Tag: religious studies

Protestant Elites Then and Now

Published on by D. G. HartLeave a comment

What is it about the younger generation of manly Protestants who dabble in Christian nationalism and write for outlets like American Reformer and Davenant?  With all of the calls for Protestant ressourcement (the last syllable pronounced “maw”!), the awareness of the past among some of these writers is surprisingly limited when it comes to recent history. The case of evangelical elites as scholars with standing in the mainstream academy is a case in point.

A couple of recent complaints about the failure of evangelical institutions to hire and sustain scholars of distinction echo Aaron Renn’s argument about the absence of evangelical elites. [link to first article.  One asserts that evangelical colleges do not snatch up “credentialed, talented, and scholarly” Protestants as they should. Why didn’t said institutions either snatch them up for themselves or work to propel them to “mainstream” posts? The piece goes into accusation mode:

 You, Evangelical elite, are not retaining potential talent, those people who fit the bill, who are “200% respectable,” as Renn put it. If you fail in this regard, you will not be able to reproduce or extend your rule. You aspire to elite status, you take all your cues from the broad mainstream elite world, but you neither staff your own colleges (i.e., elite production) nor staff those outside your predominantly clerical institutions.

The other complaint faults evangelicals for failing to think in theological categories about their scholarly work:

The bottom line is that Catholic intellectuals tend to assume that all theology is relevant to all areas of intellectual endeavor. If it’s not obvious how, it’s still worth assuming it nevertheless until it becomes apparent. On the other hand, theology for the evangelical scholar tends to be a sort of God-of-the-gaps, an occasional mortar to stick in crumbling joinery. 

What both of these writers, as well as Aaron Renn, miss is that as recently as twenty-five years ago evangelical scholars were actually elites in American universities.  The October 2000 issue of The Atlantic Monthly devoted a cover story to scholars at (then) Calvin College and Wheaton College as part of “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind.”  Part of Alan Wolfe’s conclusion after covering the breadth of evangelical colleges and scholarship was a warning:

So long as they continue to marginalize themselves, evangelicals will be unable to equal the accomplishments of the generation that brought us Marsden, Noll, Plantinga, and Wolterstorff. That would be the true scandal of the evangelical mind.

That negative judgment should not obscure the recognition that evangelical institutions actually had nurtured elite scholars in philosophy, history, and sociology (for starters).  To be sure, Wolfe faults evangelicalism for separatism and parochialism which could support those calling for more and better evangelical elites.  Someone could say that with all the accomplishments of the generation of scholars associated with Mark Noll and George Marsden, they were still unable to create a set of institutions that reliably produce elite professionals.

And yet, those calling for evangelical scholars today do not consider the effort to create an evangelical mind that began roughly in the 1970s (I am currently writing a book about this, tentatively titled, The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Mind).  That collective endeavor which went from Gordon College in the East to Westmont College in the West, and depended on the Rust Belt center of gravity at Calvin, Wheaton, and Notre Dame (thanks to a Protestant provost), lasted all the way until 2015 or so (which coincides with Renn’s point about the start of the Negative World).  Today’s proponents of Protestant scholarship could well consider the earlier building blocks of the evangelical mind and how it unraveled. 

But the failure to consider the recent past is not the fault alone of the recent advocates of an evangelical elite.  Even those who promoted the creation of an evangelical mind, complete with a Kuyperian w(orld-and-life-vie)-w had not studied the efforts of mainline Protestants in the 1950s who themselves argued for a Protestant mind.  Those Christian scholars were remarkably successful in creating religion departments at colleges and universities where undergraduates studied Scripture, ethics, and church history.  That endeavor also ran out of gas eventually, partly because the professionalization of religion as an academic discipline inevitably watered down the aggressively Protestant character of religious studies.  But this is another case from which advocates of an evangelical elite might learn about the arguments, scholarship, and institutions that made a Protestant mind possible. 

Despite the lessons that history might teach about the creation of an evangelical elite now, a fundamental hiccup in the ideal, whether mainline Protestant, evangelical, or Christian nationalist, is the distinction between the sacred and the secular that pietists (high and low brow) refuse.  Simply put, teaching Sunday school and preaching is different from teaching an undergraduate seminar at a private college.  The church is not the academy.  The credentials the Christian ministry requires – a seminary degree and ordination – is not the same as the gate by which scholars may enter the academy – a terminal degree and accreditation.  The church is a private and voluntary institution in ways the academic is public and involuntary (through government oversight and regulation). 

Some proponents of aggressive Protestantism may object to the academy’s use of standards other than the ones that govern the church.  They could argue that all institutions should submit to Christ (which is the academic version of Christian nationalism).  But that is not how the world of universities and specialized research works.  Nor is the lack of a Christian vision the reason that Protestants use for using evaluating academic, medical, and legal experts whether or not they are Christian. 

What makes scholarship special is its capacity to make sense of most parts of the world, not that it is based on the Christian faith of the scholar.  To suggest that Christians need Christian scholars so that believers can have trustworthy learning is as pietistic as it is fundamentalist.

Are Reformation Studies Over?

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

Mark Noll with Carolyn Nystrom raised a bit of a kerfuffle some years back with a book that explored the ways that the cause of Protestantism has declined in the face of fewer and fewer differences among evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Yesterday, I learned that scholars who study the Reformation at colleges, universities, and seminaries also worry that Reformation studies are on the decline.

The occasion was a pleasant seminar sponsored by the Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, which brought together scholars from the region to discuss the prospects for Reformation studies and to become better acquainted. No matter how much I may lament the loss of the CRC from the ranks of militantly Reformed Protestants, I continue to be impressed by the scholarly resources the denomination and its constituency are willing to sponsor. The Meeter Center provides scholarships and stipends for scholars and studentds access to their wonderful holdings and collection. A lot of “evangelical” colleges may talk about the life of the mind, but Calvin does embody it in some important ways.

Be that as it may, the mood was generally despondent yesterday as professors and graduate students pined for a day when history and religion departments regularly designated one slot for a historian of the Reformation. Now, Reformation scholars cannot be certain that if they leave or retire the department and administration will not appoint someone to study East Asia or depictions of animals in movies from the 1920s. One comment did put this problem in perspective. As the history and culture of the West declined as a topic that gave coherence to the humanities and social sciences — to be replaced by world history — the import of the Reformation became less obvious. At the same time, at schools like Hillsdale College where a course on Western Heritage is still required of all students, undergraduates have more of an appetite for studying the Reformation. Some are even taking a seminar on Calvin’s Institutes this semester.

I had trouble but I did avoid the temptation yesterday to promote a book I wrote over a decade ago about the place of religion in American higher education. This books goes some way in explaining the difficulties today’s Reformation historians face. Rather than simply blaming the status of Reformation studies on secularization or multi-culturalism, just as significant was the way by which religion itself became an academic discipline. It did so in the United States at a time when the nation was in the early stages of a Cold War and when recovering the religious and cultural roots of the West seemed to be much more important. It didn’t hurt that mainline Protestants were ready with scholars trained at university divinity schools to staff the new departments. Here is an excerpt from the book (self-promotion alert!):

. . . the teaching and study of religion emerged from the efforts of mainstream Protestant ministers and educators who wanted to retain a religious influence in American higher education. In the first phase of those efforts, from roughly 1900 to 1935, Protestants worked mainly through such extracurricular agencies as the Student Volunteer Movement, the YMCA, and campus chaplains. They also saw that courses in religion, especially the Bible, would be crucial to gaining academic credibility. Consequently, the churches founded Bible chairs at the same time that individuals independent of the churches Protestant set up agencies and schools of religion that would teach students what they needed to know about the Bible and Christianity. This instruction was designed to insure religious literacy and to provide spiritual guidance to the sons and daughters of the church.

In the second phase of religious studies, from 1935 to 1965, a variety of circumstances made Protestant efforts more successful. America’s involvement in international politics, both in World War II and the Cold War, underscored the need for understanding and preserving Western culture at the nation’s colleges and universities. No longer did scientific and technological developments hold the promise they had during the first fifty years of the research university’s dominance of American higher education. Instead, through a renewed interest in liberal or general education the humanities recovered a certain measure of importance in the academy and the culture more generally. Religious studies fit well with the mood propelling the humanities’ resurgence. Not only was Christianity important to European history and likewise Protestantism to the development of the United States, but many educators regarded religion as an important ingredient in the West’s stand for liberal democracy against the tyranny of fascism on the right and communism on the left. The recognition of religion’s importance gave Protestants significant leverage in establishing programs and departments that taught the Bible, theology, and church history, all with the understanding that such instruction contributed to the well-being of students and American society, and fit with the university’s mission of preserving Western civilization.

In the most recent period, after 1965, religion faculty and administrators discovered that the older spiritual and cultural reasons for teaching and studying religion were inadequate in a climate where America’s religious and political ideals were, to put it mildly, contested. . . . Once the close fit between Protestantism and liberal democracy became debatable, religious studies had to find another rationale, one more academic and less dependent on the mainline Protestant churches or the political and economic order that they supported. Religion professors were no longer able to count on the cache of Western civilization, affinities to the humanities or the prestige of the Protestant establishment.

If scholars are worried about the future of Reformation studies just as conservative Protestants are worried about evangelicals’ declining allegiance to the Reformation, perhaps the reason is that both the academy and churches are suffering the side effects of a culture that in the name of tolerance, equality, and open markets has lost its bearings and does not know or care about its heritage.