Post 144—Ignorance and Prejudice in the Citadel of Academia—Harvard

Harvard is considered to be the topnotch Ivy League university in the USA, if not the world. (I have to be careful here, for my two sons who graduated from Yale are bound to chastise me for this assertion, but I think I’m safe, for they probably don’t read this blog!)  It probably deserves that accolade, but that does not keep extreme ignorance and prejudice from its campus, not even from its professors.  This statement may surprise well you. Ignorant and prejudiced Harvard professors?  Come on; that can’t be.  Well, it can and is. 

Though Harvard started out as a Christian university, it has bought deeply and totally into the spirit of modernism and secularism, though some might argue that today modernism and secularism are being or already have been displaced by postmodernism.  That maybe so, but from the perspective of this article that does not make a lot of difference. Both create the same kind of situation I am about to describe for you. 

In fact, that secular or, if you prefer, postmodern spirit is so all-pervasive on the Harvard campus and is pushed down everyone’s throat so vigorously, that Christian students have felt the need to support each other while studying there to withstand the contempt with which they are regarded.  So, they established the Anselm House where they connect “Faith and Knowledge with All of Life”—their slogan; the same goal, by the way, of this blog. 

One of the members of Anselm House, a female student, wrote the following story:

Sometimes, I feel just the littlest bit defensive when I tell classmates and acquaintances at Harvard that I did my master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Many of my fellow graduate students are coming from places like Columbia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, and Oxford, and a Midwestern state university gets an occasional quizzical look. But I wouldn’t trade my two years at the University of Minnesota for two years anywhere else. There’s at least one area in which our very own UMN is at the cutting edge of higher education, providing resources and opportunities I could have gotten at very few other universities: its vibrant and active Christian study center.

Anselm House prepared me to face the rigors and challenges of study at Harvard with confidence in my Christian faith. When one of my English professors said casually, as an off-hand aside, “Of course a religious person can’t really be a professor,” I was ready to challenge his assertion that religious commitments limit freedom of inquiry in a way that secular presuppositions don’t—and I did so with arguments backed by my reading of Charles Taylor, James K. A. Smith, and Michael Polayni, because I’d read those works and discussed those questions at the study center.

As I studied the history of the Bible and its reception in different periods, I saw countless ways that my academic study of the Bible as a book and my personal experience of the Bible as the word of God could enrich one another, and I talked about my daily devotions in class—because as a MacLaurin Fellow I learned about scholars like Mark Noll and James Turner who are open about how their identity as Christians informs their research.

When, on the first day of one of my seminars, we went around the room and shared why each of us was in graduate school, I didn’t hesitate to say that I want to grow in the virtues I’ve been called to in the context of friendships based on shared pursuit of excellence—because at Anselm House I was surrounded by people for whom it was second nature to think of work in spiritual, moral, and relational terms.

It’s a slightly weird answer. It probably earned me a few more quizzical looks. But I don’t mind occasionally standing out as a Christian, because I know that there are countless brilliant and thoughtful people—in Minnesota and around the world—who share a vision of education that unites all things in Christ. I hope that during my time here at Harvard, I’ll get to tell many people that my studies are by the grace, and for the glory, of God.

   

I bolded this sentence in the story:  “Of course a religious person can’t really be a professor.”  Can you imagine a Harvard professor being so closed minded, so ignorant and so prejudiced as to make such a statement while surrounded by the most brilliant students in the nation?  And can you imagine that these alleged brilliant students simply soaked it in without challenging this nonsense?  It took this one single Christian female student to dare to challenge this ridiculous statement.

Well, that’s the power of faith for you. A closed faith filtered by the secular tunnel vision can stupefy even the most brilliant. There are thousands of Christian professors on all the faculties of all America’s universities. These professors do research and lecture, they write books, they engage in politics and everything else social, and this man has not run into even one of them who left his mark on one campus or another?  Simply incredible! I am dazed with incredulity!  How can such a prejudiced and ignorant professor be retained? 

Let me give you one single example from a document randomly lying on my desk today: Dr. Alvin Plantinga. Here is a brief bio:

Among many honors, Plantinga is the past president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division, and the Society of Christian Philosophers, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. With a PhD in Philosophy from Yale University, Dr. Plantinga is widely known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics and Christian apologetics. He delivered the Gifford Lectures three times, and was a Guggenheim Fellow 1971-1972. In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh’s Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science awarded him the prestigious Rescher Prize.

Now, you tell me: This Christian "can't really be a professor?!"  Can this obscure little Harvard boy even stand in Plantinga's shadow? If you happen to be acquainted with Harvard faculty, know that this prof is a man in the English department. I would love to give you his name, but I don’t have it.

This is New Year’s Eve. I did not plan to write such a sharp post today. I wanted to write something about the passing of time or some such topic, but when I read the above story, I was so incensed I just had to pick up the sword and….  It’s probably a good thing I don’t know his name and that I am far removed from him. For that, I credit the grace of God. But for that, I’m not sure what I would have done!

Happy new year!  Enter it with your eyes and mind open and discard whatever secular tunnel vision may be blinding and limiting you. Check out Jesus, who described Himself as “the way, the truth and the life.”  I have not been able to find a more exciting and liberating perspective than that!

Post 100—Conversion in Islam

Though Muslims, as I explained in Post 99, use the term “reversion” for anyone converting to Islam, call it what they may, others, including myself, consider it “conversion” plain and simple. So, our topic for today is the place of conversion in these two religions, which is not quite the same as defining the term, for they do not quite mean the same thing in the two religions.

Conversion is, of course, usually the result of a mission or evangelistic outreach by a Muslim or Christian, whether individual or organization, to another individual or community, usually with the explicit goal to bring someone or a community to conversion.  I say “usually.” It does not always come about that way. For example, many are the Muslims throughout the world who dream of a person dressed in a white robe who invites them to come to Him, who is often then identified as Jesus. Thousands of Muslims the world over have such dreams and they usually end up in accepting His invitation. There are entire books written about this kind of conversion invitation. These are not the result of any human outreach or other effort and certainly not of any “obsession” that WCC talked about in Post 98.

 There are indeed forms or styles of mission outreach to convert that are objectionable to people who do not adhere to the religion practicing it but that are usually perfectly acceptable to the adherents themselves. Muslims often quote the Qur’an that says there is to be no compulsion in religion, but they employ all kinds of compulsion and force. You ought to read the Christian volumes of my Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations to see how frequently Muslims use force to “revert” people to Islam according to Christian complaints (www.SocialTheology.com/islamica, volumes 3, 5 and 7).                                                 

Allow me one example from Nigeria. A Nigerian pastor friend of mine borrowed money from the government to establish a chicken farm. He was not able to keep up with the payment schedule and ran the risk of losing his business along with his investment. Christians did not offer to help him out with loans. When the Muslim community heard about this, they offered to pay his entire debt provided he become Muslim. Being desperate, my friend accepted and became Muslim. This has been years ago and he has not changed his mind ever since. The moment he does change his mind and returns to Christ, the Muslim community will demand repayment and, failing to come through, he will be hauled to court. (For the full story see our memoirs Every Square Inch, vol. 2, pp. 59-62 on our website < www.SocialTheology.com/boeriana >).  If that is not force, I don’t know what you call it. And if that is not a contradiction to that earlier statement about no force in religion, I don’t know what that is either.

However, you must be careful about accusing a religion not your own of contradiction, for I find that when non-Christians accuse us of contradictions, it is usually due to ignorance or, using more gentle language, misunderstanding. It is easy for us to fall into the same trap with respect to Islam. The above story is typical, not an exception. Muslims use both the stick and the carrot methods to induce “reversions” in all kinds of ways. As I said above, read my series and you’ll find a dizzying range of variations of force and “tricks” on their part. Another clever way is to surround a Christian business with such stiff competition that the owner either becomes a Muslim or closes his business—all perfectly legal!  And on and on and on…. Muslim authorities all over the world are known to create legal demands and restrictions on the Christian community with respect to registration of churches and building permits.  We have arrived at the border here between persecution and a campaign to “revert.” It’s a very thin line and it all smells of compulsion, even if called “reversion.” Word juggling does not change all of reality!

But do understand the Muslim position. If you are convinced that being a Muslim is the greatest gift you can wish for a person, then such tactics may seem minor in comparison to the magnificent gift they turn into. After all, adults punish wayward children in love for their own good.  An adult non-Muslim may not be a child, but she is in a state of jahiliya, an Arabized Hausa word for “ignorance.” She doesn’t really know what she is doing. A little push in the right direction seems a small price to pay for the end result that can only be described as magnificent. My experience in Nigeria as I record it in my series is that Muslims just don’t comprehend why not everyone wants to become a Muslim. What greater good can you possibly imagine for yourself?

So, they really are obsessed by wanting to con—or revert everyone, but that’s a good obsession and not a negative you would ever think about giving up on.  However, when someone is obsessed about trying to convert his neighbor or community to another religion, say Christianity, well, yes, such an obsession is unhealthy and must be let go. And so Muslims signed that declaration in all seriousness and good faith. To adherents of other religions this may seem like duplicity and hypocrisy; to a Muslim it is the only way to go. You have to think yourself into the other’s skin in order to understand correctly and not judge wrongly. 

In other words, to expect Muslims to give up on conversion is to ask them to give up on a core component of their religion.  That is not what the WCC conference that published the declaration expected of any religion.  The religions were not expected to surrender any part of their core; they were to remain true to themselves. Whether the declaration and the expectation can co-exist, is another question.