wear it.”

The first liar is the man who says he has fellowship with God but continues to “walk in darkness” (1:6). The Gnostics in John’s day claimed that their spiritual knowledge of God had no bearing upon their behavior. John says to them and to us that no matter how vehemently a man may profess to be in a right relationship with God, his words are a lie if his life does not reflect the light of God’s moral character.

The second liar is the man who claims to “have no sin” (v. 8—that is, denies his own state of depravity and seeks to escape the moral responsibility for his acts) or who says he “has not sinned” (v.10—that is, denies committing sinful acts). The Christian tries to avoid sin, but when he does sin he becomes a “stranger to the truth” (NEB) if he denies that he has sinned or refuses to take responsibility for it. It is foolish for the follower of Christ to become a living lie, pretending to be something he is not. He must call sin by its name and confess it for what it is; then he will experience the blessing of God’s forgiveness (1:9).

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The third liar is the man who says “I know God” but refuses to keep his commandments (2:4). Here John moves from the more general “walking in the light,” which includes more than obedience to certain precepts, to the specific responsibility to obey the commandments God has given. Obedience to God’s moral law is not optional; the professing Christian who lives in an attitude of continuing and deliberate violation of God’s moral commands is lying when he says “I know God.”

The fourth liar is the man who says “I am in the light” but does not show love for his brother in Christ. This man is not in the light at all; he is “still in complete darkness” (2:9, Phillips). Having spoken of the necessity of obeying God’s commandments, John now focuses on the greatest commandment of all—and perhaps the one most often overlooked by many evangelicals. A man’s doctrine may be pure and he may consistently avoid conduct he feels to be “evil.” But if he does not show toward his Christian brother the active, self-giving kind of love that finds its source in Jesus Christ, he remains in darkness despite his pious words and acts.

John, did you call me a liar?

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