A couple of stories caught my eye last week about evangelicals and the academy. On the one hand, evangelicals rock:
The media often portrays scientists and Christians as incapable of peaceful coexistence. But results from a recent survey suggest the two are not as incompatible as one might think. In fact, 2 million out of nearly 12 million scientists are evangelical Christians. If you were to bring all the evangelical scientists together, they could populate the city of Houston, Texas.
Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund and her colleagues at Rice University and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) reported results from the largest study of American views on science and religion at the association’s annual conference in Chicago on Sunday, February 16. More than 10,000 people, including 574 self-identified as scientists, responded to the 75-question survey. Among the scientists, 17 percent said the term “evangelical” describes them “somewhat” or “very well,” compared to 23 percent of all respondents.
On the other hand, evangelicals fear rocks:
For years, Christians have complained that academia has been an unwelcoming place for them. They’re probably right. While the evidence about whether colleges and universities are encouraging Christians to lose their faith is mixed, the anti-Christian humanist bias within academia is relatively clear—both to the disproportionately low number of Christians within the academy and to researchers, like me, who’ve taken the time to study them.
Given the hostility towards Christians, we’re left asking how Christians should approach higher education. Do they belong in academia at all?
Evangelicals follow the lead of Americans who generally sense that they are either in the mainstream or part of the aggrieved, excluded from a place at the table. The former could do their neighbors an immeasurable favor if they learned (and taught others) to live without a desire for acceptance or dominance but simply conceded that no group is in control, or conversely, that every group feels beleaguered. And if James Madison was right, that the key to a constitutional republic was the more factions the better, then the less Americans or evangelicals identify either as a dominant majority or a persecuted minority, the more likely they might be to accept that all positions are contested, that few agreements are possible, and that we walk on egg shells out there in public.
Of course, it’s more comfortable (as some less formal folks count comfort) to walk around in your underwear, as if you owned the joint. But if everyone lived like they were renters and had to worry about music being too loud or unwelcome cooking odors, the United States might be as hospitable a place as is possible this side of the ultimate Downton Abbey in the sky.
Old Life 