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dissertation entitled

BELIEVING DOUBT AND DOUBTING BELIEF: CHRISTIAN
SCHOLARS WORKING AND SUCCEEDING IN THE SECULAR ACADEMY

presented by

D. Scott Dixon

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BELIEVING DOUBT AND DOUBTING BELIEF: CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS
WORKING AND SUCCEEDING IN THE SECULAR ACADEMY

By

D. Scott Dixon

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Educational Administration

2001

ABSTRACT

BELIEVING DOUBT AND DOUBTING BELIEF: CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS
WORKING AND SUCCEEDING IN THE SECULAR ACADEMY

By

D. Scott Dixon

Is it possible for religiously oriented scholars to accommodate to the demands of
mainstream academia without compromising their faith? Can a Christian professor
working in a secular academy be devout to his or her religion and considered an
intellectual at the same time? How do the disciplines of science and theology relate to
each other? Are they competing ways of thinking, or can they be integrated into a
common search for understanding? Are the spirit and the mind at odds?

Exploration of these concerns raises two primary questions. First, what are the
working conditions on today’s secular campus for Christian faculty? What types of
external barriers and conflicts, if any, do they face? Second, how do Christian scholars
earn acceptance as intellectually capable without compromising their religious
convictions? How do they cope internally with the tensions and ambivalences which
result from a choice between what are sometimes perceived as “alternative
inauthenticities”? (Gates, 1997).

In order to address these potential tensions, this study profiles three Christian
professors who work in secular universities. Michael Behe, professor of biochemistry at
Iehigh University, reflects the recent animosity between science and religion as well as

revealing the potential power and control of the academic discipline in the faculty life

(Becher, 1989). As a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University in
Pomona, California, and a woman who converted to Christianity in mid-career, Mary
Poplin sheds light on the role of one’s vocational identity in faculty life (Hansen, 1995).
Finally, through his success as a conservative voice in the midst of the liberal elite,
Robert George, the Cyrus Hall McCormick Professorship of Jurisprudence at Princeton
University, demonstrates the power of a transformative ethical stance (Niebuhr, 1956).
A discussion of common themes and possible implications for practice and
research follows these three faculty profiles. Some of those themes include: (a) a
description of the prejudice on campus toward Christian faculty as a lack of respect rather
than a lack of tolerance; (b) the importance for Christian academics to use their talents
and convictions to create a space for their voice; (c) the difficulty of bringing potentially
exclusive theories into an inclusive academic context; ((1) the consideration of how
academic culture itself can actually aid Christian scholars in integrating their faith and
work via the university’s high allegiance to academic freedom as well as the “loose

coupling” of faculty self-govemance.

Dedicated to my loving family who patiently endured the dissertation process with me:
To Drew, Ben, Claire, Seth, and Ellie whose boundless enthusiasm for life continually
put this project in the proper perspective; and to my wife, Sara, whose unconditional love

and unwavering encouragement made the completion of this dissertation possible.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation reflects the investment made in my life by many different people.
I am grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Marilyn Amey, Dr.
Douglas Campbell, and Dr. Steven Weiiand for their guidance and encouragement. I
must give a special note of thanks to my advisor and committee chairperson, Dr. Ann
Austin. As a student and advisee I have benefitted immeasurably from Ann’s careful
scholarship, creative vision, and encouraging words.

Many friends have been of special encouragement along the way: Mike Stone, a
fellow student from MSU whose words of wisdom helped me set a course to navigate the
dissertation mountain; Eric Mounts, whose ZO-year friendship has continually reaffirrned
the high value of a faithful friend; and special thanks to my Cedarville University
colleagues, Phil Bassett and Chris Miller, whose barks turned out to be much worse than
their bites. They helped me believe the project was doable.

Expressions of appreciation would be incomplete without recognizing the
significant partnership of my family in the completion of this project: Bob and Ellen
Beattie whose faithful love to each other, their children, and grandchildren has been an
inspiration to me; Karen Beattie who shared with me her editor’s eyes and artist’s heart;
my father and mother, Paul and Pat Dixon, whose 40-year investment in my life has been
one of modeling excellence and gracious living. The greatest single contributor has been
my wife. This research project exists as a testimony to her encouragement, love, and
support. Thank you, Sara, for your partnership in life and ministry.

Most importantly, I commit this entire project to Jesus Christ. His grace has

sustained me, and His love has inspired me. My desire to do this type of study grew from
my desire to serve Christ. My hope is that this dissertation will motivate and inspire

other Christian faculty to integrate their faith and work into a doxological whole.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 - LIVING BETWEEN TWO WORLDS ........................... 1
Living With Contradiction ........................................... 3
Two Questions .............................................. 5

One Method ............................................... 7

Voice of the Oppressed ............................................. 8
Ghettos and Monasteries .................................. 9

The Able Seducer ........................................... 12
Insiders on the Outside? ...................................... 17

Voice of the Philosophers .......................................... 20
A Forbidden Epistemology ................................... 23

Pulled in Two Directions, Awkwardly ................................ 27
Postmodern Paradox ........................................ 28
Christian Schizophrenia ...................................... 30
Looking for Places of Unease ....................................... 32
Three Interesting Lives ...................................... 33
Portraits and Conversations ................................... 36
CHAPTER 2 - GOD AS RIVAL ........................................... 37
Introduction ..................................................... 37
Disciplines: The “Inner Faith” of Faculty ........................ 40

Any Room at the Inn? ....................................... 42
Overview ................................................. 44
Working on the Edge .............................................. 45
The Evolution of a Scientist .................................. 47

An Important Voice in an Ongoing Debate ....................... 49
Making His Case ........................................... 53

The Unlikely Crusader ............................................. 60
Religious Journey ........................................... 6O
Surprised by the Silence ...................................... 62
Taking Up the Mantle ....................................... 66
Looking at the Walls ........................................ 71
Viewing the Fight ................................................. 73
Intellectual Lens ........................................... 75
Biochemistry: A hard-pure discipline. ..................... 75

Science versus religion--An epistemological skirmish ........ 76

Behe’s epistemological battles--Challenging the elite ......... 78

Behe’s epistemological battles--Paging Mr. Spock ........... 81

Social Lens ................................................ 84
Biochemistry: A convergent-urban discipline ............... 85

Collegiality .......................................... 85

Reputation ................................. '. ........ 9O

vii

God as Rival ..................................................... 92

CHAPTER 3 - GETTING FROM ONE TO THE OTHER ...................... 101
Introduction .................................................... 101
Getting From One to the Other ............................... 103
Adopting a Rhetoric of Vocation .............................. 105
Overview ................................................ 108

Filling in the Black Hole .......................................... 110
Searching for One’s Identity ................................. 112
Wilderness Wanderings ..................................... 113
Please, Come and Get Me ................................... 117

Being Protected: Feeling Watched ................................... 127
Academic Context for Faculty Work ........................... 128

We Will Protect Her to the Death ............................. 128
Freedom Without Respect ................................... 130
Rhetorical Tensions ........................................ 132
Vulnerable or Misunderstood? ................................ 133

An Engaged Apologetic ........................................... 136
Describing Mary’s Integrative Bridge ................................ 147
The Call ................................................. 148
Intellectual Bridge ......................................... 151
Relational Bridge .......................................... 155
Two-Way Street ........................................... 161
Mother Theresa ........................................... 163
Reflections ............................................... 165
CHAPTER 4 - REBEL WITH A CAUSE ................................... 167
Introduction .................................................... 167
Princeton’s Reigning Conservative ............................ 170

Christ and Culture ......................................... 172
Overview ................................................ 175
Bizzaro World .................................................. 176
Academic Devotion--To Know the Truth .................... 180

Rebel in the Classroom ..................................... 184

The students ........................................ 189

The lecture ......................................... 190

The strategy ........................................ 193

Precept experience ................................... 194

Praying at Princeton .................................. 198

Rebel in the Faculty Lounge - A Dialectical Engagement ........... 201

Rebel in the Public Square ................................... 210

Why a Success? ................................................. 213

viii

CHAPTER 5 - HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A PARADOX? .................. 219

Introduction .................................................... 219
Reading Across the Lives ......................................... 222
Merging Doubt and Belief ................................... 223
Questions .......................................... 224

Methods ........................................... 225

Exotic or Toxic? ........................................... 228
Making a Space ........................................... 230

Being Exclusive in an Inclusive World ......................... 232
Integrating Faith and Work .................................. 236
Academic Freedom and Loose Couplings ....................... 238

If You are Good Enough .................................... 241
Advice From the Panel ............................................ 242
Finite, Fallible, and Fallen ................................... 242

Equal Opportunity? ........................................ 245

Where Do We Go From Here? ............................... 248

Living and Working Without Regret ........................... 250
Looking for the Christian Scholar ................................... 253
APPENDIX A - GLOSSARY ............................................ 257
APPENDD( B - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................ 259
Stories and Qualitative Research .................................... 259
Background .............................................. 259
Portraiture and human archeology ....................... 260

Life history ......................................... 261

Faculty Lives and Qualitative Research ......................... 263
Context ............................................ 264

Nuance ............................................ 265

A dialogical production ............................... 267
Epistemological Concerns ................................... 269
Ethical Concerns .......................................... 273

Using Stories to Describe Christian Faculty in a the Secular University ...... 274
Method and Protocol ....................................... 276
Analyzing Inforrnants’ Accounts .............................. 279
Advantages and Limitations .................................. 280
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................... 282

ix

CHAPTER ONE

LIVING BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Strolling across the campus of Michigan State University during the middle of the
Fall semester, I basked in the beauty of the October day-~the vivid colors of the changing
leaves clinging to the large, stately oak trees, the relaxing melody of the nearby Red
Cedar River as its current flowed noisily downstream, and the tingly embrace of the
autumn wind.

In order to walk from the main library to my graduate assiStant office on the fourth
floor of Erickson Hall, I had to cross a pedestrian bridge near a large classroom building
named Wells Hall. As the Red Cedar meandered its way through the middle of MSU, it
left only a few crossing points to advance from one half of campus to the other. Always
busy with student traffic, the Wells Hall bridge and surrounding sidewalks were no less
crowded this afternoon.

A group of 30 to 50 people were clustered together on the west end of the bridge
near the entrance to Wells Hall. Because of this concrete intersection’s strategic location
on a campus of close to 40,000 students, salespeople and recruiters would set up shop to
hawk their wares and push their causes. On any given day, I might be offered a free T-
shirt for changing my long-distance carrier or promised a life full of challenge and
adventure if only I would give four years to Uncle Sam. Today’s salesman offered no
freebies and made no outlandish promises. Today, the salesman offered only Jesus.

I had read letters to the editor in The State News, the student newspaper,

complaining about the “Wells Hall Preacher”--a generic name given to the sidewalk

evangelists who would periodically show up and proclaim their version of the gospel to
all who would listen. Evidently, some students did not appreciate being shouted at and
told to repent on their way to calculus class. As a part-time pastor at a local Baptist
church who had spent five years of his life in seminary, I was intrigued and disturbed by
all this commotion surrounding the “Wells Hall Preacher.” This afternoon would be our
first encounter.

As I slowly made my way across the bridge, I could see the crowd and hear the
muffled shouting. I also saw that the one doing most of the yelling was holding up a
large sign with bold, colorful lettering. The first words readable from a distance were
placed in the middle of this hand-held poster. Larger than any of the other words above
and below them and printed in all capital letters, this three-word message became clearer
as I approached the murmuring mob: “GO TO HELL.” “This is an interesting way to
draw a crowd,” I thought.

Edging closer to the group, not more than 15 feet away, I began to recognize the
beginning words of the placard which were placed directly above the previous message
and written in a slightly smaller font: “REPENT (or you will).” There was one more set
of words on this overcrowded communique, and they were the smallest yet. Now at the
back of the crowd, I had to stand on my tip-toes to see over the head of the person in front
of me. Scribbled underneath this not so gentle warning of fire and brimstone was the
following coda: “Jesus Loves You.”

My looming first convergence with the “Wells Hall Preacher” suddenly grew into
a close encounter of the worst kind. The mass of students was not receiving the

preacher’s rather direct message with passive restraint. They were not buying what he

was selling, and I don’t think he cared because he was more into telling than selling
anyway. Both sides showed more anger than tact as each raised its decibel level in order
to be heard above the other. This was not a place for reasoned debate, nor was anyone
abiding by Robert ’s Rules of Order.

The only situation matching the verbal mayhem taking place outside of Wells Hall
was the cacophony of voices striving to be heard inside my head. What does this
“wacko” preacher think he is doing? Do these students equate all preachers with this
guy? Couldn’t he have picked a little less controversial and more loving message to
broadcast on a sophisticated university campus? What would the students think of me if
they knew I was a preacher? More important, what would my professors and student
colleagues in the College of Education think if they were standing here beside me?

i As a conservative religious person, I went back to my office that day evaluating
my place in the secular university. Not that I agreed with the stance of the “Wells Hall
Preacher”--far from it. I thought he did more harm than good, and I questioned his true
intentions. Still, was the emotional interchange between a religious voice (granted, an
extreme one) and a university audience representative in any way of American higher
education’s receptivity to “God-talk”? And were my own conflicting emotions of anger,
embarrassment, and fear typical for a person with strong religious convictions

anticipating a presence in the secular academy?

Living With Contradiction

In her book I ’ve Known Rivers, Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994) presents six

portraits of highly successful African-American professionals. Lawrence-Lightfoot has

chosen these six stories to answer a foundational question that has gnawed at her for over
twenty years: “What does it mean to be black and successful?” As an African-American
woman who grew up in an upper-middle-class home and who now holds an influential
position as a professor of education at Harvard, Lawrence-Lightfoot has searched for a
portrayal of lives that would “capture” (p. 5) her own experience. Having found similar
books wanting, she decided to do her own research.

Caught between the two worlds of their African-American heritage and a
professional world composed almost entirely of white, westem-Europeans, these six have
survived, according to Lawrence-Lightfoot, due to “their ability to embrace and live with
contradiction” (p. 10). Because of their birth in the former culture, they may never be
fully accepted by those in the latter; but, due to their large amount of success in the
second sphere, they feel they can never fully return to their roots in the first.

As I listened to these six voices, I heard echoes of the Christian scholar’sl
experience within a secular academy. As the six described a life “of double
consciousness” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, p. 644), I sensed the same central tension expressed
by Christian academics who ask, “How does the religiously committed scholar
accommodate to the demands of the mainstream academic profession without
compromising her faith?” (Marsden, 1997, p. 11). As I read Lawrence-Lightfoot’s work,
I remembered some of my own struggles as a Christian scholar in training. Having grown

up in church, the son of a preacher, I was fairly sure I knew what it means to be a

 

lSee the “Glossary” in Appendix A for definitions of key terms.

Christian. I knew how to think, how to act, how to speak, even how to dress. I knew
what was expected.

I was not so sure about the scholar part. Every other college and graduate school I
had attended identified itself as a Christian institution of higher learning and privileged
the religious point of view. In the pluralistic context of Michigan State, I knew what used
to be assumed now had to be defended. My conservative religious identity moved me
from insider to outsider.

Values cherished in the one place were shunned in the other. Beliefs held closely
in the former were “bracketed” in the latter. The motto of my seminary in Texas was
“Preach the Word.” One of my constant fears at MSU when I wrote a paper or made a
comment in class was to be accused of “sounding like a preacher.” What would I have to
change in order to be accepted as a full-fledged scholar? What part of my religious

identity might I be asked to sacrifice?

Two Qg. estions

“What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian, the venerable theologian,
asked this question in the second century to gauge the relationship between earthly
knowledge and divine wisdom. How would the philosophers of ancient Greece interact
with the religious leaders seated in Jerusalem? How open would Athens be to the
influence of Jerusalem, and how closely could Jerusalem assimilate itself to Athens
without compromising its theological convictions?

How do the two worlds of reason and faith relate? Or, to put the question in a

more contemporary fashion, how does the scientific method fit with the notion of divine

revelation? Higher education has spent centuries grappling with this pivotal question.
The American university has mirrored the changing fortunes of faith in relationship to
reason within the world of scholarship. Also a perceived dichotomy between reason and
faith has become more and more manifest within the academy since the latter half of the
nineteenth century.

For the Christian faculty member working in today’s secular university, these
questions are more than rhetorical; they have become deeply personal. The answers to
this question can have career-altering ramifications for those religious scholars who are,
according to Robert Wuthnow (1988), “living the question” by continually asking what
the relationship of their faith is to their scholarship and how their scholarly work
potentially affects their religious devotion.

This study seeks to describe the precariousness of living in two worlds: two
worlds that often have trouble accepting the other without qualification. Two primary
questions present themselves. First, what are the working conditions on the secular
campus today for a Christian professor? If Boston University scholar and self-proclaimed
secularist Alan Wolfe (1996) is correct when he describes the current academic climate as
“so secular” that it leaves “little room for religious expression” (p. B4), what types of
external barriers and conflicts, if any, do Christian faculty face?

Second, if Marsden (1997) is right when he writes that “the norm for people to be
fully accepted in academic culture is to act as though their religious beliefs had nothing to
do with education” (p. 24), how do Christian scholars earn acceptance as intellectuals

without compromising their religious convictions? How do they cope internally with the

tensions, uncertainties, and ambivalences that result from a choice between what Henry
Gates (1997) calls (in another context) “alternative inauthenticities”?
One Method 2

In John Lahr’s (2000) introduction to his collection of show business profiles,
Show and Tell, he reveals the controlling mental template that shapes his literary craft: “If
you find the pulse of the artist, you find the pulse of the art” (p. xii). Whether it be
playwright David Mamet’s masterful use of unexpected dialogue and his childhood
experience filled with fear and abuse, or Woody Allen’s pessimistic and anxious psyche
resulting in almost autocratic control of each of his film projects, Lahr shows the artist
and the art to be inextricably linked.

This study profiles three Christian professors in order to capture a valid picture of
today’s academy.3 These faculty narratives provide the time and space required to
uncover the pulse of the academic scholar and offer a deeper and more nuanced
comprehension of the scholarly enterprise: its participants, fields of study, and
institutions. Looking beyond the practice of scholarship to the motivations for and
tension within professorial work holds the academy up to the light of examination and

introspection where close observation can lead to insightful analysis.

 

2A more detailed explanation of the method used in this project can be found in
Appendix B.

3Other profiles exist of Christian academics, including philosophers in
Philosophers Who Believe (Clark, 1993) and God and the Philosopher (Morris, 1997), as
well as professors from various disciplines in Professors Who Believe (Anderson, 1998).
These books are brief first-person narratives written primarily for a Christian audience.

Before we use these faculty lives to help us address the potential tensions
Christian academics face (both externally and internally) within today’s secular academy,
we need to contextualize their stories within the ongoing conversation taking place within
the literature. Before we focus on this trio of voices, it will be helpful to listen to other
Christian scholars who have written about their perceptions of the current situation. They
have, in fact, themselves borrowed the rhetoric of others who have studied the culture of
American higher education--two sets of vocabulary, in particular.

First, Christian academics have used what I call the “voice of the oppressed” to
describe perceived discrimination on campus. Commenting on the tendency of the
academy to “normalize” all those who enter its gates, Christian scholars begin to sound
like other groups of difference who do not necessarily fit the “one size fits all” approach
of academia.

Christian professors also have borrowed a second rhetoric from the language of
the philosophers. Pointing out the difficulties religious scholars face in trying to establish
disciplinary arguments based on reason and faith, researchers and commentators have
discussed in detail potential epistemological tensions. How does divine revelation co-
exist with the scientific method? Is that even a valid option? These two sets of language

will help us contextualize the possible tensions of Christian faculty in today’s university.

Voice of the Oppressed

“One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible

for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be

religious” (Weinberg, 1999, p. 48). This quotation, taken from a speech given by

 

University of Texas physicist Steven Weinberg during a 1999 conference for the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, communicates the anti-religious
passion among a portion of the academic community today.

A 1979 Nobel Laureate as well as a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, Weinberg leaves little ambiguity in his conviction that scholarship and religious
belief do not mix. To call a religious person intelligent has become an oxymoron.
Making no pretense toward open-mindedness or reconsideration, Weinberg ends his talk
with a declaration of victory: “We should not retreat from this accomplishment” (p. 48).

Does this statement from a leading physicist within the American scientific
establishment represent the opinion of the whole, or is it just the biased, unreflective
ranting of an eccentric professor speaking outside his field of expertise? Is Weinberg’s
denigration of religious belief typical of the response Christian scientists or scholars can
expect if they were to invoke a religious idea or theological deduction within a scholarly
argument? In the eyes of their disciplinary brethren, is it possible for Christian academics
to be considered religious and smart at the same time? Or has religion been trivialized

and marginalized to the anti-intellectual outskirts of the academy?

Ghettos gd Monasteries

Christian scholars like Notre Dame professor George Marsden and Stephen Carter
of Yale have not been shy in accusing the academy of prejudice, discrimination, and
religious bigotry. Whereas the historian, Marsden (1994), takes the more measured tone
when he describes higher education’s relatively recent history of “perpetuating . . . strong

prejudices against traditional religious viewpoints” (p. 429), Carter (2000), a law

 

 

professor, adopts a more argumentative stance in his recent text on religion and politics,
God ’3 Name in Vain, when he decries the “anti-religious slurs” that have become
commonplace within intellectual discourse:

On America’s elite campuses, today, it is perfectly acceptable for

professors to use their classrooms to attack religion, to mock it, to

trivialize it, and to refer to those to whom faith truly matters as dupes, and

dangerous fanatics on top of it. I have heard some of the wisest scholars in

the country deride religious beliefs and religious believers in terms so full

of stereotype and of - let us say the word - bigotry that we would be

appalled were they to say similar things about just any other group.

(p. 187)

Both external pressure from secular academic powers and choices made by
Christian professors themselves have contributed to the marginalization of the Christian
voice. On the one hand, religion has been relegated to separate campus ministries and
“ghettoized” into separate religion departments with little influence on the intellectual life
of the larger campus. Mark Schwehn (as cited in Marsden, 1997) has suggested that
“Christians are now treated in a manner rather like women were treated in the pre-
ferrrinist era. Women could be hired, promoted, and retained, so long as their feminism
did not figure prominently in their research interests, their scholarly perspectives, and
their manner of life generally” (p. 145). And, while no one would deny the existence of
many Christian professors within the secular academy, some still ask whether they feel
the freedom to integrate their scholarship with their faith.

In an academic universe replete with feminist schools of thought, Marxist

econonrics, and queer theory, among others, where are the avowedly Christian theories?

Is religion seen only as “a meddling patron” to be avoided at all costs (Burtchaell, 1998,

10

p. 850)? Often, Christian academics feel the emotions expressed by political scientist
John C. Greene in a New York Times article:

If a professor talks about studying something from a Marxist point of

view, others might disagree but not dismiss the notion. But if a professor

proposed to study something from a Catholic or Protestant point of view, it

would be treated like proposing something from a Martian point of view.

(Steinfels, 1993)

But external pressure from academic powers cannot be solely blamed for choices
made by the Christian professors who contribute to the problem. Some religious faculty
who desire a more explicit connection between their faith and scholarship have chosen to
retreat into the subculture of Christian higher education--an academic monastery that has
existed for centuries (and from which many of today’s elite, private universities
originated). As Alan Wolfe (2000) has remarked, many Christian scholars have been
content to marginalize themselves and have created their own subculture “complete with
journals, conferences, and publishing houses.” He adds, “If the price of academic
respectability is the modern research university . . . most evangelical scholars would
rather not pay it” (p. 72).

Other professors have chosen to remain in the secular academy but they have
bowed to the pressure by hiding differences in order to fit in with the majority. As Carter
(1993) explains, the religiously faithfully have continually been tempted “to be other than
themselves” among the cultural and academic elite (p. 3). “As easily shrugged off as a
favorite color” (p. 56), one’s faith carries no intellectual weight. At best, religion is
treated as a hobby (“like building a model airplane”) fit only for private consumption.

And, at worst, the religious voice is considered irrational and unsuitable for public

discourse.

11

 

 

This separation of the private and public selves begins to rrrirror the metaphoric
use of “closet” by other outsider groups. Working—class faculty have written of the “class
closet” and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy taken by the academic powers-that-be in
order to “erase” a vital part of the working—class professor’s intellectual biography (Dews
& Law, 1995, p. 334). Women academics find themselves in the place of “intellectual
detachment” as they “must actively suppress that part of [their] experience that differs
from that of men” in the university (Simeone, 1987, p. 152). And, writing from the
perspective of queer theory, William Tierney (1997) speculates on the consequences of
keeping “professional personae distinct . . . from private lives” and ultimately rejects the

notion the two selves can ever be fully separated (p. xviii).

The Able Seducer

Reading the literature of the Christian scholar, it becomes clear that most writers
are not claiming victimization or a conspiracy on the part of American higher education.
Rather, the academy is presented as an “able seducer” (Burtchaell, 1998, p. 850) that
requires people of faith to adopt “the academic motif of intellectual freedom, patient
research, evidence-based judgment, and rational argument” (p. 859) to the exclusion of
faith-based assumptions.

Like many students of the American university, Christian scholars recognize this
able seducer as highly resistant to change and a strongly normative influence on those
who seek to enter its halls. Ironically, this institution “run by and for a group that has
been dubbed ‘tenured radicals’ may be the most conservative institution in American

society” (Wolfe, 1996, p. 1). Columbia professor David Damrosch (1995) has borrowed

12

a term from Mikhail Bakhtin and labeled higher education as a “heterocosm” that
functions as a “universe obeying its own laws and deriving from its own history,
intimately linked to current social realities at some points but bafflingly distant from them
at others” (p. 18).

“One of the remaining guild-like groups in American society” (Kerr, 1995, p.
168), the academic culture’s true strength may be seen in the manner in which it
socializes its members. Also called “monastic guilds” (Karabell, 1998), the disciplines
offer professors the role of medieval monk within a university monastery. Living in a
compound cut off from the outside world, obeying the rules of the monastic life
established by the founding fathers, meditating in the company of like-minded souls, and
with a pointed mission to preserve knowledge through the transcription of ancient texts,
this monks’ world leaves little room for improvisation.

Apprenticed through the crucible of graduate school, young scholars are
encouraged to withdraw from society and asked “to exchange the workaday life of most
Americans for the rarefied world of scholarship” (Karabell, 1998, p. 59). With the
promise of eventual membership within the guild, these apprentices learn to practice their
scholme craft according to the preordained rules passed down from the full professors
“on high.” These mentors not only guard the entry gate into the profession through the
granting of the Ph.D. but also possess the power to award promotion and establish one’s
reputation through refereed publications and eventual lifetime membership through the
granting of tenure.

Considered a “process of acculturation” (Damrosch, 1995, p. 153), graduate

school becomes a place where the habits of the mind are learned and enforced.

13

Borrowing from the work of French post-structuralist Michel Foucault (1979), whose
studies of prisons, hospitals, and asylums illustrated how strongly normative cultures
marginalize and “imprison” outsiders, cultural theorists such as Peter McLaren (1989)
have indicted institutions like universities as “colonizer[s]” that “provide the terms and
frames of reference” for those on their margins (p. 52).

What some have called the power of acculturation, others have designated the
“price of acculturation” (Marsden, 1997, p. 7), which is required of all who desire full
acceptance in the academic community--a “hegemony” where those who are different can
be welcome as long as “they think more-or-less alike” (Marsden, 1994, p. 432).
Working-class professor Carolyn Law has renamed the socialization of the academy a re-
creation: “Education has destroyed something even while it has been re-creating me in its
own image” (Dews & Law, 1995, p. 2).

When Richard Rodriguez (1982) describes his own educational journey from the
outside in as a “laddering [his] way up the rungs,” he highlights the hierarchical nature of
the institution (p. 73). Along with British nobility and the Westminster Kennel Club, the
university may be one of the most highly stratified places on earth, where titles and
pedigrees are everything. To be at the wrong end of the hierarchy puts one at a
competitive disadvantage. In a place where everyone is supposed to be color blind, few
miss the institutional seal on the diploma or the bibliography on the vita sheet. The
academy is a Darwinian world where it is not the survival of the fittest, but the “survival
of the most footnoted” (Damrosch, 1995, p. 29). The scholars who survive are those who
conform to the expectations of the gatekeepers located within a very small but powerful

segment of elite universities.

l4

Many titles and tags are affixed to determine pecking order within the university,
and outsiders have long found the academy to be “a part of the ideological apparatus that
sustains the myth of meritocractic placement, and in fact provides crucial certification of
who is ‘somebody’ and who is ‘nobody’” (Simeone, 1987, p. 3). In a place where labels
matter, those who affix the labels have much power over those who receive them. The
most powerful and historic institutions have determined the narrative of many of the
lesser known universities and colleges, and the fact that many of these same elite
institutions long ago renounced their strong religious roots is not lost on the Christian
academic.‘

This power over the “other” is only magnified through the monopoly held by
American higher education over the scholarly enterprise within the western world. “The
plain fact is that most of the capital society allocates to the support of intellectual inquiry
and writing is allocated to the academy” (Simeone, 1987, p. 143). The elite universities
function “as the mind of the western culture” as they “define what is important” by setting
the agendas, providing the vocabulary, and producing the books (Noll, 1994, p. 51).
Serving as the “engine of economic growth and the source for technological and scientific
progress” (Finn & Manno, 1996, p. l) and THE credentialing institution of society,
“higher education . . . is woven into our lives” (Kennedy, 1997, p. 3).

In addition, many of those foundational scholars whose theories have established

the intellectual conventions of the academic disciplines claimed no religious affiliation.

 

‘A number of Christian historians have written texts tracing the history of
American higher education and its strong religious roots, including The Soul of the
American University (Marsden, 1994), The Secularization of the Academy (Marsden,
1992), and The Dying of the Light (Burtchaell, 1998).

15

 

For example, the founders of the modern social sciences- Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud
- “all abandoned any personal commitment to Christianity (or Judaism) long before they
embarked on the intellectual journey that produced their contribution to the formation of
the social sciences” (Wuthnow, 1989, pp. 159-160). The intellectual canon of the secular
academy (including the elite institutions and foundational theorists) that has formed the
deep structures of the modern mind has experienced a paucity of religious influence
within the last century.

It should be noted that most of these Christian academics are not arguing for a re-
establishment or reinstatement of Christianity to a privileged position within the
academy. In the name of pluralism and diversity, no one religious viewpoint ought to
dominate. As Marsden (2000) argues:

At Harvard, for instance, there ought to be room for professors who are

orthodox Jews, traditional Christians, Muslims, etc., to relate their

religious faiths to their teaching and scholarship, so long as they do not

violate any essential rules of academia or public life . . . . They should be

free to openly relate their faith to their scholarship, but they must do so in

a way that respects the diversity of the community and especially of the

student body (paragraph 6).

Christian scholars have recognized the dangers of privileging one approach to
scholarship. Wolfe (2000) quotes one such opinion: “Naturalism becomes dangerous
when, like the dogmatists of old, it declares its way of knowing to be the only legitimate
one and then seeking to disenfranchise other voices”(p. 71). Rather than create another
hegemony to replace naturalism, Christian faculty simply want to create a space for their

religious voices. They just want to be accepted “on equal terms” within everyday

academic discourse (Marsden, 1997, p. 4).

l6

Like women faculty who are “carving out a space for themselves in an
unwelconring, nonsupportive, and frequently hostile environment” (Simeone, 1987, p. 4),
religious acadenrics understand how their very presence in the university argues for
progress; but they desire more. As Carter (2000) relates his own place as a professor at
Yale, “One of Yale’s virtues is that it has a place for somebody like me - not me in

particular, but somebody like me. But not a lot of spaces” (p. 188).

Insiders on the Outside?

Objections and counter-arguments have arisen about the appropriateness of
Christian professors using the language of the oppressed. In a review of God 's Name in
Vain written in the New York Times Book Review, Brent Staples (2000) calls Carter’s
claim of intellectual bigotry “implausible” and expresses significant doubts that “in an
age of speech codes” and “rigidly enforced tolerance,” a university professor could trash a
student’s beliefs without being subject “to institutional ridicule.” (pp. 13-14).

An intellectual historian, Thomas Bender (1994), wonders how Christian
historians like Marsden can claim a history of religious prejudice within the academy
when so many academics themselves are religious. How can religious scholars depict
marginalization within the academy when, in fact, the country as a whole remains so

religious?5 How can a Christian academic assert the status of the underprivileged when

 

5A 1997 Gallup poll revealed that 84% of American adults believe in God, with
another 10% trusting in a “higher power.” Forty-four percent of the American public
trust in the literal truth of the Genesis creation story, whereas another 39% hold that
evolution was guided by God.

17

“no group has a history of more privilege”? How can a group of insiders claim to be on
the outside looking in?

While sociological studies have been conducted demonstrating that the religious
majority of the American public has not necessarily transfened to the rooms of the Ivory
Tower,6 there still exist doubts about the use of outsider rhetoric. Although similarities
exist between the vocabulary of Christian academics describing their own perceived
marginalization within the university and other oppressed groups, it would still be less
than accurate and possibly even offensive to equate all “outsiders” without qualification.

Whereas affinities of language do reflect a common experience, there remain
differences of degree. Whether it be race, gender, class, or sexual orientation, each
community claiming to be silenced differs from other groups in meaningful ways. Some
groups (gender, race) have no choice but to announce their difference everywhere they go,
whereas others (sexual orientation, class) may avoid the more overt acts of discrimination
by choosing to hide portions of their identity. Yet, those who are able to hide often
experience the intense loneliness that comes from the often incorrect impression that they
are “dining at the table of the norm” (Tierney, 1997, p.56) all alone.

Another irony of the rhetoric of oppression rests in the fact that one may be both
oppressed and oppressor simultaneously. As Tierney (1997) observes, most people “exist

in relation to dominant norms, and at the same time, we also often reside within a

 

°Robert Wuthnow (1989), writing in The Struggle for America ’s Soul:
Evangelicals, Liberals, and Secularism, has examined such studies from the last 50 years
and concluded that the evidence documents the “irregliosity” of the academy in general
and scientists in particular. And a recent study by Larson and Witham found only 7% of
the members of the National Academy of Sciences claim to believe in a personal God
(see Angier, 2001).

18

dominant norm” (p. 75). Gay, white males may experience discrimination for personal
lifestyle choices while at the same time enjoying the privilege that comes from financial
wealth. So, too, a Christian physicist may feel that her faith has marginalized her within
her profession while enjoying all the perks offered by her professional status.

Rightly or wrongly, some Christian scholars have co-opted the rhetoric of other
oppressed groups--marginalized subcultures coping with the normalizing power of the
academy. By studying the individual lives of Christian faculty, we will begin to see
whether this claim of victim status is accurate. We will seek an honest rendering of the
current status of Christian acaderrrics on campus. Is there subtle or not-so-subtle
prejudice against them? If so, in what forms would this prejudice appear? And what
countermeasures allow the Christian professor to withstand such pressure?

Another set of voices seeks to be heard within this scholarly conversation--the
voice of the philosophers who ask about the relationship of reason to faith from an
epistemological point of view. In an enterprise whose mission is to discover and transmit
knowledge, questions about the nature of truth and the criteria used for justifying
knowledge claims become all important. Are reason and faith compatible in this
mission?

To complicate matters even further, how does the current post-Enlightenment
epistemological revolution on campus affect this relationship? When disciplinary
brethren cannot even agree about the validity of the scientific method or any other
proposed research method, how are they going to respond to religious arguments? To
paraphrase Tertullian, what is the relationship of Athens to Jerusalem when both are

forced to answer to Berkeley?

19

Voice of the Philosophers

The emotions felt by those students toward the Wells Hall Preacher were almost
matched by my own passionate response to a discussion held one evening in a graduate
class in MSU’s College of Education. In this class, located (ironically) in 3 Wells Hall
classroom, a dozen Ph.D. and master’s level students were studying current curricular
issues in American higher education. We had been asked to read a number of articles,
including one by William Tierney (1990) on “Cultural Politics and the Curriculum in
Postsecondary Education.”

Our professor asked us to respond to Tiemey’s critical framework for approaching
what he considered to be a dynamic curriculum, which functions as one expression of an
organization’s culture and ideology. When I read the article the night before, one
comment had caught my eye: “There is no one single, simple unilinear rationality; there
are multiple, competing rationalities” (p. 43). Being a novice to the study of education
and curricular studies, I found it curious that the author appeared to be denying the
existence of objective truth. Chalking it up as a minority opinion, I quickly moved on to
the rest of the required readings.

Now, we as a class were being asked to critique Tiemey’s premise. I eagerly
anticipated my fellow students’ reactions to what I believed to be a spurious argument. I
was startled, however, to hear murmurs of assent among the group. Some thought
Tiemey’s observations rang true with their own educational experience, and others agreed
with his description of the curriculum as “a set of filters through which we define and

choose what counts as knowledge” (p. 41).

20

“This can’t be happening,” I thought. How could educated people be questioning
the existence of truth? Surely, the professor leading the discussion would speak up,
stamp out these heretical brush fires, and defend the honor of truth.

Again, my expectations were not met. Rather than challenge students’ comments,
this professor asked follow-up questions to contextualize the isolated thoughts. Rather
than make evaluative judgments, she sought clarification. Whatever personal thoughts
she had were effectively hidden behind her desire to make sure all viewpoints would be
expressed and heard.

Finally, I had to speak up. I do not remember the words I used to express my
thoughts that night, but I vividly recall the emotions behind those words. I was
incredulous, and I was angry. How could we ever harbor doubts about truth’s existence?
Had not Descartes settled the possibility of epistemic certainty centuries ago? Even the
most rudimentary use of logical analysis proved the denial of absolute truth to be a self-
defeating claim.

Sitting in a chair that faced our small semi-circle of desks, the professor listened
patiently to my mini-tirade. When I was finished, she asked a series of gentle, prodding
questions designed to help me see both sides of the issue. I did not want to see both sides
of the issue. I was right, and Tierney was wrong. From my limited perspective, it was
obvious.

I had spent four years at a college and five years at a seminary where absolute
truth was assumed. God exists, and He has communicated to us through his revelation.

Sure, we spent hours in class debating and discussing the exact interpretation of that

21

revelation. But we worked under the assumption that metanarratives could exist and that
the Bible was the most important metanarrative ever written.

Now, Bill Tierney along with his fellow constructivists wanted to do away with
the very possibility of such a “rationality.” Theology was just one other “fiction” open to
interpretation and contextualization with no pretense of generalization. I felt like Tierney
had just told me the last ten years of my life were a waste of time and the misuse of a
good mind.

Recognizing my internal distress, the professor tried to case my mental anguish by
distinguishing capital “T” Truth and lower case “t” truth. Constructivists were simply
focused on little “t” truth--an interpretation of reality that still held out the possibility of
capital “T” Truth’s actuality. Although I appreciated her explanation and hesitantly
agreed with her proposal, 1 still had my doubts that she could ever get Bill Tierney to
agree. He seemed absolute and resolute in his doubt of “Truth’s” existence.

This was my second class in the second course of my Ph.D. program, and I began
to realize I was on foreign epistemological turf. Not only were there differing
philosophical assumptions about the nature of knowledge at play here, but also the rules
of evidence were shifting as well. Coming into a pluralistic, secular institution, I knew
God and revelation would be granted no special authority. However, I had not fully
anticipated how those rule changes might affect my own ability to take part in the

ongoing scholarly conversation. I came to realize that I was not the first Christian

academic to think these thoughts.

22

A Forbidden Epistemology

A number of Christian scholars writing within the literature have claimed a
minority epistemological status. Referred to as an “alternative mode of cognition”
(Graham, 1981, pp. 312-314), an “alien way of knowing” (Carter, 1993, p. 43), and a
“forbidden epistemology” (p. 58), the use of religious beliefs to justify truth claims is on
shaky epistemological ground within today’s post-Enlightenment world. Describing the
current academic environment for people of strongly religious persuasions, Kelly Monroe
(1996), a graduate school chaplain at Harvard, suggests that religious academics “feel
safer as doubters than as believers, and as personal seekers rather than eventual finders”
(p. 15).

Are reason and faith compatible? Is religion the “antipathy of reason” (Marsden,
1997, p. 21), or can traditional religious points of view “be just as hospitable to
scientifically sound investigations as [any] other viewpoints, all of which are ultimately
grounded in some faith or other” (p. 45)? Do religious ideas extend beyond the accepted
canons of proof within the university?

George Marsden (1997) quotes one common sentiment within the academy when
he cites a professor’s comments in The Ohio State University’s alumni magazine:
“Evidence should meet the standard of profession. But faith is by definition a belief in
that for which there is no proof” (p. 25). Do religious truth claims break the rules of
shared dialogue within scholarship by beginning at inaccessible starting points and
reasoning through inaccessible methods? Or does a religious point of view have as much

right to exist as a Marxist or feminist perspective?

23

These philosophical concerns become even more complicated for Christian
scholars when they are situated within the current knowledge revolution on campus.
“The gyroscope at the center of any educational system, if it is not to be just a gymnasium
or a fraternity row, is its dominant conception of knowledge” (Kernan, 1999, p. 297).
Yet, the university’s concept of knowledge can be difficult to ascertain when preceded by
adjectives like “postmodern,” which has been defined as “so new it’s out of date already”
(Scrivenor, 1989).

In a business whose historic mission revolves around the dissemination of
knowledge, any attempt to redefine the nature of knowledge itself will have serious
repercussions. Linda Ray Pratt (1996), former president of the American Association of
University Professors, has suggested that this epistemological paradigm shift has led to
“significant intellectual and methodological transformations in the ways scholars think
about knowledge, language, and truth - changes that have altered assumptions about
teaching, writing, and education itself” (p. viii). The arguments of scholars like William
Tierney represent this type of transformation.

Prone to doubt rather than to believe, the current educational trends are
challenging the university’s centuries-old Enlightenment foundation. Suspicious of any
proposed overarching framework to reality, any claim of neutral descriptive language, and
any attempt to build a permanent standard of rationality, this “incredulity toward
metanarratives” (Lyotard, 1984, p. 40) has created a context for scholarly exploration in
which “epistemological confusion reigns” (Phillips, 1987, p. 80).

The philosophical debate between epistemologies has a historical precedent.

More than a debate over the nature of rationality, it has historically been a conversation

24

about the nature of reality itself. In the last 2000 years we have seen two major shifts in
Western thought: providence to progress and progress to nihilism (Lyon, 1994). Before
the onset of the Enlightenment existed the “premodem,” in which scholars viewed history
in providential terms. Championed by writers such as fourth-century apologist Augustine
of Hippo, history moves forward under the direction of God toward a specific goal, and
truth is found through revelation.

Early Enlightenment thought took this generally positive outlook on history and
strengthened it through an emphasis on progress, although Enlightenment thinkers
emphasized the role of reason while downplaying divine intervention. As David Lyon
(1994), a scholar on the history of Western thought, has described this Cartesian move:
“The certainty of our senses supplanted certainty in God’s law and paved the way for the
rise of the modern scientific world view” (p. 5).

Yet, Lyon cautions, “Autonomous reason would always have its doubts” (p. 5) As
early as the nineteenth century, Friedreich Nietzsche prefigured today’s postmodern push
by exposing the hollowness of Enlightenment hopes. Philosophers in the early twentieth
century began to question whether truth revealed by reason alone was nothing more than
the opinion of various social groups. The advent of two world wars shook the inherent
belief in progress, and the cynicism of the 1960's dealt it an almost mortal blow. The
Enlightenment quest for a rationalized world was conring up empty, and the postmodern
was born. Increasingly, the possibility of absolute truth was now seen as a relic from the
past.

This debate between the old and new paradigms within the academy penetrates

deeper than a simple epistemological change of mind; it goes to our ontological core.

25

Questions surrounding research methods and pedagogical approaches become more than
devices to solve epistemological problems. Some of the most perplexing questions that
trouble us as human beings form the center of the debate. “What are we, and what can
we know, what norms ought to bind us, and what are our grounds for hope?” (Bernstein,
1983, p. 4).

The recent epistemic shift continues the historic discussion about what some
scholars have called “the quest for certainty.” This quest seeks more than just “the nature
and scope of human rationality” (Bernstein, 1983, p. 2); it also desires to work out one’s
own ontological presuppositions. Questions on the nature of rationality contain implicit
references to the nature of reality itself. Epistemology and ontology go hand-in-hand.
Philosopher Richard Bernstein (1983) offers this consideration:

The primary reason the agon between objectivism and relativism has

become so intense today is the growing apprehension that there may be

nothing - not God, reason, philosophy, science, or poetry - that answers to

and satisfies our longing for ultimate constraints, for a stable and reliable

rock upon which we can secure our thoughts and actions. (p. 13)

When we ask how a person defines knowledge or truth and the criteria for justifying

6‘

knowledge, we also ask how that person undertakes building Pascal’s tower reaching to
the infinite” and where he or she finds Bernstein’s “stable and reliable rock” upon which
to base his or her quest for certainty. We are asking the very same questions addressed by
religious points of view. Academic scholars no longer have the luxury of staying on one

side of the Kantian divide and leaving the metaphysical disputes to the philosophers and

theologians.

26

Pulled in Two Directions. Awkwardly

Nearing the end of my course of study at MSU, I had grown more accustomed to
life and work within the post-Enlightenment world of educational scholarship. From
John Dewey to Paulo Freire, post-positivism to critical theory, William Perry to Mary
Belenky, and Karl Popper to J aque Derrida via Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerberand, the
names, theories, and vocabulary required constant adjustment.

Since my own initial confrontation with the postmodern leanings of the
constructivists, I had become more fluent in the scholarly language required in the
academic world to which I hoped to belong; however, at times, my religious accent would
suddenly reappear and I would be reminded that I might never fully belong. As
Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994) observes, “Our outsider status becomes clearer as we work to
claim our insider’s place” (p. 10).

This insider-outsider paradox was exemplified in one of my final classes, in which
I spent five summer weeks studying the methods, challenges, and validity of using
qualitative research. Already harboring doubts concerning the use of what I perceived to
be cold, sterile statistics alone to describe the richness of people’s lives, I was quickly
enamored with the opportunity as a fledgling educational researcher to steal the best that
anthropology, psychology, and the other more “human sciences” had to offer. Searching
for Geertz’s (1997)“thick description” of a particular educational culture or career
sounded much more inviting and informative to me than using some computer program to
generate the confirmation of a hypothesis by means of statistical significance.

Challenged to read the field work of various qualitative researchers, 1 had a

scholarly inclination to accept without reservation the gospel of qualitative methodology.

27

However, when I read the theory and the epistemological assumptions that propped up the

method, I began to experience renewed theological doubts.

Postmodern Paradox

For the academic who embraces a religious identity, post-Enlightenment
epistemology introduces an interesting paradox. On the one hand, postmodernism can be
seen as a friend of religion as it has helped qualify modemism’s almost total reliance on
reason as the sole source of truth. Religion has often been at odds with science.
Postmodemism’s emphasis on multiple ways of knowing has reopened the door to faith
as a possible way of finding meaning in reality. (Yet, some current Christian scholars
complain that these same discredited Enlightenment arguments are pulled out of the
“epistemological closet” when religious ideas come on line.)

On the other hand, postmodernism taken to its logical extreme also becomes a
form of relativistic subjectivism where whatever a person wants to believe is acceptable.
Any attempt to comprehend reality from a “God’s-eye point of view” is strongly resisted.
As postmodern educator Henry Giroux (1988) explains:

All claims to universal reason and impartial competence are rejected in

favor of the partiality and specifity of discourse. General abstractions that

deny the specifity and particularity of everyday life, that generalize out of

existence the particular and the local, that smother difference under the

banner of universalizing categories are rejected as totalitarian and

terroristic. (p. 14)

Thomas Nagel (1986) has condescendingly called the “God’s-eye point of view” the
“view from nowhere.”

Said another way, postmodern epistemology is a double—edged sword for the

Christian academic. If we must acknowledge the situatedness of all knowledge claims,

28

then there is little reason to exclude religious voices a priori because “everyone’s
intellectual inquiry takes place in a framework of communities that shape prior
comrrritrnents” (Marsden, 1994, p. 149). As the implicit is now made explicit, there is
room on campus for Marxist econorrrics, feminist political science, and queer theory.
Furthermore, religious intellectuals now want to claim a place for the Christian world
view as “one of several acceptable interpretations of human behavior” (Wuthnow, 1989,
p.163)

Yet, if all knowledge is accepted as situated and socially constructed, then no
possibility exists for truth grounded in metanarratives and applicable to all. The God who
offers universal guidance and direction becomes a God who merely provides personal
inspiration.

How could I square the claim of qualitative researchers Lincoln and Guba (1994),
that “there is in this [post-Enlightenment] ontological position, always an infinite number
of constructions that might be made and hence there are multiple realities” (1994) with
Jesus’ claim to be “the way, the truth, and the life” (italics added) (John 14:6)? If all
knowledge were socially constructed and all truth claims equally valid, then questions of
right and wrong would only be questions of perspective and the Ten Commandments
would become nothing more than the 10 opinions. If there is no clear foundation upon
which basic judgments about truth, reality, and knowledge can be made, then beliefs in a

transcendent God quickly become irrelevant.

29

Christian Schizophrenia

Could I be a Christian scholar with integrity, or was I in danger of developing
what George Marsden (1997) calls “Christian schizophrenia”where I advocate a religious
world view on Sunday while “playing by [scholarly] rules that are not consistently
Christian” on Monday through Friday (p. 55)? Like Nancy Mpaglia, a working-class
faculty member, I was now being pulled “in two directions awkwardly” (Dews & Law,
1995,p.7)

Should a Christian professor even expect to be fully accepted within the
mainstream academy without theological accommodations? Former Duke professor
Stanley Fish (1996), a post-Enlightenment partisan and not one who is known for his
religious loyalties, states unequivocally that Christian scholars cannot remain consistent
to their theological convictions and beliefs while accepting the liberal establishment’s
epistemological premises within the academy’s rules of intellectual engagement:

A person of religious conviction should not want to enter the marketplace

of ideas, but to shut it down, at least insofar as it presumes to determine

matters that he believes have been determined by God and faith. The

religious person should not seek an accommodation with liberalism; he

should seek to rout it from the field, to extirpate it, root and branch. (p. 21)

A study of the Christian academic within the secular university is more than a
description of what it takes for Christian faculty to get along within the academy, more
than an external story relating possible prejudice and conflict. It also is a portrait of the
Christian scholars themselves. To be accepted as scholars, are they forced to become

less connected to their Christianity? Could I want to belong so badly to the group that I

subtly or not so subtly adjust my own personal convictions? How would I even know it if

30

it happened? As Dews and Law (1995) have asked, will I feel able and free to “integrate
my background with my foreground” (p. 333)?

Other circles of academics who live between “two worlds”--the academy and a
specific subculture of faculty--have experienced these internal tensions. Working-class
scholars communicate a profound sense of guilt mingled with fear as they have felt forced
to learn “to lie with conviction in two contexts at once and fearing expulsion from both”
(Dews & Law, 1995, p. 4). With a strategy of “silence and lies,” they worry that they
have betrayed a part of self “in order to gain acceptance within the academic community”
(p. 2).

Women faculty have asked “whether women must remain outside the institution
in order to remain true to their own convictions and knowledge” (Simeone, 1987, p. 148).
Also, Tierney (1997) portrays a potential compromise for the gay professor so severe that
his consuming desire “to fit within the norm” of the university may cause him to hide his
true identity even from himself--what Tierney calls “masquerading” (p. 78).

How difficult is it to be a Christian and a scholar in today’s secular university?
One of the ironies of living within two worlds concurrently is how each can affect the
other. Change and influence are not always one-way streets. Our study of Christian
faculty is not just an investigation of how one’s faith affects his or her scholarship--how
one’s religious beliefs alter the individual’s academic work. It is also a study of how a
life of scholarship influences one’s religious identity.

As shown in Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (1994) study of successful African-American
professionals, living in two worlds includes the notion of “trade-offs” where one lives

continually on the border between being “too black” or “too white,” depending on the

31

context in which one currently resides (p. 9). For the Christian scholar, the life of the
mind is not always respectful of the life of the spirit, and the life of the spirit is too often
distrustful of the life of the mind.

There have always been those religious academic types who have thought that
secular institutions ask too much from the Christian scholar and have withdrawn into
distinctively Christian colleges and universities. Is the simplicity of faith at odds with the
complexity of the mind? What did Jesus mean when he praised the “Father” for hiding
certain truths “from the wise and learned” while at the same time revealing them “to little
children” (Matt. 11:25)?

Conversely, there also are Christian academics who bemoan the tendency of
Christian scholarship toward pietism and the mystical at the expense of solid research
(see Noll, 1994; Wolfe, 2000). They believe that even those working within Christian
higher education must interact with the academic establishment through their respective
disciplines. To paraphrase Jesus’ quotation of the Old Testament “Shema”
(Deuteronomy 6:4), they seek to live out the life of a Christian scholar by loving God

with all of their heart and all of their mind, without sacrificing a part of either one.

Looking for Places of Unease

Living in two worlds described by two sets of voices has led us to two primary
questions. What are the external circumstances on the secular campus for Christian
scholars, and how are they able internally to negotiate the sometimes competing

allegiances between the world of their religion and the world of academia?

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Because of the complexity of these tensions, we need more than a general
description of how various Christian faculty get along in a university context that may be
largely indifferent or even hostile to their religious beliefs. There also are internal
tensions that demand exploration, and the use of individual narratives has the potential to
add a “qualitative depth” to the more common quantitative breadth (Tierney, 1997, p. 96).
Complex issues need to be situated within life context in order to reveal nuance and better
resist reductionist tendencies to oversimplify and overgeneralize the part for the whole.

A Christian scholar’s work is located within the exceedingly strong culture of the
academy; a Christian scholar’s life is complicated by his or her desire to succeed at work
while remaining faithful to his or her faith.

Yet, it is these internal tensions that offer the most interesting and insightful
places for study. Dreams fulfilled and dreams unfulfilled tell the story of one’s career,
with the latter group of unsatisfied aspirations often providing the most fruitful spaces for
research. Lahr (2000) gives a methodological clue to his own biographical chase when he
writes: “I have to listen hard to find that place in them [the artists] which is not at ease”
(p. xii). Those places of unease, those locations of discontent are the cracks in the
narrative through which the complicated identity of the person shines through. The often-
ironic disconnect between someone’s personal dreams and current life circumstances

reveals itself through a career’s presenting tensions.

Three Interesting Lives

Introducing her collection of stories about women intellectuals, Mary Catherine

Bateson (1989) admits that her choice of subjects is “not a statistical sample - only, [she]

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hope[s], an interesting one” (p. 16). I make no pretense to generalizability through the
following three faculty narratives. Yet, they hold the potential to offer three interesting
snapshots to the presenting problem.

Michael Behe is a biochemist working at Lehigh University in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. Mary Poplin teaches education at Claremont Graduate University in
Pomona, California; holding the McCormick Chair of Jurisprudence at Princeton
University is Robert George. Although all of these professors are white and part of the
professional class, they offer us a variety of experience, including different genders,
disciplinary fields, institutional types, and geographical locations. Each has taken a
slightly different focus on the academic profession: Behe, the scientist, has spent most of
his time in the lab, the study, and lecture circuit; Poplin has concentrated on the roles of
teacher, advisor, and administrator; and George has used much of his career to write and
to teach.

All three of these professors have definitely remained out of the closet-~they have
worn their religious identity on their sleeves. Yet, all three are what Lawrence-Lightfoot
(1994) labels “narratives of ascent.” They have negotiated the academic journey with
some degree of success and achieved tenure and the rank of full professor. Each of them,
in his or her own way, has earned acclaim beyond the norm in his or her field and
institution.

Most important, each of the three has the ability to communicate a reflective
glance back on his or her journey through the academic gauntlet. All have made it to
middle-age, which Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994) describes as “a time to pause” (p. 11) and

consider where they have been and where they are headed. Sharing their successes and

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struggles, they are able to speak of the benefits and distractions posed by their religious
identity within the secular university. They have all agreed to appear under their own
name.

As I present three very different stories of professors who have struggled with
similar tensions, I sometimes sew a quilt and at other times weave a tapestry. Because
Behe, Poplin, and George are three individual people working in separate disciplines
within unique institutions, like the individual squares of a quilt, their stories need to stand
alone. With Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994), I want to construct “a more authentic and
complicated narrative about . . . lives” (p. 118). To do this, I must resist the temptation
toward over-simplification by forcing a tapestry’s seamless presentation where it does not
belong.

All three lives bring a unique and powerful angle from which to view the
problem. Reflecting the recent animosity between science and religion, Behe will reveal
the potential power and control of the discipline within a faculty life. As a woman who
converted to Christianity in mid-career, Poplin sheds light on the role of one’s vocational
identity and her motivation for working in a difficult context. Finally, through his
success as a conservative voice in the midst of the liberal elite, Robert George
demonstrates the power of a transformative ethical stance.

Yet, while certain mini-themes will manifest themselves within the individual
lives, there still remains the possibility of meta-themes that are shared by all three. There
will be strands weaving in and out of each story that begin to form patterns and help us to
see a more colorful and instructive image of faculty life in general and the career of a

Christian scholar in particular. We will learn lessons that can teach us all.

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Portraits and Conversations

When Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994) presents her portraits of successful African-
Americans, she seeks more than an authentic rendering of African-American privilege.
She is searching for an accurate self-portrait, for, as she uncovers the layers of these six
journeys, she ultimately is making known her own life story.

I, too, write as an insider. My story is intertwined throughout the three you will
read in these pages. Woven throughout these lives are themes I have contemplated as a
Christian graduate student and now as a faculty member. This closeness to the topic and
personal investment in the outcome will, I hope, bring an urgency and seriousness to the
project and a balanced and authentic treatment of the subject.

When Henry Gates (1997) introduces his book about the modern American “black
man” and the seven celebrities he profiles, he refuses to label them as portraits, but rather
calls them “a series of conversations, unresolved and unconcluded” (p. xxvii). Long after
Gates turned off his tape recorder and finished typing his own recollections of the lives he
had observed, the conversation continues every time a new reader picks up Gates’ work
and interprets those lives through the lens of his or her own experience.

This study about the life of a Christian scholar is more than a series of portraits,
more than a group of four voices, when I include my own. This project actually involves
five stories as you, the reader, interpret the following narratives from your own pre-
understandings. As Gates so eloquently reminds those of us who read biography, “Listen,
and you will hear all the tensions and uncertainties and ambivalences that shaped [the

subjects], that shaped me, and that - just maybe - shaped you, too” (p. xxvii).

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CHAPTER TWO

GOD AS RIVAL

Studying the Relationship of Science and Religion Through a Disciplinary Lens
Michael Behe, Professor of Biochemistry, Lehigh University

Charles Darwin didn ’t want to murder God, as he once put it. But he did. (Time, 1999)

Item

Describing a recent conference in Sweden of some of the leading physicists and
cosmologists of the twentieth century, science journalist John Horgan (1996) relates the
following scene:

Toward the end of the meeting . . . [the] cosmologists piled into a bus and

drove to a nearby village to hear a concert. When they entered the

Lutheran church where the concert was to be held, it was already filled.

The orchestra . . .was already seated at the front of the church. Their

neighbors jammed the balconies and the seats at the rear of the church. As

the scientists filed down the center aisle to the pews at the front reserved

for them, [Stephen] Hawking leading the way in his motorized wheelchair,

the townspeople started to clap, tentatively at first, then passionately, for

almost a full minute. The symbolism was perfect: for this moment, at

least, in this place and for these people, science had usurped the role of

religion as the source of truth about the universe. (p. 97)

Such is the intertwined and contested relationship between religion and a century
of emerging scientific exploration. In a series of editorials reflecting on the major events
of the past millennium, the editors of The New York Times wrote an article entitled “New

Directions in the March of Science” in the twentieth century (1999). Calling the swift

pace of change in science and technology in the last 500 years “overwhelming,” the

37

editors hailed science as the “dominant intellectual force, displacing religion and
philosophy as the chief explanation of the natural world” (p. 14).

Tellingly, they did not stop with science’s domination of nature as the editorial
ends with the authors’ plea for science to be careful of its priorities and “concentrate on
human welfare and quell the urge to produce gerrnonic weapons” (p. 14). Not only have
they placed the world of natural laws on the shoulders of science, but they also have
empowered scientists to police their own ethical boundaries.

Horgan (1996) echoes the Times’s accolade of science:

The power of science cannot be denied: it has given us computers and jets,

vaccines and thermonuclear bombs, technologies that, for better or worse,

have altered the course of history. Science, more than any other mode of

knowledge — literary criticism, philosophy, and religion - yields durable

insights into the nature of things. It gets us somewhere. (p. 4)

Yet, even as editors, authors, and scientists are trumpeting the triumph of the
scientific method as me means to understand reality, other scholars wonder what place
disciplines like philosophy and theology have in the search for truth. More specifically,
when the study of physics bleeds over into the study of metaphysics, how are science and
religion to relate? Are they “competing ways of thinking” (Gilbert, 1997, p. 9), or do the
scientific and theological methods exist in a “cousinly relationship” (Polkinghome, 1998,
p. xii)?

Two hundred years ago, scholars considered science and religion partners in the
common quest for understanding, as science and philosophy were often described as

“handmaidens” of theology. Then, with the advent of the Enlightenment and Darwinism,

a pluralistic (even pugilistic) language was adopted with the publishing of books like The

38

History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (J. W. Draper, 1875) and A History
of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom (White, 1876).

Today, a reexamination of this relationship gains momentum. Newsweek’s recent
cover (Begley, 1998) announces the revelation: “Science Finds God.” And reporters in
the Chronicle of Higher Education ask, “Can Science and Theology Find Common
Ground?” (Kiernan, 1999). “T he intersection of religion and science is a topic gaining
increased currency” (Kiernan, 1999, p. A17) as the academic world wonders whether
scientists and theologians can - and should - learn from each other.

Maybe this surge of interest should not be so surprising because both science and
religion address the most basic questions we ask about life and reality. As cultural
historian James Gilbert (1997) summarizes:

It is apparent that the dialogue between science and religion in America

expresses essential ideas and deep-seated structures of culture. It reveals

a theological problem and a profound concern of philosophy; it also

shapes a significant portion of everyday popular culture. It provides

categories for thinking about modern existence: to structure the world as

divided between science and religion, or to imagine it united with their

convergence. (p. 322)

For researchers of American higher education, the dialogue (or competing
monologues) between science and theology provides a unique angle for the study of
faculty and the influence of the disciplines within their lives and work. How do the
respective disciplines relate to each other? How do they maintain their own intellectual
and social boundaries? And how much control do the disciplines exert over their

individual faculty members? The life and career of Michael Behe, professor of

biochemistry at Lehigh University, will give insight into how these issues affect one

39

faculty member who has both a tremendous stake in the study of science and a passionate

attachment to religion.

Disciplines: The “Inner Faith” of Faculty

To understand Mike Behe’s story, one must first understand the landscape and the
culture in which it unfolds. To get beyond the surface and study the inner life of a
professor requires a study of his or her academic specialty because the culture of the
disciplines has become the “central source for a faculty member’s identity”(Austin, 1990,
p. 64). Burton Clark (1987), a long-time student of American higher education, has
written that the disciplines serve as the “primary units of scholarship and identification
within the academic profession” (p. 7). Also labeled the “basic organizational element”
in the American university, the disciplines remain a “major cultural force affecting faculty
today” (Austin, 1990, p. 63).

Certainly, changing views of knowledge have had their effect on individual
faculty members. In certain disciplines, postmodernism’s entrance into the academy has
altered epistemological boundaries (Rosenau, 1992), and concern over “disciplinary
parochialism” (Welland, 1995, p. 266) has pushed some educators to a de-emphasis of the
disciplinary citizenship of faculty. Yet, disciplinary identity “will probably never be
abandoned” (p. 288) because, once internalized by faculty, the discipline becomes what
Burton Clark (1987) has called an “inner faith” that guides their academic vocation.

A discipline’s controlling presence begins with the socialization process of
students in graduate school, where future professors learn the language, rhetorical style,

folklore, traditions, and artifacts of their disciplinary culture. This influence increases

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with time as the discipline enculturates the work habits and rituals common to the
respective field of study. Ultimately, academic fields can control the trajectory of a career
because faculty reward systems are so dependent on publication channels which are
refereed by the disciplinary brethren.

British scholar Tony Becher (1989) has taken a thorough look at the influence of
disciplines within faculty lives and careers. Trying to avoid generalizations, he has used a
grounded study of more than 200 faculty from across 12 disciplines and 2 continents to
research the interconnectedness between the nature of disciplines and academic culture.

His work has provided a helpful theoretical lens through which to view this often-
complicated interaction. According to Becher, academic specialties carry out a two-fold
role as they not only impose intellectual order through their epistemological function, but
also they impart a social order through their institutional capacity. These two roles fit
“hand-in-glove” as the “ideals and practices of academic communities are intimately
bound up with the nature of the knowledge they pursue” (p. 169). Even Becher’s title,
Academic Tribes and Territories, reinforces his frame, for the “ways in which particular
groups of acadenrics organize their professional lives (social tribes) are intimately related
to the intellectual tasks on which they are engaged (epistemological territories)” (p. 1).

Thus, the often-tempestuous relationship between religion and the scientific
disciplines, specifically the hard sciences, becomes a compelling context for considering
the degree to which a discipline can influence or even control an individual faculty
member, both socially and epistemologically. Becher’s particular viewpoint provides an
appropriate lens to look at the unique tensions faced by faculty caught on the firing lines

in the battle between science and religion. More to the point, following the life and

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career of a distinctly Christian scientist, Mike Behe, will provide a rich resource for
studying faculty careers, disciplinary culture, and the unique pressure placed on a person
with religious convictions who happens to work within a discipline that is often “allergic”

to the supernatural.

Any Room at the Inn?

In fall 1996, Pope John Paul H released a document stating that evolution was
“more than a hypothesis” and that scientists should feel free to investigate the theory as
long as they remembered the soul is still a direct creation of God. Seeking a qualified
person to comment on the Pope’s controversial position, the editors of The New York
Times contacted Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University, who not only is a scientist
teaching biological issues at a major university but also is a lifelong, practicing Roman
Catholic. The Times published his response in an editorial on October 25 the same year
(Behe, 1996a).

In his 1000-word essay, Dr. Behe states that the popular argument about the
theory of evolution is more than an evaluation of the scientific data. Rather, the central
question is the working relationship between the disciplines of the hard sciences and
religion. The Vatican’s statement had stunned many in the media who had assumed
religion had no time for scientifically produced ideas like evolution. Behe turns that
misleading assumption around by asking how much time science actually has for
religiously fueled ideas like an intelligent Designer.

Commenting on the Pope’s endorsement of theistic evolution, Behe makes it clear

that this is “old news” to a Roman Catholic scientist who had been taught throughout

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parochial school that God could use evolution’s natural processes to produce life.
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, religion has made room for science for a long time.”
Since the time of Darwin there have existed theologians who have adapted their
interpretation of Genesis to fit what they perceived to be the scientific evidence. In
contemporary academic culture, religious accommodation of science is not necessarily the
problem. Rather, the tension, according to Professor Behe, is found in science’s disregard
for any evidence pointing to the supernatural. Or, as he so starkedly asks, “As biology
uncovers startling complexity in life, the question becomes, can science make room for
religion?”

Can science make room for religion? This question forms a central vocational
tension for any Christian scholar working within the scientific disciplines today. In the
nineteenth century, the immediate reaction to Darwin and Origin of Species was to ask
how religion could ever make room for evolutionary science. In popular American
culture and education, the question simmered until exploding on the national scene during
the Scopes Trail of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. And while the controversy continues in
American politics (i.e., The Kansas state school board’s decision to exclude evolution
from state proficiency tests in summer of 1999), the scientific community has long since
made its decision.

Can science make room for religion? Since the day Mike Behe, as a young
assistant professor of biochemistry at Lehigh, sat in his office reading scientific journals
and began to notice a repeated use of evolutionary theory to support agnostic beliefs, this
question of religion’s place within science has been the burning issue within his

professional life. He had long ago adapted his theological beliefs, without any argument,

43

to accommodate prevailing scientific wisdom. Now, he was startled to discover his
chosen discipline had no inclination to give his religious beliefs even a hearing. If he
wanted to participate in the ongoing theoretical discussions within science and
biochemistry, he was expected to leave his theological assumptions at the door because
they were construed as something less valid and less valued than “pure” naturalistic,
scientific arguments. Behe resisted this externally imposed condition upon his vocation
and has continued to resist it until this day. It is this defiant stance that, in his own words,
has “provoked [him] to stake out a distinctly minority view among scientists” and earned
him the widespread reputation (“for good or ill”) he possesses today.

Can science make room for religion? A faculty career built to answer this
question has the potential to inform us about the current relationship between science and
religion within academia. A faculty life focused on this issue can teach us about the true
influence of the disciplines on American higher education and faculty careers. And
finally, a narrative that traces one faculty person’s principled journey to demand an
answer from the scientific establishment dramatically reveals the particular tensions

Christian faculty face in a secular academy.

Ov i w

In the following narrative, we will begin by getting to know Michael Behe the
person through a brief biographical sketch highlighting formative influences in his life
and career, as well as his influential position in today’s cunent debate between science
and religion. Then, I will recount a recent presentation he made at Ohio State University

to gain some understanding of his argument for irreducible complexity and intelligent

design. In the second major section of the narrative I will trace his religious, intellectual,
and career development, which has brought him to his current front-line stance. Finally, I
will reflect on particular disciplinary themes recurring in Behe’s life that reveal the
pressing tensions he feels as a Christian scientist.

By viewing Professor Behe’s life as a religious scientist through a disciplinary
lens, emphasizing the social pressures and intellectual boundaries of his chosen academic
community, and placing that narrative up against the backdrop of the intellectual battle
between science and religion, certain questions and themes will begin to surface. These
questions and their answers will provide us with an intellectual thread with which to

weave a portrait of a Christian working within the twenty-first century academy.

Working on the Edge

Michael Behe’s office sits at the end of a narrow winding road on one of eastern
Pennsylvania’s foothills at the Mountaintop Campus of Lehigh University. In topography
that resembles a state park more than a modern university campus, research facilities
appear almost out of nowhere amidst the densely wooden terrain. The only landmark
hinting at the true identity of the property would be a piece of modern art guarding the
entrance to the campus. Consisting of three 10-foot-high metal balls resting precariously
atop each other, this postmodern snowman suggests the presence of intellectual activities
more complicated than choosing an ideal campsite.

As a school whose reputation rests primarily on its engineering program, Lehigh’s
naming of Iacocca Hall reminds visitors of the school’s most famous alumnus. Within

this huge, modern complex Michael Behe plies his trade. As a professor of biochemistry,

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it is not surprising to find his office amidst a catacomb of chemistry labs. An article
hanging prominently by the door to his neat, sterile office announces a feat accomplished
by two of Behe’s eight children. “Amazon.com” had sponsored a children’s invention
contest and his two oldest kids were among in the t0p 40 prize winners. Evidently, the
scientific genes run deep in this family.

Dressed casually in jeans, loafers, and green polo shirt, Behe seems much more
comfortable in a white lab coat than in a suit and tie. He speaks softly and thoughtfully,
responding to questions gingerly and without a hint of the serrnonic. Yet, as he begins to
comment on a topic he feels passionately about, Behe’s words begin to leave his mouth
with increasing speed. While his tone belies deep thought and reflection, Behe’s kinetic
body movement complete with moving hands, elbows and knees beneath the voice
reveals an energetic approach to life that stimulates a deep curiosity to get beyond surface
issues.

Dr. Behe’s office reveals three immediate impressions: One, he loves his family;
two, he has an orderly approach to life; and three, he is proud of his influential voice for
intelligent design. His office walls immediately reveal his place on the front lines of
today’s battles between science and theology in general and his important place in the
debate over intelligent design in particular.

To the side of his computer hangs a large poster replicating the jacket cover for
his 1995 best-selling book, Darwin ’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution, as well as a copy of The New York Times’ best seller list, which displays Black
Box in the top 20 nonfiction titles for that respective week. And directly above his work

desk hangs one of two recent op-ed pieces he has written for the Times.

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The Evolution of a Scientist

A professor since 1985 in the Department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh
University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Mike Behe has “liked science” since he was a
child growing up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His father was an educated man with a
degree in Business Administration. The first in his family to go to college, the elder Behe
worked his whole career in a loan company. Behe, along with his seven siblings was
encouraged to do well in school, but there was no undue pressure to excel or make
academia a career. As he describes his home life, “We didn’t have pictures of Einstein on
the wall or anything like that.” Nevertheless, describing himself as a “science enthusiast”
(Woodward, 1997, p. 8), Behe excelled in school, graduating in the top 10 of his high
school class as well as being elected senior class president.

He left home at 18 to attend Drexel University in Philadelphia where he majored
in chemistry. Having graduated from Drexel in 1974, Behe “went across the street” to the
University of Pennsylvania for his graduate education, eventually earning a Ph.D. in
biochemistry in spring 1978. His dissertation research focused on “the mechanism of
aggregation for sickle cell hemoglobin.”

After spending four years doing postdoctoral work at the Institute of Health in
Bethesda, Maryland, he received his first academic appointment at Queens College in
New York City, where the highlight of his tenure was his introduction to a bright,
attractive young woman named Celeste who, like Behe, had grown up in an Italian

Catholic family. After dating for three months, they were engaged and married the

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following year. Wanting to raise their family in a more rural setting, the young Behe took
a position at Lehigh in 1985, where he received tenure two years later.

The Behes have eight children, ranging in age from 2 years of age to 16. They
have an active household with an emphasis on learning and fun. Mrs. Behe home schools
the school-age kids, and their extracurricular activities include piano, karate, and singing
in the church choir. They traded in the television a number of years ago for an extensive
collection of children’s books and classics. When Dad comes home from the office or the
lab, he joins in on the fun and games. You might find him playing frisbee on the front
lawn with the older children or reading to the younger ones in their reading room.

Behe’s love of his family and extensive time with them results in numerous
“homey” illustrations that appear throughout his writings and lectures. He may use
Tinkertoys to describe how organic molecules are built or use his daughter’s toy wagon to
explain how the human body’s antibodies fight off infectious invaders. Obviously, his
family has affected the rhetorical manner in which he communicates his message.

Maybe the most intriguing clue to the intersection between Behe’s love of family
and his contentious position within his discipline comes from a hand-drawn card on a
wall of his small office. The color illustration represents his oldest daughter’s depiction
of a trial between proponents of intelligent design theory and followers of Darwinian
evolution. Two attorneys stand before a judge’s bench. Richard Dawkins, an arch
proponent of Darwin and natural selection, acts as one attorney, while the earth itself
represents the other side. The judge, whom she has labeled “science,” asks the earth:
“Mr. Earth, do you have mot” that what Mr. Dawkins is telling you is not tflg?” Inside

the card is “Mr. Earth’s” response: a replica of Black Box’s cover jacket.

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An Immrtant Voice in an Ongoing Debate

Behe’s daughter’s cartoon illustrates the unique position in which Behe now finds
himself. He’s caught in the middle of a debate between Darwinian theory and intelligent
design that has gone on for decades, and an even bigger argument over the relationship
between science and religion that has lasted for centuries.

Science and religion have possessed a long-standing, but often contrary
relationship throughout intellectual history. Through the work of scientists like Galileo,
Newton, and Bacon (all avowedly religious), science was able to connect God’s world
with God’s Word (Scripture) and thus be considered a “handmaiden” to theology.

As late as the nineteenth century, established through Scottish Common Sense
philosophy, the Baconian inductive method, and the argument from divine design,
intellectuals perceived science as consistent with the biblical account of creation and
history. Science and religion were seen as “siblings - feeding off and sparring with each
other” (K. L. Woodward, 1998, p. 52). Scientists and theologians could pursue parallel
and complementary paths of discovery and be assured of reaching the same doxological
destination.

After the Enlightenment, as reason began to replace revelation as the source for
understanding, science and religion began to “drift into separate ideological camps” (K.
L. Woodward, 1998, p. 52). And with the advent of Darwin in the nineteenth century, the
two “camps” established increasingly irreconcilable positions. Science began to explain

God and not the other way around. As science became more and more fixed on purely

49

natural and material causation, God was demoted into a “God of the gaps” who inhabited
“whatever dark corner science had not yet brought to rational light” (p. 52).

The twentieth century eventually brought an end to this “search for concordance”
(Gilbert, 1997, p. 8) between science and religion as science became more secularized
and connected to the prosperity and security of America. An increased reliance on an
ateological evolutionary thesis, combined with the re-emergence of religious
fundamentalism and its tendency to reduce religion to issues of salvation and morals,
caused scientists to regard religion as inelevant to their intellectual pursuits. As the
advent of Sputnik forced the country to be serious about science, “the scientific
community pointed out that getting serious about science included getting serious about
evolution” (Tourney, 1994, p. 8).

Darwinism and its late-nineteenth-century scientific revolution stand as prime
examples of how science and religion evolved from compatible pursuits into
contradictory methodologies. “Like many great ideas,” Darwin’s theory is “elegantly
simple” (Behe, 1996b, p. 3). First, Darwin suggested that there is more life produced in a
geographical area than there is food to support it. Second, no two living organisms are
alike, and this random variation is transmitted through heredity. Third, as these
organisms struggle for existence, their differences give some an advantage over others.
Finally, the “winner” transmits these advantages by heredity and will over time create a
whole new species.

What set Darwin apart was not his theory of evolution, which echoed the work of
earlier nineteenth-century evolutionists such as Lamarch and Chambers. What

distinguished Darwin as a revolutionary was his method. His naturalistic approach

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regarded science as man’s only legitimate means to interpret reality and began what some
have called “the main source of agnosticism in the nineteenth century” (Greene, 1981, p.
153). Darwin’s theory of natural selection contradicted religion’s teological design of
nature as evidence for the existence of a loving and sovereign God and challenged the
Christian world view by positing that “beneficial variation was random and natural
selection was cruel” (Larson, 1997, p. 17).

Citing natural selection as the mechanism for humanity’s descent directly
contradicted the biblical account of creation. Not only did Darwin challenge the age of
the earth (which many theologians were able to reconcile to the biblical account in
Genesis), but also, more important, his theory of a common ancestor for all living
organisms had devastating implications for the core Christian tenet: that man, being
created in the “image of God,” stood as the centerpiece of all creation. “If humans were
not the center of the universe, then they had, in their hubris, constructed a complex
mythology to justify the ransom of nature and ward off the night of self-doubt” (Gilbert,
1997,p.9)

Such long-lasting implications of Darwin’s views were forecast soon after
publication of Origin. One reviewer of Darwin’s 1871 follow-up volume, The Descent of
Man, worried in the Edinburgh Review that “if these views be true, a revolutionary
thought is immanent, which will shake society to its very foundation by destroying the
sanctity of the conscience and the religious sense” (as cited in Wright, 1994, p. 328). As

Iohn Horgan (1996) comments, by the end of the nineteenth century such prophecies had

b6en fulfilled and Nietzsche had proclaimed, “God is dead.”

51

Even philosophers of science (Kuhn, 1970) have attributed Darwin’s
revolutionary idea to his focus on natural processes rather than to his work on evolution.
Darwin’s natural and undirected process of variation directly contradicted the “Newtonian
model” which explained nature’s laws through the prism of a benevolent and omnipotent
Creator. A good God would seek to ensure that all created organisms could survive and a
powerful God would not be subject to the whim and variation of chance. “The spirit of
the scientific method initiated by Bacon and Newton had reached its ruition with
Darwinian theory” (Wilkins, 1987, p. 32).

Thus, the Evangelical response to Darwin and his compatriots was not based
solely on evolution, for evolutionary theories had existed for some time. Nor was this
anti-Darwin sentiment directed to Darwin’s denial of a literal interpretation of Genesis
because nineteenth-century geologists had argued for a much older earth for almost a
century. Rather, Evangelicals were disturbed by Darwin’s ateological view of history, his
philosophical materialism and anti-supematural tendencies, and his dethroning of man as
the centerpiece of creation. Evangelical theologians like Princeton seminary professor
Charles Hodge (1874), accused Darwin of out and out atheism: “It (Darwinism) is
atheism [and] utterly inconsistent with the Scripture . . . [a] denial of design in nature is
virtually the denial of God” (p. 173).

The centrality of Darwin’s thesis to the debate between science and religion
continues today. Called by the London Times the “Newton of biology” at the centennial
of Origin’s publication, Charles Darwin and his theory of natural evolution continue to
retain a “central organizing status in biological studies” (Wilkins, 1987, p. 13). In a

recent issue of the New York Times Book Review, John Durant (1999) claimed that

52

Darwin “has never been more popular than today” and that, more than 100 years after his
death, “he is widely revered as the greatest biological genius since Aristotle” (p. 28).

Darwin’s answer for the wide diversity of life on earth remains “the” answer in
the scientific and popular literature. Daniel Dennett (1995) argues in Darwin ’s
Dangerous Idea that evolution via natural selection is “the single best idea anyone has
ever had,” and Behe (1996) writes “there is nothing-mo organ or idea, no sense or
thought-~that has not been the subject of evolutionary rumination” (p. 4).

Today, Darwin’s influence extends far beyond biology as some writers (Wilkins,
1987) refer to a “modern synthesis” in which Darwinian theory serves as the “core”
around which all other sciences are interpreted. From geology to behavioral psychology,
many sciences are linked by “the continuous thread of evolution by natural selection” (p.

25).

Making His Case

The auditorium on the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio,
is packed with more than 500 people including university students, faculty, and outside
guests. They have come to attend a panel discussion hosted by the Veritas Forum
carrying the ponderous title, “Exploring the Implications of the Frontier Findings of
Science and the Religious Significance of Scientific Knowledge.” The Veritas Forum is a
Christian organization of faculty and students started at Harvard and now located on
various university campuses across the US. The forum’s goal is to provide “a place to

discuss issues of truth and faith within the university.”

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Behe is the featured speaker of the evening. Along with a panel of respondents,
he will be discussing the viability of his attack on Darwinian theory as espoused in his
book, Darwin ’s Black Box. Behe shares the scarlet-clothed dais with two theologians,
one from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis and the other from the Lutheran
School of Theology in Chicago. A philosophy professor from Ohio State serves as the
master of ceremonies for the evening’s proceedings.

As the first presenter, Behe takes center stage behind the smallish, wooden
podium emblazoned with the red and white crest of the Veritas Forum. He has his work
cut out for him. First, he is facing an audience of complete strangers, many of whom are
present only to see him get his intellectual comeuppance for daring to challenge a sacred
theory like Darwinism. For the professional scientists in the crowd, Darwinian evolution
and natural selection have served as foundational tenets in their own work as scientists.
For the students, Darwin has provided one of the basic theories used in their studies as
they prepare for a life in science.

A second obstacle facing the speaker is his time limitations. He has only 15
minutes to explain a complex scientific argument that has taken him more than 300 pages
to present in Black Box. And this explanation has to be simple enough to communicate at
the level of the scientific laymen in the group, as well as deep enough to anticipate the
objections of the experts in the crowd.

As a scientist and as a communicator, Behe has the ability to simplify complicated
t0pics without sounding condescending. He speaks with a concise rhetorical style and a
Vocabulary free of scientific jargon. Even when forced to explain complex biochemical

Systems, Behe uses everyday analogies. With Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes cartoons

54

as illustrations and transitions, humor becomes a tool to keep his audience’s attention, as
well as a means to put them at case. And maybe most strategically, he is able, potentially,
to disarm even his toughest critic with sly, self-deprecating bits of humor.

Dressed in a navy blue suit, starched white shirt, and red tie with white stripes,
this average-sized biochemist with thinning hair presents a distinguished yet non-
threatening pose before his audience. He will spend the first half of his 15 nrinutes
outlining his basic argument for irreducible complexity and intelligent design, and then
take the last part of his allotted time to answer some of his critics.

Behe jumps right into the core of his argument. Following the line of reasoning
he uses in Black Box, he begins by putting up a transparency with a direct quote from the
man himself, Charles Darwin (1872):

If it can be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not

possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications,

my theory would absolutely break down. (p. 151)

For Darwin, natural selection required gradualism because any change that happened too
quickly sounded suspiciously miraculous or supernatural. Behe then proceeds to attempt
to hang Darwin with his own noose.

If there existed a system or organism with a number of discrete, interacting parts,
the removal of any of which, would cause the total breakdown of the machine, then it
would be impossible, Behe suggests, for that system or organism to evolve gradually.
Behe calls that type of organism, system, or machine “irreducibly complex.” He
describes irreducible complexity as a “fancy phrase which I made up to make people
think that I’m smart” but says the phrase actually describes “a pretty simple concept.”

And, Behe adds, if such a machine exists in the natural world, then natural selection

55

would be found wanting. This would then become a “big headache” for Darwinian
science because natural selection is the “engine” that drives the rest of his theory of
origins.

Having sufficiently baited the intellectual hook, Behe now begins to reel in his
audience by giving three examples of irreducibly complex machines, one man-made and
two from nature. With what some have referred to as “his characteristically impish grin”
(Woodward, 1997, p. 3) appearing through his beard, Behe now puts up another
transparency containing the pencil drawing of a simple mousetrap. In what has become
his “pedagogic paradigm of irreducible complexity” (Shapiro, 1996), he uses this
everyday household item to simplify for his audience a sometimes difficult concept.

An average mousetrap has five essential parts, including a wooden platform, a
spring, and a hammer, among others. For a mousetrap to function, all five parts are
necessary. One of the five by itself or even four of the five could not effectively catch
mice. How then could a mousetrap evolve through natural selection? Could a wooden
platform catch a few mice? And with the addition of a spring, could it catch more mice,
and so on? Of course not; all five parts need to be present before the machine can
perform its intended function. A mousetrap is “irreducibly complex.”

Having explained the concept with an example from the mechanical world, Behe
now poses a rhetorical question: “Are there any examples of irreducible complexity
within the biological world?” He answers immediately, “Yes, tons of them.” At this
point in his talk, Michael Behe, Ph.D. in biochemistry, emerges to give his class a hunied
journey into the universe of biochemical systems. He gives us two examples, complete

with transparencies, in fewer than four minutes.

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For the second example, the bacterial flagellum, Behe uses another analogy easily
identifiable by his audience: an outboard motor. Flagellum serve as the outboard motors
that bacteria use to swim through liquid. These microscopic transportation devices
contain parts similar to the machine that might transport your boat: a propeller, drive
shaft, rotor, and so on. More than 40 proteins are required for the bacterial flagellum to
operate. Without all of these parts interacting, the flagellum would cease to function.
Thus, it becomes difficult to explain this biochemical system in Darwinian terms.

At this point, Behe pauses and admits that what he has just communicated is not
necessarily new or controversial. Other scientists, including Lynn Margulis,
Distinguished University Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, have
also cited such weaknesses in Darwinian theory. She writes that the “proponents of
standard evolutionary theory cannot name a single unambiguous example of the
formation of a new species by the accumulation of mutation” (as cited in Mann, 1991, p.
378). Other renowned scholars such as Steven J. Gould of Harvard have tried to account
for the lack of evidence by positing other theories such as “punctuated equilibrium,”
where the development of species came in rapid and concentrated populations which then
make it difficult to find evidence in the fossil record (Gould, 1992).

What makes discussion about Behe’s argument so heated is what he does next.
He offers an alternative explanation to Darwin: “If you look at this [the evidence from
biochemical systems], they look like they were purposefully designed by an intelligent
agent.” Not only has he offered an alternative to Darwin, his alternative is one that many

scientists consider to be nothing more than religious ideas disguised as science.

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Behe then spends the last seven and a half minutes allotted to him to address this
dominant critique. He dryly notes that his argument for intelligent design has attracted “a
bit of attention.” As the audience knowingly chuckles, he then lays out what he perceives
to be the primary line of argument for many of his critics through the use of droll,
hyperbolic role playing:

You know, this Behe fellow is a known Christian. He has been seen

entering and leaving church. Therefore, the idea of irreducible complexity

is a religious idea. It is not a scientific one and [he’s] letting [his] religion

interfere with his scientific work.

Behe has hit at the heart of the historic, epistemological skirmish between science
and religion. He is once again asking in clear terms whether science can make room for
religious ideas even if those ideas are the consequence of scientific investigation.

Behe “appreciates” the concern of his yet unnamed critics, but he is in total
disagreement with their premise. He defends his idea of irreducible complexity and
postulation of intelligent design as “completely empirical,” based “totally on the physical
evidence.” In other words, his argument is a scientific one that may have theological
implications. For a quick demonstration, he puts up another transparency with a Far Side
cartoon. A troop of explorers are walking through the jungle, and the lead explorer has
been strung up and skewered for all to see. The guy who is next-to—last in line turns to
the fellow behind him and says, “See, that’s why I never walk in front.” After the
audience laughs at the joke, Behe asks them if they thought the cartoon had been
designed. If so, how do they know? Was this a religious conclusion or an empirical one?

Behe then displays for the audience some of the wide-ranging reactions his book

and argument have provoked. He puts up a list of the various publications that have

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reviewed Black Box including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post
and the Allentown Morning Call, Behe’s hometown newspaper. He then quotes some of
the reviewers’ opinions that more or less agreed with Behe’s biological premise, the
concept of irreducible complexity, and pointed out the difficulty Darwinian theories had
in explaining the existence of such complex biological systems.

Behe then shows another page of quotations from reviewers who regard his
conclusion of intelligent design with utter skepticism. He suggests that these critiques are
not necessarily scientific ones but rather philosophical and even aesthetic objections.
Why, he wonders, is this the case? He answers his own question with another cartoon, 3
red “no crossing symbol” superimposed on the outline of a white ghost, a replica of the
trademark from the old “Ghostbusters” movie. As Behe explains in Black Box, many
scientists “just don’t want there to be anything beyond nature. . . In other words, like
young earth creationists, they bring an a priori commitment to their science that restricts
what kinds of explanations they will accept about the physical world” (p. 243).

Many scientists are uncomfortable with the argument for intelligent design
because they are uncomfortable with religion, whereas others think religion and science
need to be kept in separate intellectual categories. Behe admits he does not know how to
answer the first group, but he ends his presentation with an answer for those in the second
category.

Using the illustration of the “Big Bang” theory, he shows how a good scientific
theory can have philosophical and theological ramifications. Reading from a 1989

editorial in Nature, Behe demonstrates that some in the scientific community objected 10

years ago to the Big Bang as an accurate description of the universe’s origins because

59

 

some theologians were using it as a description of Genesis’ account of a created universe.
The editor wrote, “Creationists and those of similar persuasion seeking support of their
opinion have ample proof in the doctrine of the Big Bang”(Maddox, 1989). Maybe that
is why the editorial had the following subheading: “Apart from being philosophically
unacceptable, the Big Bang is an oversimplified view of how the universe began.”
Although Behe leaves the debate concerning the Big Bang’s validity as a scientific
argument to the physicists, he uses the example to demonstrate how the discussion of
irreducible complexity and origins needs to be a scientific one as “we follow the
investigation wherever it leads,” regardless of the theological implications. With this

final plea, the professor thanks his audience for their attention and sits down.

The Unlikely Crusader

Whether talking about his career path or his stance as a scholar/scientist, Michael
Behe does not currently reside where he once begun. Referring to the trajectory of his
own career as “strange,” “absurd,” and “utterly amazing,” Behe never would have
imagined back at the University of Pennsylvania chemistry laboratory that his career
would lead him to his current hi gh-profile position in an often contentious debate. The
only way to understand the evolution of Behe’s scholarly life is to examine both his

religious and academic journeys.

Religious J Qumey
Influential physicist Richard Feynman ( 1998) has described the core intellectual

stance of a scientist as one of doubt. According to Feynman, when one does science

PI‘Operly, “It is necessary to doubt [and] it is valuable to doubt” (p. 35). His bold

60

 

proclamation is supported by a cursory examination of scientific revolutions down
through the centuries. From Aristotle to Newton and then from Bacon to Einstein,
scientists who have succeeded in challenging long-held beliefs concerning the cosmos
have been those scientists who felt no obligation to cling to the traditional dogma about
nature. Therefore, they were free to doubt their way to new and more accurate ways of
describing our world. Without doubt, scientists have no freedom or impetus for
discovery.

Behe presents, at times, a paradox in doubt. As a biochemist his doubts about
Watson and Crick’s research into DNA have guided his own study of the various
structural forms found in DNA besides the double helix. As a questioner of the adequacy
of Darwin’s model to describe life’s origins, Behe’s doubts have freed him to confront
directly some of the most fundamental doctrines of science. Yet, as a Roman Catholic,
Behe expresses few, if any, doubts within his own theological world view, declaring,
“I’ve always believed in God.”

At least a third-generation Christian, Behe was born to “devout” Roman Catholic
parents who themselves had grown up in Catholic homes. He attended parochial school
through the twelfth grade. And, although he acknowledges a “drift(ing) away” during his
four undergraduate years at Drexel, Behe remains to this day a committed religious
person: “I’ve always been a Roman Catholic.” Jokingly, he expresses regret that he lacks
the dramatic conversion story of his Protestant Evangelical acquaintances.

Although Behe does present his own religious development as almost doubt-free,
he does express being “disturbed” as he faced various atheistic arguments against

Christianity for the first time during his college days. “I might have wondered how to

61

justify things,” he says, but goes on to clarify, “I don’t think I ever doubted that God
existed or that Christ was who he said he is.” He even describes the brief phase of
religious disinterest in college as an issue of “neglect” rather than a genuine crisis of faith.
“Religious concerns were not very prominent in the fraternity . . . . [Our main question in
life was] ‘Where is the party tonight?”’ Why would a man whose profession requires a
skeptical mind and whose present notoriety has been achieved through unyielding
questioning of scientific doctrines be so conditioned to accept without question a

tradition-bound faith in God?

Sugprised by the Silence

For a man who apparently enjoys his frontline position in an often contentious
debate, Behe describes an educational and intellectual journey that, for the longest time,
gave little thought to possible conflicts between his academic discipline and religious
beliefs. From his own testimony, the idea that Darwin and Genesis might be difficult to
synthesize intellectually did not enter his mind until he was well into his first academic
appointment.

Although Behe has admitted to the lack of sudden transformation in his religious
life, when he begins to describe his intellectual journey away from Darwinian theory and
toward intelligent design, the story has a striking resemblance to a conversion experience.
His education left him “in the dar ” and unaware of possible alternatives to the received
explanation of life’s beginnings: Darwinian evolution via natural selection. Even in

parochial school, “Nobody had anything against evolution . . . we assumed that . . . God

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can make life however He wants to. And if He wants to make it by evolution, well, who
are we to question Him?”

Not until his tenure as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of
Health did Behe begin to question the scientific establishment’s orthodox story. He
shared a lab with another “postdoc” student named Joann Nicholls, who also happened to
be Roman Catholic. One day they were chatting and the issue of origins arose. He
recounts the conversation: “Well, let’s see, what would we need to start an organism?
Well, you need DNA. You need protein, and you need a membrane. And you need an
energy system.” Giving each other incredulous looks, they responded in unison,
“Naaaaaah!” None of this would be possible without some type of Designer.

He slowly grew more uncomfortable with Darwin’s explanation and increasingly
skeptical of the scientific argument that he, his teachers, and fellow students had assumed
to be true. “It didn’t seem that [chemical] laws as we know them would be sufficient to
account for the origin of life.” Fueling his skepticism was Behe’s realization that people
were using Darwinian theory not only as a explanation for the origins of life but also as
an argument against the existence of God. As he began his career as a professional
biochemist, he began to pay more attention to the primary scientific literature outside his
narrow speciality and noticed scientists writing about evolution “couched in terms of . . .
God and religion.” They used Darwin to show “how it was possible to get life without
relying on or invoking a Creator.” These unnamed authors were challenging Behe’s
assumption of compatibility between science and religion. Before this, he “hadn’t given

much thought” to the ateological and materialist assumptions of Darwinian thought.

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Although he had always been able to compartmentalize his belief in God with an
acceptance of Darwinian evolution and thereby hold onto both, his reading of these
agnostic/atheistic Darwinists began to blur those artificial walls he had once erected.
These scientists and philosophers of science created cognitive dissonance for Behe, and
he grew increasingly antagonistic about the received scientific wisdom he had once
blindly accepted. “These folks were using it [Darwinian theory] as . . . an argument
against God [and] that starts to get under your skin . . . and you start to say to yourself,
‘This ain’t right.’”

What Behe used to see as a thoroughly viable explanation for life’s beginnings he
now perceived as “a stick to beat God with . . . and a belief in God with.” His science
and theology were in conflict, and he was slowly transformed from a passive proponent of
Darwinian theory into a crusading opponent of evolution’s atheistic presuppositions.

Behe’s recollections of this transformation are a bit hazy. But a few
serendipitous, yet seminal, intellectual encounters remain firmly’etched into his memory.

In the late 1980s he saw an advertisement in one of his science periodicals for a new book
by Michael Denton (1986), entitled Evolution: Theory in Crisis. Having become
Suspicious of evolution’s atheistic tendencies, Behe was now more receptive to arguments
against evolutionary theory itself.

He picked up Denton’s book and was impressed with the author’s scientific
arguments against natural selection. His previous association with anti-Darwinian
arguments had come from “young earth creationists” (one a former girlfriend) who
Offfired what Behe considered to be “naive” and “reductionist” arguments that were even

“Silly” at times as they questioned how an apple tree could ever evolve to the place where

 

it might also produce oranges. Denton was different. He was a professionally trained
scientist as well as a self-admitted agnostic who had no religiously fueled ulterior
motives. And he asked a Darwin type of question:

Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality,

the smallest element of which - a functional protein or gene - is complex

beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of

chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence

of man?

Denton confirmed for Behe his own theological discomfort with natural selection while
at the same time appealing to Behe’s scientific disposition. Denton allowed Behe to
follow his theological suspicions while staying true to his disciplinary methodology.

Denton’s thesis produced in Behe an astonished realization that Darwin’s
arguments were not as foolproof! as Behe had first been taught. And, even more
troubling, he became more and more aware of the utter silence in scientific circles
concerning Darwin’s weaknesses. He reflected on his education and training: “I was then
an associate professor at a remotely good school, and I had never heard of any [arguments
against Darwinian evolution].”

Along with the surprise he felt, Behe also experienced increased skepticism about
the sizable gap in his scientific and academic training. “I became suspicious that I was
being led down the primrose path and that my thoughts were being funneled in a
particular direction.” Skepticism grew into anger as he became convinced he “was being
misled--wasn’t being given the whole story.” The emotions began to alter his intellectual
curiosity. Even though evolutionary theory was not necessarily something his academic

specialty touched on, he became interested in the subject. His relationship to this

foundational theory within his academic discipline began to evolve from a stance of blind

65

acceptance to a position of active resistance. He began to explore the situation for

himself.

Taking Up the Mantle

Behe recounts his conscription into the battle over origins with descriptive phrases
like “just kind of falling into it” and “serendipitous.” Up to the point of his intellectual
discomfort with Darwin, he experienced a career much more concerned with the possible
structure of the human DNA than the veracity of Darwinian evolution and natural
selection as the foundation to biology and biochemical systems.

In July 1991, a couple of years after reading Denton’s book, Behe happened
across a recent edition of Science magazine in his departmental office at Lehigh.
Thumbing through the Table of Contents, he became intrigued to see that this influential
periodical within the scientific community canied a small review of Philip Johnson’s
(1991) new book, Darwin on Trial.

An avowed Christian, Philip Johnson was, at the time, a professor at Berkeley’s
Boalt Law School. Johnson was also the acknowledged leader of the “design
movement,” an interdisciplinary group of scholars “scattered in colleges and universities
from Seattle to Princeton, New Jersey,” whose stated mission is “to liberate science from
its shackles of naturalistic philosophy so that scientists who probe the origin of nature’s
wonders will have the freedom to consider all the possible explanations--including design
by an intelligent agent” (Woodward, 1997, p. 5). Johnson, through his vocation and
avocation, was a leader in the “fight” being waged over science and origins within

American academic and popular culture.

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He had spent a considerable amount of time and effort researching Darwinian
theory from a theistic perspective, and his new book was the result of these efforts.
Although writing from a different theological perspective, Johnson was building on the
arguments and objections first espoused by Denton and questioning the privileged
position currently accorded Darwin and his followers. Behe had previously read Trial
and was “impressed” with Johnson’s arguments. So he eagerly turned to the review in
Science to see how part of the American scientific establishment would answer what
Behe considered to be Johnson’s carefully thought-out objections. He was “surprised” by
what he read.

The reviewer (Amato, 1991) immediately attempted to connect Johnson and his
book with the Institute for Creation Research and other “creationists.” He was attempting
to find Johnson guilty by association, without even considering his arguments against
Darwin. The reviewer also suggested that, as a nonscientist, Johnson’s “arguments
demonstrate [a] misunderstanding of the scientific process.” The brief review concluded
with a caution from Eugene Scott of the National Center for Science Education (a sworn
opponent of creationism) who “warns” the magazine’s readership that Johnson’s
“academic position (at Berkeley) and his approach will win him a wide following. I hope
scientists find out about this. They really need to know [the book] is out there and is
confusing the public.”

Having read the review, Behe was incredulous that the editors of Science used this
prime opportunity to dialogue with anti-Darwinian arguments simply as another chance to
warn people away from such writings. This only added fuel to Behe’s already simmering

fire. “I got mad . . . so I wrote a letter to the editors of Science.” Amazingly, Behe’s terse

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but witty reply was published by Science in August 1991. In the letter, Behe finds fault
with the editors’ failure to address directly Johnson’s argument against evolution. Instead
they relied “on ad hominem arguments” and failed “to follow [their] own advice about the
perennial evolution controversy” with well thought-out responses to reasonable
objections devoid of emotional hyperbole. He wrote that “a man like [Johnson] deserved
to be argued with, not condescended to.”

Behe rejected not only the review’s illogical and condescending response but also
its paternalistic tone.

The scientific community would do much better in the long run to

patiently list supporting facts and frankly admit when positive evidence is

lacking, rather than patemalistically maintaining that an understanding of

the theory of evolution is reserved for the priesthood of professional

scientists.

Like Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the door of Wittenberg’s cathedral, Behe used
this short but powerful letter to announce to his scientific colleagues loudly and clearly
that they had strayed from the path. They had sacrificed their ideals for the sake of “in
house” traditions. Now is the time to get back to the empirical method and follow its
heading even if it should call into question cherished doctrines. And, like Luther, this
initial salvo was only to be a small part of what was to follow.

Although Behe was exceedingly pleased his letter became public, he never
dreamed that Philip Johnson, himself, would read it. Johnson did read it and immediately
contacted Behe, inviting him to an upcoming conference at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas in the coming spring of 1992. Organized by the Foundation for

Thought and Ethics, a Dallas think tank, the conference organizers’ plan to was to bring

in five Darwinists and five proponents of intelligent design to discus Darwin on Trial and

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its central argument that evolution itself was “fundamentally grounded in philosophical
preference, not scientific inference” (Woodward, 1997, p. 11). Behe would be one of the
five scientists on the side of intelligent design.

A picture of the SMU conference hangs prominently on a wall in front of Behe’s
work desk. Behe’s fond memories of the conference and its pivotal place in his own
professional journey are difficult to miss when, in response to a question, he quickly takes
down the photograph, which he describes as “a little picture of me and the gang.” He
points to Philip Johnson in the middle of the portrait, along with other skeptics and
proponents of Darwinian theory who attended the conference. Behe greatly “enjoy ” the
opportunity to dialogue with people from both sides of the issue concerning his own
newly formed thoughts and concerns. “‘There [were] no conversions on either side,’
recalls Behe, ‘but a genuine spirit of conrradery and mutual acceptance grew among us. It
was one of the highlights of my life’” (Woodward, 1997, p. 11).

The conference also served to establish Behe as a “player” within the debate itself.
Johnson organized another conference in California soon after SMU for almost two
hundred scholars devoted to the intelligent design movement. According to Behe,
Johnson wanted to take the next step “to show the intellectual bankruptcy of Darwinism.”
He invited Behe to be a part of this confab as well. It was at this gathering that Behe first
“got to rehearse some of the arguments” he had been thinking about with regard to his
own research into bio-chemistry. He began to speak openly about his fledgling thoughts
on what he would some day label “irreducible complexity.”

Today, he has difficulty tracing the morphology of irreducible complexity. All he

knows is that Denton had pushed him down the anti-Darwin path, whereas Philip Johnson

69

and his cohorts helped to supply a positive, intellectual alternative that would also be
consistent with Behe’s Roman Catholic faith. This intellectual and emotional context,
combined with his own biochemical research, provided fertile soil for his developing
thesis. “When you study biochemistry, you come upon some fantastically complicated
systems, and you are always thinking, ‘How in the heck did this ever get itself together?’”
He began “casting around” for a phrase to describe what he was seeing and settled on
“irreducible complexity” because it “sound[ed] good.” Thus, Behe’s argument was not
only scientifically based and theologically satisfying but also aesthetically pleasing.

Johnson’s conference in California became the place where Behe first began
publicly to “rehearse some of his arguments” with regard to his own research into
irreducible complexity. He began to speak openly about the concept and realized that he
“had something to say that nobody else had said before.” And it was here that he got the
idea (and gained the confidence) to write a book. “I figured if Phil Johnson could write a
book, I could write a book, too.”

With the encouragement of Johnson, Behe began to look for a publisher. He
found an agent who helped him contact about 20 publishers. Ten of them were
interested, including a couple of university presses. They held “a competitive bidding for
the manuscript,” with the Free Press winning the right to publish Black Box. Behe still
shakes his head when he recounts the story. “I was pretty fortunate with the whole thing--
especially having no idea what it was like and just kind of falling into it.” “Falling” may
provide us with the best metaphor for Behe’s sudden transformation from one on the
outside looking in to one of the integral players at the center of the debate between

Darwin and design. As soon as he took the jump from passive acceptance of disciplinary

70

theory to active proponent of alternative explanations, it was as if he no longer had

control of his own academic career.

Looking at the Walls

Spending any length of time with Mike Behe, one can quickly surmise his
consuming vocational passion. The walls of his office, the use of his time, and the
current use (or nonuse) of his lab loudly proclaim this man as a scientist who has chosen
to use his career as a platform to announce his significant doubts about the legitimacy of
Darwinian evolution as a viable theory to account for the origin of the universe.

Behind a face and voice that communicate an authentic concern for people lies a
passionate and focused mind that argues its beliefs with a take-no-prisoners rhetoric.
This conviction and passion do not come through the voice or the eyes but through the
hands that are constantly moving and a kinetic body that never sits still. The closer the
conversation steers to the debate over origins, the faster the hands move. Behe is a man
who likes people and a scientist who loves the search for truth. He gladly carves out time
in his already busy schedule to talk to a total stranger, but he is equally fast to attack a
person’s argument that exhibits faulty assumptions or logical fallacies.

Behe’s passion to argue for the design side has affected the way he conducts his
vocation as a university professor. His research and writing have sought to argue the
merits of irreducible complexity as a worthy challenger to Darwin. His use of time has
been altered drastically. “Now I devote most of my time to this subject [intelligent
design], whereas before . . . I spent a lot of time in the lab working on nucleistic

structure.” Behe spends most of his current work day writing articles, responding to

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critics and supporters, and traveling the lecture circuit. His newly found passion has
“essentially changed my day-to-day activity.”

Behe’s approach to the classroom has also been affected. For five or six years he
has offered a course at Lehigh called “Popular Arguments on Evolution.” Describing it
as a “critical thinking type of class,” he presents the claims of protagonists and
antagonists in the discussion over evolution “side by side.” He wants his students to ask
the provocative question: “How can these people [authors] look at the same thing and
arrive at different conclusions?” Although he freely admits that most students “stick” to
the view of evolution they entered the course with, Behe still expresses satisfaction that
they can see the issue “as a more complicated question than what they thought coming
in.” And he adds, “I’m happy with that.”

Behe’s superiors at Lehigh have not commented about his change in career focus,
nor the way he conducts his work. “Nobody has said, ‘Boo’ to me.” This may have more
to say about the internal structure of American higher education and the value placed on
academic freedom than the scientific opinions of the Lehigh administration. As Behe so
succinctly states, “When you’re a full professor, you can do whatever you want to.”

But Behe is extremely self-conscious about his work and use of time. “I try to be
as scrupulous as I can to not miss classes and things.” He has even begun to cut back his
speaking engagements in order to spend more time in the lab. Because his foray into
writing and lecturing has increasingly demanded more of his time, Behe’s laboratory
work “had kind of petered down.” And he expresses sincere regret for that: “I feel a little
guilty about that because there are graduate students who are looking for laboratories to

join and I’m not able to offer as much as I could before.”

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Yet, Behe’s conviction that he is working on a foundational issue within his
discipline keeps him at his task of writing and lecturing. “The issue of evolution is a
foundational one in biology, and I think that the discussion that I’m helping to engender
actually offsets the other things that I don’t have the time to do anymore.”

Behe’s future career plans continue to focus on intelligent design and irreducible
complexity. Hoping “to extend the argument” he has already made, he wants to test his
conclusions back in the lab and do some “straightforward science.” As he described in
Black Box, the theory of intelligent design stands on the principle of irreducible
complexity as observed in biochemical systems. Now, he wants to present more research
results that support the principle and consequently the theory. He wants to get off the
lecture circuit, get back in the lab, stay at his desk, and “get some work done.”

With a career trajectory that has led him directly into a path of resistance against a
cherished doctrine, Behe is able to illustrate the potential hold a scholar’s discipline has
over his life and work. By using Becher’s framework below, we will begin to tease out

some of the central tensions for the Christian scientist.

Viewing the Fight
Within today’s American university, academic disciplines provide “systems of
order” for faculty work as they help to give some structure to the often messy task of
intellectual exploration (Weiland, 1995, p. 268). The disciplines then spawn departments
within the local institution which provide faculty the community necessary to survive the
often intricate, Byzantine labyrinth called academia where “nothing is as simple as it

seems” (Becher, 1989, p. 33). Figuring out your own professional identity within a

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diverse academy that is pulling you in a myriad of directions becomes tenuous without a
disciplinary family to give you some sort of reference point for your work--both how to
go about it and how to evaluate it.

Tony Becher (1989) has grouped disciplinary influences under two major
headings: intellectual and social. First, the discipline creates for faculty epistemic
boundaries that control what questions are to be asked, the manner in which they are to be
answered, and finally, the criteria for judging whether or not the answer is satisfactory.
Second, the disciplinary community tells the members who they are, where they belong,
and who their colleagues are. As Clifford Geertz (1983) writes, the discipline provides “a
cultural frame that defines a great part of one’s [faculty] life” (p. 83) or as Becher calls it,
an “academic fraternity” in which “patriotic feelings run high” (p. 37).

As Michael Behe reflects on his own faculty life and career, his observations and
feelings can be classified under Becher’s headings. He has been a part of his scientific
community for more than 25 years, and he has experienced the “powerful bonds” of his
discipline. His career moves have not come without cost. He has struggled intellectually
and emotionally in his decision to challenge his academic community.

We will look at these tensions below: first, through an intellectual lens as we seek
out the possible epistemic hurdles Behe has faced and second, through a social lens as we
rehearse the potential pressures faced within a tightly knit knowledge community. We
will then conclude by asking whether Behe’s initial question, “Can science make room

for religion?” has been answered.

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Intellectual Lens

Becher, with help from Biglan (1973) and Kolb (1981), has provided a helpful list
of categories to aid us in classifying the respective disciplines. He is careful to recognize
the immense diversity that exists among the disciplines and uses his categories to clarify
those differences. Becher uses a taxonomy consisting of four major groupings: (a) hard
versus soft, (b) pure versus applied, (c) convergent versus divergent, and (d) urban versus
rural. The first two deal with the discipline’s intellectual influence, whereas the latter two
classifications describe the social factors.

Biochemistry: A hard-pure discipline. Behe’s chosen discipline, biochemistry, is
actually a fusion of two disciplines, biology and chemistry. Becher classifies both of
them, as well as biochemistry, as hard-pure disciplines. Hard-pure disciplines carry high
prestige both inside and outside the academic world. They are usually intellectually
demanding and attract individuals of the highest quality.

Becher uses the descriptor “hard” to characterize the clearly defined intellectual
boundaries of the discipline. He also refers to them as “restricted” due to the hard
disciplines’ focus on quantitative methodology and well developed theoretical structures.
Research in the hard disciplines usually consists of a search for causation with an
emphasis on universal laws and generalizable findings. For them the research method to
be used often determines the problem to be studied.

Pure disciplines, as opposed to applied ones, suggest a resistance of outside
influence on the part of the disciplinary hierarchy rather than a lack of application. Hard-
pure disciplines often have beneficial applications to society as a whole, and that is one

reason they have earned such a glowing reputation. Therefore, they carry with them an

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“elitist” mentality, self-regulating in epistemological procedures with uniform standards
and procedures and high “intellectual control.” Cognitive revolutions, when they do
happen, are rare. Therefore, any attempt to interject arguments from outside sources into
a hard-pure discipline such as biochemistry or science in general would usually be seen as
an unwanted invasion by the disciplinary hierarchy. It is no wonder that religion and
science have had difficulty getting along.

Science versus religion-An epistemological skirmish. The lead article of an issue
of Newsweek in the summer of 1998 (“Science Finds God”) described recent attempts by
theologians and scientists to revisit the relationship between science and religion: “From
Georgetown to Berkeley, theologians who embrace science, and scientists who cannot
abide the spiritual emptiness, are establishing institutes integrating the two” (Begley,
1998, p. 48).

Some scientists intervieWed for the report spoke of science’s influence on their
own religiosity. Astronomer Allan Sandage told how, at the age of 50, “he willed himself
to accept God” because his “science drove [him] to the conclusion that the world is much
more complicated than can be explained by science” (Begley, 1998, p. 46). According to
Mark Richardson, “Science may not serve as our eyewitness of God the Creator, but it
can serve as a character witness” (p. 50). Other scientists were equally clear in their
testimony that science has led them into an entrenched atheism. Steven Weinberg stated,
“The more the universe has become comprehensible through cosmology, the more it

seems pointless” (p. 48).

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Do “science and philosophy [and religion] have a common question” (Begley,
1998, p. 51)? Can their paths be complementary, or are they destined to be contradictory?
A Newsweek reporter captures the tension felt by religion’s faith and science’s doubt:

In one sense, science and religion will never truly be reconciled. Perhaps

they shouldn’t be. The default setting of science is eternal doubt; the core

of religion is faith. Yet, profoundly, religious people and great scientists

are both driven to understand the world. Once, science and religion were

viewed as two fundamentally different, even antagonistic ways of pursuing

the question, and science stood accused of smothering faith and killing

God. Now it may strengthen belief. And although it cannot prove God’s

existence, science might whisper to believers where to seek the divine (p.

51).

Are science and religion two unique models of explanation? Are they two
different ways to understand separate parts of reality? Or are they two complementary
methods for comprehending the same reality? Could they be two contradictory
approaches to understand one world? These types of questions force us toward a
philosophical and epistemological examination of the relationship between these two
fields of knowledge.

James Gilbert (1997) uses broad intellectual strokes to contrast the two. Science
works from a materialistic world view. whereas religion operates from more of an idealist
philosophical stance. Religion constructs an anthropocentric world with human beings as
central, whereas science remains skeptical of any privileged place for humans. Science
proposes a closed universe consisting only of a material world that can be understood
through the wonder of technology and human engineering. Religion affirms an open

universe and a reality of “sublime otherness” (Gilbert, 1997, p. 12) beyond nature that can

be assessed through faith and reason.

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Whereas science seeks to understand the knowable, religion responds to the
unknowable and the mystical. Science uses experience to generate hypotheses that seek
to approximate truth; religion uses experience to confirm that which is already
apprehended through faith. Science is seeking answers to nature’s mysterious cosmos
and uses this wonder and curiosity to fuel its intellectual enterprise; on the other hand,
religion has received through divine revelation a narrative behind the world and then
seeks to use science to confirm this meta-story.

Before the age of the Enlightenment, scholars used philosophy and theology as
primary paths to a rational understanding of the world. Since then, science has grown in
intellectual stature and become both an aid and a rival to philosophy and theology. Any
historical account of these disciplines’ relationship would include periods of mutual
support along with instances of bitter enmity. Galileo challenged the received theological
categories of his day and was branded a heretic.

For some time now, science and religion have been reconciled as each keeps its
separate cognitive sphere: science will answer “what” and “how”; religion will provide
the “why.” As science has grown in prestige, religion has been increasingly dismissed as
irrelevant to the enterprise of knowledge; therefore, astronomer Carl Sagan could

conclude there was “nothing for a Creator to do” (as cited in Begley, 1998, p. 38).

Behe’s epistemological battles-Challenging the elite. Mike Behe’s faculty

biography gives no sign that the epistemological skirmish between religion and science is
lessening. In April 2000, he participated in a conference at Baylor University hosted by

the Michael Polanyi Institute. Entitled “T he Nature of Nature,” this interdisciplinary

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conference brought together leading intellectuals to discuss and debate the merits of
philosophical naturalism and its role in science. Proponents of naturalism see the
universe as self—contained, without the need for an external entity to account for the
world’s existence or function. Many scholars closely link this “closed view” of the
universe with Darwinian theory (Gilbert, 1997; Kuhn, 1970; Larson, 1997; Wilkins,
1987).

Opponents of naturalism posit the counter notion that matter and energy are not all
there is; in fact, nature actually points to something beyond itself. For example, purely
natural explanations of the universe cannot account for the existence of individual
consciousness, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics to model the physical
world, or the origin of life. Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, and intelligent design
proponents would be found within this group.

According to Behe, the Baylor conference brought together “some really top notch
intellectuals” from both sides of the discussion in such fields as philosophy, mathematics,
history, and science. The group included Nobel Prize winners and members of the
National Academy of Sciences. Behe participated in a discussion on biological
complexity during the second plenary session. That panel included 1974 Nobel Laureate
Christian de Duve from Belgium and Mark Ptashne, member of the National Academy of
Sciences and a microbiologist working at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in
New York City. Asked to reflect on the conference, Behe uses terms like “terrific” and
“conviviality.” He especially was pleased with the social tone of the event. “It started

out a little bit tense [and] by the end everyone was raising glasses of wine to each other,

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and there was a real conviviality that I think was progress [from the beginning of the
conference].”

The intellectual climate also experienced changes, although none as dramatic as
the social environment. Although no one on either side changed positions, “a better
understanding of each other developed” and certain misconceptions were corrected.
From Behe’s vantage point, this was especially true of the naturalists, who he thinks
disparage the intelligent design side as “a mindless commitment to certain dogmas.” By
the end of the meeting, most of the participants realized that this discussion contains “real
intellectual arguments” on the part of both sides that deserve to be engaged.

One obvious exception to this increase in understanding and civility was Steven
Weinberg, astrophysicist from the University of Texas at Austin. Arguing for the
“naturalness” of the naturalist position, Weinberg countered with the contention that all
supernatural entities (which he referred to as “fairies”), whether Yahweh or Thor, could
not adequately account for reality and especially the existence of evil within that reality.
Behe called Weinberg’s lecture “antagonistic and disrespectful” and thought Weinberg
was “deliberately trying to be provocative.” For some reason, Weinberg did not engage
the other arguments presented. And so, from Behe’s perspective, Weinberg’s arguments
“were not what you would expect from an intellectual.”

Behe considers Weinberg’s performance to be an illustration of “the typical
sociological forces that one has to deal with when . . . trying to make an argument for
intelligent design or other things which have strong theistic implications.” Behe’s
experience has been that “a lot” of scientists “don’t believe in God” and that “in science”

atheism has “a strong standing.” Therefore, to argue for a theistic world view, to talk

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about God, or even to talk about the apparent design of nature within a scientific
environment can gain you “reproving looks from many of your colleagues.” For Behe,
this is “certainly enough to give you second thoughts about saying anything like that
casually.”

Behe is quick to note that not all scientists are atheists or even agnostics. His best
guess would be that about 50 % of scientists, including 50 % of biochemists, would
actually be atheists. [Data collected by Robert Wuthnow (1989) confirm Behe’s
assumption and suggest that strongly religious scientists within the academy are a distinct
minority] Therefore, for Behe, “when you get a bunch of scientists together, the
presumption, essentially, is materialism [nothing exists beyond matter]” and by extension,
naturalism.

Behe goes on to describe how the scientific community’s “allergic” reaction to
religion affects his own performance and fears as a scientist. “When you have to go up
against the reproval of Weinberg and many other elite members of the scientific
community, you are going to hesitate, or at least think very hard about saying anything
that might be construed to have theistic implications.” And if you are indeed arguing for
theistic theories like intelligent design, you do so “only at the risk of your reputation.”

Behe’s epistemological battles--Paging Mr. Spock. Amidst the discussion of
science and religion’s epistemological relationship, Behe broached the subject of the
“scientific method.” Somewhat surprisingly, he flatly stated, “There is no scientific
method.” He considers the traditional use of the phrase as an “ill-defined” concept that is
useful only as “something to tell kids when they are taking science class.” He would

rather describe the scientific search for truth and meaning as a much less rigid procedure:

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You just kind of fly by the seat of your pants. You just look at what

worked before [and] try it again. If it doesn’t work again, cast around for

something reasonable. If nothing reasonable works, then cast around for

something unreasonable.
He goes on to describe the search as a “feel”--a “feel for the discipline, a feel for what’s
likely, a feel for what’s unlikely.”

Behe carries this search for “reasonableness” to the arena of religion and faith as
well. Asked whether or not the naturalist and the supematuralist were arguing from two
different epistemological perspectives, Behe immediately and forcefully argued that
reasonableness is just as necessary for religious viewpoints as scientific ones. “You have
to have reasons . . . nobody has blind faith.” He went on to say, “You have to have
reasons for deciding the claim of divinity by Jesus or something like that is in fact true
and that the scriptures are true and so on.” Even his dependence on the authority of the
Bible as the guide for life and practice is not “baseless,” but it is grounded in what Behe
considers to be sound reasons.

This is the type of epistemological method Behe and his colleagues took into the
conference at Baylor. “We started from the premise of the world as we observe it . . . we
did not postulate God [and] we did not postulate the authority of scripture.” Again,
reasonableness became the measuring device for meaning. “We were arguing essentially
that the world as it is constructed points to God or points to the supernatural.” For
example, the philosophers reasoned that rationality itself argues for God’s existence, and
the biologists argued that the bacterial flagellum points to a Designer. “We did not start

from the premise of theism . . . but we were arguing about where [our] common

experience points to.”

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Even with all his talk of reasonable arguments and common experience, Behe
recognizes the search for meaning does not happen in an emotional vacuum. He
conjectures why brilliant scientists like Weinberg could so cavalierly dismiss evidence
that Behe and his distinguished cohorts believed in so passionately. He made a
fascinating admission: “From my point of view there is a great deal of nonrational factors
influencing people like Weinberg, probably people like me, too. Even scientists, even
Nobel Prize-winning scientists are not rational machines. They are not Mr. Spock.”
Even when he reflected on many of the negative reviews his book had received, Behe was
quick to note that it was “more than just the science that they’re reacting against.” He
continued, “One strongly suspects that religious views . . . play a part in their strong
opinions.”

As evidence, Behe used Weinberg’s propensity to justify his dismissive attitude
and denial of a supreme deity with Weinberg’s seeming inability to rationalize the
existence of a good and powerful God with the early loss of his mother to cancer.
Interestingly, Weinberg has used that same line of reasoning in other places besides the
Baylor conference (see Begley, 1998, and Horgan, 1996). Behe concludes, “So, it is very
likely that a loss of someone dear to him and other things influence his thinking about
religion a lot more than cold, analytical calculations.”

The discussion on epistemology concluded with an observation about ontology.
Explaining, once again, the straightforward strategy used by design proponents at Baylor,
Behe stated, “We only required the other side to be open to the possibility that [design]
can be true--that there can be a God. If they refuse to consider that there might be a God

or refuse to allow that conclusion, then we got troubles.”

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He has drawn the conclusion that one side’s epistemological method cannot go
beyond the other side’s ontological presuppositions. Therefore, it becomes very difficult
for a supematuralist who clings to the presupposition of a universe open to outside
intervention to ever cross over into the world of a scientific establishment steeped in a
closed universe of nothing more than matter and energy. In Black Box, Behe (1996)
writes, “ . . . many people, including many important and well-respected scientists, just
don’t want there to be anything beyond nature . . . . They bring an a priori physical
commitment to their science that restricts what kinds of explanations they will accept
about the physical world” (p. 243).

According to Thomas Kuhn (1977), within the sciences there is a “jealous
guardianship of the status quo (p. 71) or what Merton (1973) has called an “organized
skepticism”of anything challenging the entrenched conservatism of the elite gatekeepers.
For Behe, the hard-pure disciplines of the natural sciences have established a closed
universe as one of their ontological presuppositions, which leaves religious ideas little if

any voice within the epistemological conversation.

Social Lens

Not only do disciplines provide the academic world a type of intellectual authority
by policing their own boundaries, but also they offer networks of social influence.
Disciplines as knowledge properties designate the epistemological forms that control the
actual work of research within the community, and they function as a type of knowledge

community that contributes social norms that curb relationships within the group as well.

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Biochemistg: A convergent-urban discipline. When it comes to the social

characterization of disciplines, Becher has used the adjectives “convergent/divergent” and
“urban/rur ”to isolate their differences. Convergent disciplines have uniform standards
and procedures for how faculty go about their work and exert tight intellectual control
within a stable elite who exercise power over the rest. Examples of these types would be
physics and history. Divergent communities like geography tolerate more academic
deviance. Disciplines with an urban social sphere cover a narrow area of intellectual
territory and cluster around a limited number of discrete topics with a high ratio of
available people for a given problem; the rural types have problems thinly scattered over
a broader, more diverse area and solutions are usually much more time consuming.
Again, Becher labels physics as an urban discipline with the modern languages examples
of rural social communities.

As with most of the hard sciences, Becher considers both biology and chemistry
to be convergent, urban disciplines. As convergent-urban disciplines, both biology and
chemistry exert a good amount of control over individual members through a class-
conscious community with an acknowledged academic elite. This strong social presence
within Behe’s academic life comes through when he reflects on his interaction with
colleagues, as well as the reputation he has earned within the community.

Collegiality. When Behe is asked to reflect on his relationship with colleagues,
both locally with faculty at Lehigh and nationally within his discipline, he tells a story of
one of his first forays into the “battlefield.” A couple of years before Black Box was
published, he took part in a debate at the State University of New York at Stoney Brook.

At the invitation of a student at Stoney Brook, he and two other design proponents

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debated three scientists from the Darwinian side. Although Behe calls the five hour
debate “a lot of fun,” his relationship with at least one of his Lehigh colleagues began to
change.

A couple of weeks after the debate, he received an e-mail message from a faculty
member in the biology department. Even though Behe was in the chemistry department
at the time, this colleague was still in what Behe describes as “high dudgeon” over Behe’s
appearance at another university to attack Darwinian thought. Behe summarizes the gist
of the communique: “Apparently a former student of his [the biology faculty member]
was in the audience [at Stoney Brook] and wrote back and said what sharrre it brought to
Lehigh to have one of its faculty arguing for the ‘dark side.’” This colleague of Behe’s
was so heated by this prospect that he even sent a copy of his e-mail to the Dean of the
college in order to alert the dean of Behe’s “deviant activities.”

Behe replied to this outraged colleague in a “friendly” and disarming way to
explain his own position. Eventually, after the colleague cooled down emotionally, they
were able to meet in Behe’s office for more than an hour as he took great pains to explain
exactly what he meant by irreducible complexity. After listening to his explanation, the
colleague, who happened to be an organic biologist, replied, “Well, you have some points
[and] we [as organic biologists] don’t worry about these molecular things in my science.”

From this episode, Behe began to figure out the best way to deal with his
colleagues who did not necessarily share his views. “The lesson I learned from [Stoney
Brook] is to try to be as open as possible with this. Don’t do any secret letter writing . . .
let everybody know your reasons.” The dean himself never responded to the colleague’s

e-mail. When Behe inquired about the dean’s thoughts on the whole matter, the dean

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responded, “Well, this seems like none of my business, so I don’t know why you sent this
to my attention.”

Behe used the same open approach with his colleagues before the publication of
his book. Roughly six months before its release date, he sent out a department-wide e-
mail. At the time Hillary Clinton was on a national book tour publicizing It Takes a
Village, so Behe began his note with the announcement of some “exciting news.” Like
Hillary, he, too, had written a book and was about to embark on his own book tour and
“it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Then he went on to give a little synopsis of his book. “It’s likely to be a little bit
controversial because it’s about evolution.” (Sometimes, Behe has a mode of
communication that can best be described as “casual understatement.”) Then he gave a
brief explanation of irreducible complexity and intelligent design to his departmental
colleagues. He was careful to disavow any connections with religious creationists. “I
stressed the fact that I’m not . . . a young earth creationist.” He closed the note by
informing them that a copy of his manuscript would be placed in the departmental office,
and any who desired could read it and come and discuss any questions or thoughts they
had with the author any time they wished.

Even though some people were not happy with his general argument in Black Box,
he was told by departmental friends that his open approach helped to “defuse” potential
difficulties. Behe explained, “I’m an amiable type of guy and got along with everybody
. . . there was no previous ill will or anything like that toward me.” There were no
protests concerning the book, and he stayed in the good graces of the department. He was

even promoted to the rank of full professor soon after the book’s release. Although he

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does confess that in the letter from his chairman inforrrring him of his promotion due to
his “good” teaching and research, the chair admitted “there was some concern about the
book.” Evidently one of the eight senior faculty on the promotions committee had voted
against the promotion based solely on Behe’s book. No matter how much Behe
contributed to the department through his laboratory and classroom work and no matter
how collegially he might conduct himself, some would still consider his book and its
insipid attack on Darwinian theory a strike against him.

Behe’s account confirms Becher’s (1989) description of convergent disciplines as
“fraternal” communities with “tightly knit” ideologies and common values. Departmental
politics become an issue in a much larger way within these types of disciplines, and Behe
understood this. One reason he survived virtually unscathed was his ability to play the
political game.

Even after receiving all the publicity he has in the last five years, Behe still does
not make a habit of taking his very public debate into the private environment of Lehigh’s
faculty lounge. Although a colleague down the hall might mention Behe’s previous
night’s interview on CNN or a recent editorial in the Times, a substantive discussion
about his position is rare. In this context, his desire for amicable relationships outweighs
his passion for arguing intelligent design. “I do not initiate substantive conversations here
and very few people initiate them with me. The thing at Lehigh is that I also do not want
to rub people’s noses in this. This is my place of employment and I have to get along
with everybody.”

One other disciplinary lesson we learn from both Behe’s experience and Becher’s

study is that a convergent discipline’s strong political context can be lessened by its urban

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setting. Urban disciplines have a densely concentrated population, with more scholars
per area of study than more rural disciplines. Thus, researchers are forced to go deeper
and deeper into their speciality to make a contribution to the community, whereas those
faculty in more rural areas take the broader approach to a given area of study. So, when
Behe made his controversial argument in Black Box in areas (natural selection and
origins) that have more to do with biology than chemistry, he found his fellow
biochemists failed to pay close attention.

Behe recalls little change in his interaction with disciplinary colleagues at national
conferences after his book. He recounted a conference held in Albany on the structure of
proteins in nucleic acids not long after all the furor over his argument erupted. Walking
down a corridor, he heard his name: “Mike, Mike Behe.” When he turned around a
stranger approached him, “You’re Mike Behe.” Behe, thinking it would be a question
about Black Box, said, “Yes, I am.” The stranger responded, “I wanted to talk to you
about your work on the Histone H4.” Behe anticipated this colleague wanted to discuss
irreducible complexity, but this fellow biochemist just wanted to talk over some research
on acids.

Approximately 500 scientists attended the conference, and by Behe’s recollection
only one person even mentioned the book. This only confirmed his contention that most
scientists in his narrow speciality of biochemistry are “completely oblivious to any of the
things I said.” Like most scholars in urban disciplines, successful scientists have “got to
concentrate on a narrow area and just go full bore on that area, and rarely do people have

time to look to the left or to the right.”

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Reputation. Behe was asked to reflect on his professional journey, including his
thoughts and feelings on his own role in the design debate within the scientific discipline.
He was quick to express his feelings and slower to explain his thoughts.

The mostly negative reaction to his argument and his book within the scientific
establishment has made Behe feel “both good and bad.” He explains, “They [reactions of
scientific colleagues] make me feel bad because few people want to be called cowardly
and lazy and want to be mocked in the professional journal of their discipline.” He goes
on, “Ah, but it makes me feel good because here’s the most prestigious science journal in
the whole world and the best they can do is say, ‘He’s nothing but a Creationist.’ And
they admit that they can’t now answer the arguments that I’ve put forward.”

At this point in the conversation, Behe’s words reveal a pivotal tension in the
academic profession: the emotional desire to be accepted as part of the disciplinary
fraternity and the intellectual drive to push the theoretical boundaries of the discipline
itself. The former impetus requires an insider’s mentality, whereas the latter necessitates
the mind set of an outsider without the emotional ties that might cloud one’s judgment.
Behe exemplifies this almost schizophrenic stance, “I want to be liked as much as the
next guy, but I am kind of stubborn, and so I . . . will not just go away until somebody
satisfactorily addresses these questions.” His conflicting emotions point out one of the
primary motivational forces in faculty careers and one of the more powerful ways
disciplines influence faculty lives: the scholar’s reputation.

When describing the driving force and motivation behind much of the activity
within academic circles, writers have concentrated their attention on reputation, both

individually and communally (Becher, 1989; Hardy, 1941; Merton, 1957). Becher

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explains this concept through a helpful contrast: “The main currency for the academic is
not power as it is for the politician or wealth as it is for the businessman, but reputation”
(p. 53). Reif (1961) writes, “The scientist . . . is extraordinarily dependent on the good
opinion of others.” Many factors contribute to a faculty member’s reputation, including
where you come from (alma mater), whom you studied with, and the main avenue used to
gain recognition from one’s peers: publication.

With qualification, Mike Behe agrees that reputation is exceedingly important for
the average scientist and that publication becomes the primary means to be noticed.
Reflecting on his own career, however, he is careful to view reputation from two vantage
points, the localized and the universal. Many scientists in leading universities are able to
gain some acclaim within their own specialized field, but that expertise may be known by
just a few. “You might be the world’s leading expert on nucleic acid and your work is
known by [only] 50 other scientists.” Before Black Box, Behe’s own work on DNA
structure was an example of this localized reputation. Although it had a “decent
reputation” in his small specialty, “hardly anybody outside the field knew or cared about
what I did.”

With the publication of his book, however, Behe’s reputation has blossomed. He
has moved onto a more public stage accessible to a wider audience. “The book has of
course given me a reputation, for good or ill, far beyond a specialized area, and I’m more
widely known that I was before.” Behe tells how Black Box has been reviewed by “major
organs of culture in the United States,” including the New York Times Book Review,
Newsweek, and the Washington Post. It has been published internationally in China,

Holland, France, and Peru. “And so the most satisfying thing to me is that now people

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have to address the argument . . . when they talk about evolution. And I think it really has
changed the terms of the debate. And that’s really what I set out to do.”

The desire to protect or promote one’s reputation can also involve one’s own
institution within the academic world. Like Behe’s biology colleague who was aghast
that he would travel to a neighboring university and argue against Charles Darwin, could
other colleagues exist who are concerned that his “deviant” activities might strike Lehigh
at the heart of what it values most-~its academic reputation? Behe thinks that some would
definitely find him guilty by association and attach that guilt to his institution. In their
minds, Behe “criticizes evolution, and therefore, he’s a crazy fundamentalist and likely to
turn our department into a laughingstock and drag our reputation down because of all of
this.” He understands that, in academia, reputations are not necessarily earned in a
vacuum; but his colleagues’ “reputations [are] somehow linked to mine.”

Yet, interestingly, Behe also notes that this reputation thing can move in two
directions. Lehigh’s reputation has actually helped Behe gain a wider hearing for his
arguments. He believes that he was able to get published by a New York publishing
house and not a religious publication arm precisely because he was from Lehigh, a fairly
prestigious university in the East and not some nondescript religious college in the south.
Even his religious identity as a Roman Catholic and not a fundamentalist Protestant has

helped Behe at least gain a first hearing in some circles. Reputation works both ways.

God as Rival
As Behe has stated, his public airing of irreducible complexity and intelligent

design has earned him a reputation within the scientific community, and the American

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popular culture for that matter, both for good and for ill. This mixed reaction to Black
Box begins to help us answer his central question about the ultimate relationship between
science and religion.

The publication of Black Box brought a swift and large response. “Newspapers
and magazines from Vancouver to London, including Newsweek and the Wall Street
Joumal” (T. Woodward, 1997), published articles and reviews on this “heretical”
(Shreeve, 1996) scientist at Lehigh. Some of the leading scientific journals in the field,
such as Nature and the American Scientist, reacted to Behe’s argument for intelligent
design. Even the Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly paper designed for professors
and adnrinistrators within the academy, picked up on his provocative stance against the
prevailing scientific dogma and commented on the “wide attention” (Wheeler, 1996) his
book has received.

Some reviewers did have positive observations to write about Behe and his book.
James Shreeve (1996), science writer for The New York Times Book Review, commented
on Behe’s “lively exposition” and “fine prose” (p. 8). Others agreed with Behe’s premise
that evolution was not able at this time to explain the complexity of biochemical systems.
“He has hit the weak point in terms of origin-of-life studies” (Wheeler, 1996, p. A14) and
“it is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast
subject - evolution — with so little rigorous examination of how well its basic thesis
works” (Shapiro, 1996, p. 62).

Although some did think more could be done on traditional science’s part to
explain the development of these complex systems, no reviewer within the orthodox

scientific community could be found who bought Behe’s suggested answer to this

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problem: intelligent design. Dr. Christopher Wills, a biologist at the University of
California at San Diego, was quoted in the Chronicle: “It is far too early to give up on a
scientific explanation for the precursors of life” (Wheeler, 1996, p. A14). Just because a
clear answer was not available now, does not mean a future discovery might not solve the
problem. Shreeve ends his review by pleading with Behe to “leave mysteries for our
grandchildren to solve”; because “something is beyond our understanding today does not
mean it will be beyond theirs” (p. 8).

Then, there were other reviewers with a condescending tone who simply
dismissed Behe’s entire argument as a ”Trojan horse” used by Creationists to introduce
theological arguments into America’s classrooms. Behe’s “ludicrous logic” is not science
at all but religion “masquerading as an appeal for truth” (Dorit, 1997, p. 474). His
argument is “old,” “arrogant,” and “deeply unsatisfying” (Darwin's Black Box: The
Biocherrrical Challenge to Evolution, 1997, p. 113) and any “serious scientist” would
consider the book “poor scholarship” and a “disappointment” (Blackstone, 1997, p. 445).

Certainly, the most damning critique comes from the mouth and pen of Richard
Dawkins, Oxford professor, holder of the Charles Simone Chair of Public Understanding,
and world-wide spokesperson and defender of Darwinian theory. Interviewed on PBS’s
Think Tank by Ben Wattenberg (1996), Dawkins refers to Behe as a “straightforward
creationist” who has “taken an argument which dates back to the nineteenth century” and
made it his own. In not-so-gentle terms, Dawkins calls him a lazy coward: “Behe should
stop being lazy and should get up and think for himself about how the flagellum evolved
instead of this cowardly, lazy copping out by simply saying, ‘Oh, I can’t think of how it

9”

came about, therefore it must have been designed. And for the coup de grace, Dawkins

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is quoted by Behe himself as saying, “If Behe were a real scientist, he’d get off his lazy
behind and find a naturalistic explanation for the objects he studies.” Dawkins then
critiques the American system of higher education: “How can anyone so lazy get tenure
at an American university?”

What these critics have done is to provide an answer for Behe’s question: “Can
science find room for religion?” In one chorus and with perfect harmony, they give us a
resounding “No!” His argument for a possible religious alternative to the scientific
explanation is taken as a “misguided attempt to bring religion back into biology”
(Shapiro, 1996, p. 62). University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne (1996) comments
with a historical sweep, “If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get
nowhere by labeling our ignorance ‘God”’ (p. 227). And the Chronicle closes its report
with this declaration: Behe “has revived a problem that scientists have wrestled with for
centuries. Are science and religion compatible? Many would prefer to keep God out of
their research” (Wheeler, 1996, p. A14).

When Behe himself tries to explain the relationship between science and religion,
he uses the image of a Venn diagram to describe two world views that are paradoxically
intertwined with each other and at the same time independent of each other. According to
his perspective, theology “provides the underpinnings for science.” Tracking the history
of science back to the Middle Ages, he finds a strong connection between Christian
doctrine of a “Divine Lawgiver” who created a “rational, notable universe--a law-like
universe.” Without these “fundamental [theological] concepts” of rationality, science

could not exist.

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Yet, in the actual daily activities of science, scientists do not “have a whole lot of
direct dependence on any particular theology.” Certain pieces of Christian theology, like
the Trinity, have “little day-to-day interaction with whether the P53 protein is localized to
[a particular] area of the cell or not.” Still, the “foundation of science” as a rational
approach to a rational universe depends on theological presuppositions, “whether
scientists realize it or not.”

As Behe continues to draw his Venn diagram on his hypothetical chalkboard, he
highlights two mistakes people make when relating science and theology. Some
incorrectly overlap the two circles so that one is identical to the other; different scholars
have mistakenly created a clean break between the two. Scientists, especially religiously
oriented ones, make the first mistake when they interject supernatural arguments within
science itself. He is careful to justify his arguments in Black Box with the physical data
and not necessarily his own theological convictions. According to Behe’s definition of
science, “Science cannot study the supernatural; science only studies natural things.”
Therefore, he does not explicitly invoke the supernatural in his argument for intelligent
design. “I don’t talk about the supernatural in my book.”

According to Behe’s argument, design is not a supernatural phenomenon; rather,
design is something we apprehend naturally and also something that may have theological
implications. As he did at the OSU conference, Behe uses our conversation to draw a
parallel between irreducible complexity and the Big Bang. When the Big Bang was first
proposed by physicists, many people thought it had theological implications. However
that did not stop physicists from using the theory and doing experiments based on its

premises. “We postulated the Big Bang from the motion of the galaxies, and not from a

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reading of Genesis [and] because it justifies itself with respect to the physical data. It’s
science—even if it has theological implications.” This is how Behe desires to use
irreducible complexity. By using scientific observations of complex biochemical
systems, we can postulate a universe with design. It is science-science that has overt
theological implications. Ironically, as Mike Behe seeks to remain true to his discipline,
he also clings fast to his religious presuppositions.

While Behe has resisted drawing too big an overlap between science and
theology, he finds that most nonreligious scientists have gone in the opposite direction
and completely separated the two. Behe estimates that roughly “80 %” of the National
Academy of Sciences would be on “Dawkins’s side [of the design debate].” He went on
to give a penetrating explanation for this belief: “I think atheism . . . is just a professional
hazard in science.” He compared this phenomenon to common occupational hazards
within other professions. Police struggle with egomania, and lawyers have to guard
against cynicism. “I think a professional hazard [for scientists], especially for the elite, is
to think that you can explain it all. And not only can you explain it all, but you have to
explain it all.”

This need to explain our natural world is what “drives” scientists to Darwinian
evolution because it gives us a scientific explanation for the diversity of life. And, for
Behe, this drive “makes people overlook a large number of problems with [natural
selection].” That is why, according to his own point of view, he has, as a “no-name”
biochemist, made such a “big splash” by “proposing pretty obvious points” and

consequently “become the target of a lot of criticism.”

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Again, Behe gives a historical perspective. As science has matured over the
centuries and become “more confident of its own abilities and its own methods,”
scientists have acted like adolescents attempting to escape the authority of their parents
and “sort of forgotten their obligation to religion and theology.” Scientists think they
must be able to explain everything from natural premises; therefore, they begin to see
supernatural explanations as threats. “You think God is the rival explanation,” says Behe.
And although “there certainly are a number of scientists who don’t fit into that
stereotype,” there are enough who get the big media exposure to provide such a typecast.

Maybe Behe’s best attempt to answer his question about the relationship of
science and religion comes in a quotation from Black Box (1996):

Science is a noble pursuit that can engender fierce loyalty. The purpose of

science is to explain the physical world - a very serious enterprise.

However, other disciplines (principally philosophy and theology) also are

in the business of explaining parts of the world. Although most of the

time these disciplines stay out of each other’s way, sometimes they

conflict. When that happens, some dedicated people put their discipline

ahead of the goal it is supposed to serve. (p. 254)

Behe is suggesting that the answer to his question is not purely an intellectual one
but also one of disciplinary proprietorship. Could it be that science has so little room for
religion because it not only has intellectual and epistemological objections, but also
because scientists are unwilling to share the power and prestige their discipline’s stature
affords them? Might this be what Rorty (1999) means when he uses Nietzche and
Foucault to “unmask” science and call into question the very notion of scientific
objectivity? Surely, this is what Behe (1996b) himself is getting at when he refers to the

science establishment’s disdain of religious explanations as “scientific chauvinism” (p.

235).

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Asking the Right Question in the Right Way

Can science make room for religion? Has Behe answered the question? Can
Behe answer the question? Or is posing the question itself good enough? Surely,
Christian acaderrrics need to ask whether or not their respective disciplines have room for
religious ideas and convictions. If not, will they be content to play the game by the rules
already provided? Or will they be willing pay the price to try and change the rules?

Mike Behe proves an example of what that price may be. He has risked
reputation within the scientific community. He has altered his career and research focus.
Nevertheless, in the end, Behe would say his journey has been well worth the effort. He
has the conviction, principles, and stubbornness necessary to do what he believes is right,
no matter the consequence or what others may think.

Can science make room for religion? Mike Behe has asked the right question and
Mike Behe has asked it in the right way. From the beginning, he has backed up his
challenging voice with a gentle and kind spirit. He asks potentially offensive questions
without putting people on the defensive. He prides himself on his collegiality, and his
amicable approach to life has won him the right to speak. Mike Behe has been open and
forthright with his colleagues and exhibits a razor-sharp mind. He also possesses the
courage to say what he thinks.

Behe is careful not to describe his role as a crusade against some atheistic,
evolutionary theory. Rather, he sees his frontline role as a simple vocational choice. “I
just view it as my job . . . . I’m a biochemist. I’m supposed to understand how
biochemical systems got here . . . . I’m working on a foundational question in my

discipline.” Clearly, his choice to establish himself as a contentious voice within the

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scientific community originates from more than his theological presuppositions. His
choice of roles has emerged from his sense of vocational identity—-his disciplinary
identity--and what it means to be an authentic scientist. For Behe, controversy “is
supposed to be what you’re [about].” Controversy is something “you should put up with
if you’re trying to pursue . . . what you think is right and correct.”

Mike Behe’s faculty narrative is not only about how science has reacted to his
questions but also about the manner in which Behe has initiated the discussion. At the
end of the day, for the Christian scholar, the question may change from “Can my
discipline make room for religion?” to “Do I have the mind, the character, and the

conviction necessary to raise the question in the first place?”

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CHAPTER THREE

GETTING FROM ONE TO THE OTHER

A Vocational View of Faculty Life
Mary Poplin, Professor of Education, Claremont Graduate University

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world ’3 deep
hunger meet.
-Frederich Buechner
Introduction
The bookshelves of Mary Poplin, a 20-year professor of education, speak volumes
about her research interests, classroom passions, and personal curiosities. Like a
mechanic’s choice of a family car, the personal choices inherent in an academic’s
allocation of precious shelf space give insight into a scholar’s theoretical convictions and
vocational identity. The books that line Professor Poplin’s (or “Mary,” as her students
call her) far office wall, along with their geographical patterns, reveal intriguing clues
about her academic and personal journeys. In the bottom left-hand corner of the
bookcases she has tucked texts from her former vocational life. With titles like Special
Voices and The Myths of the ADD. Child, they serve as reminders of Mary’s prior
interest in special education and the reason she initially was hired at Claremont Graduate
University (CGU) in Pomona, California.
The largest number of books accentuate Mary’s previous theoretical focus on
feminism, multiculturalism, and issues of power within society and education. Ralph
Ellison, bell hooks, Carol Gilligan, Angela Davis, and Peter McClaren, among other

authors, raise their voices to the plight of the powerless. Books entitled Beyond Silent

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Voices, Democratic Education, Race and Culture, Unequal Sisters, and Class Warfare
give clues to Mary’s passion for the disadvantaged and her underlying desire to fight for
the underdog. Critical Theory, Culture and Power in the Classroom, and Cultural
Pedagogy: The State and Cultural Struggle are remnants from her arsenal in the fight
against fundamental injustices within America’s schooling and political contexts.

Stacked in the center of this vast array of books stand volumes whose titles
communicate a different educational life from all the surrounding texts. These
publications, which include treatises on Knowing God, The Holiness of God, and Prayer,
vividly portray Mary Poplin’s second career--the career of a theological educator.

The books resting on these long, narrow wooden shelves represent more than
Mary’s reading and research patterns; they symbolize her own vocational journey.
Although Mary has tucked books from long-ago educational considerations in the far
corners of the intellectual space. apart from her current ideas and thoughts, some shelves
reveal that her divergent paths cannot be cleanly separated. C. S. Lewis stands alongside
Cornell West and a biography of St. Bonaventure rests on a shelf directly below an
ethnography of African-American children in inner-city schools.

As an outside observer, I want to sort the books and Mary’s intellectual interests
into discrete and orderly categories. On closer observation, however, they begin to bleed
into each other forming a passionate whole. The integration of the secular and the sacred
communicates the story of an academic who is struggling to find a way to unite her
sometimes conflicting intellectual passions under one calling. Each of these authors has
informed Mary’s career and life. Although some volumes currently speak louder than

others, they all have played a role in making Mary the person and professor she is today.

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As I begin to understand how Mary blends those voices, I will start to catch a glimpse of

how she carries out her vocation as a Christian scholar.

Getting From One to the Other

Mary Poplin has lived two separate acaderrric lives in one faculty career. Before
1992, as a professor of education at CGU in Pomona, California, Mary sought to save
America’s public schools from the inside out through feminist pedagogy, constructivism,
and critical theory. Since 1992, when she converted to Christianity, Mary has remained a
professor of education at CGU; she still longs to see America’s schools and teachers
strengthened and empowered. But feminist pedagogy, constructivism, and critical theory
have taken an intellectual backseat to Mother Theresa, St. John of the Cross, and the New
Testament. Where Mary used to make liberal use of the best secular humanism had to
offer, she now informs her career and life with the sacred and the theological

Bridging those two academic lives has become Mary’s major professional tension
in the last eight years. At a lecture Mary gave at a large conference for women school
administrators soon after her return from Calcutta, where she had worked with Mother
Theresa for two months, a woman in the audience asked Mary, “Have you had any
trouble conring back?” Mary says, “I just started crying right in front of this whole
audience of about 200 women.” Then, when she had composed herself, Mary went on to
tell these professional women (both religious and nonreligious) how much she struggled
synthesizing her former work life with her present spiritual commitment.

Every time I walked into my office, I looked at the things I had written and

the things I was teaching and all the books. And then I looked at the truth

[Mother Theresa] lived her life by and I couldn’t see--I could not see how I
could ever get from one to the other.

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Getting from one to the other has consumed Mary’s vocational attention. How
does she bridge the intellectual and spiritual divide between a secular, pluralistic academy
that prizes diversity and inclusivity and her own religious faith that preaches an exclusive
doctrine that Jesus is the only way to God and true meaning in life? In the name of
inclusivity, American higher education has been receptive to spirituality in recent days.
Yet, according to Mary, “Education as a field [is] . . . so inclusive in its spirituality that it
excludes everything that wouldn’t accept Buddha as also [part] of the truth.” Ironically,
the more inclusive the academy has become the more excluded many Evangelical
Christians like Mary have felt. They have discovered that the academy’s inclusive
pluralism actually excludes any world view that does not share the university’s post-
enlightenment epistemology and values.

Like the work of Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot, Mary also describes a faculty life
struggling to live between two worlds—-a life struggling to embrace contradiction. Her
struggle is not about race. Mary’s internal conflict is about the spirit and the mind.
Before 1992, she invested her vocational life in an academy that values the mind and its
ability to address the pressing social issues of the day. After 1992, Mary still believes in
the value of addressing injustices through the intellect but not without the influencing of
the spirit as well. The mind by itself is no longer enough to address the deep problems of
our culture. Mary’s internal contradiction comes from the inability or unwillingness of
those who share her pre-1992 world view to accept her current vocational stance.

How is Mary getting “from one to the other”? Maybe a better question is why

Mary is still seeking to bridge the two worlds. She could leave the secular context of

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CGU and ply her trade in the more hospitable environment of a Christian university. Yet,
she chooses to stay.

Mary feels great disdain for her secular academic culture because, according to
Mary, it feeds “all the dark stuff that’s going on--all that secular humanist, soulish junk.
And [the secular academic world] just never even touch[es] God.” It is her belief that the
best the academy has to offer can never touch God, which drives Mary away from the
secular university.

But it is her equally passionate belief that God can touch the secular university
that keeps Mary right where she is. “I do know God has me here. I do know that because
I’ve tried to escape. So, I know I’m supposed to be here. And I know why in a way . . . I
know why, period . . . because a lot of my students are in the same pit I was in. And I
weep for them.” With these words Mary shares a love for the people of the academy that
far outweighs her dislike for many of its ideas.

The more I listened to Mary explain her work at CGU and her great love for the
students there, the more I realized she was describing something more than just a job.
She was relating what she believed to be a divine call to undertake a supernatural

mission. Mary Poplin was using the language of “vocation.”

Adopting a Rhetoric of Vocation

 

Serving as an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, David T. Hansen (1995) spent three years in the field studying the
everyday working lives of four teachers in urban schools. He wanted to know “why they

continue to teach . . . with conviction and success despite the difficulties and challenges

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they and their colleagues everywhere face in today’s schools” (p. xiii). Yet, when it came
time to write up his findings, Hansen struggled to find an appropriate theoretical language
that would adequately explain the “animating force” behind these four successful
negotiations of what were often trying working conditions. So he went outside traditional
educational literature to sociology, philosophy, and religion in order to borrow the
rhetoric of vocation.

Hansen had long been fascinated by what he refers to as the “inner life” of
teachers. Why did some teachers seem highly motivated, whereas other educators
appeared disinterested? Why did some care deeply, and others simply went through the
motions of the daily routine? As an educational researcher, Hansen began to look for
ways to uncover the answers to these complex questions. Along with two colleagues, he
spent two years studying the moral life of schools (Jackson, Boostrom, & Hansen, 1993).
After 400 hours of observing classrooms and conducting interviews, they came to the
conclusion that “it is the person within the role” who makes the difference with students.
Only an understanding of that inner person would provide a complete picture of schooling
in America.

Not a systematic research project like Hansen’s work, Parker Palmer’s (1998)
observations, confessions, and suggestions in his book A Courage to Teach make similar
assumptions about the centrality of a teacher’s selfhood. Palmer argues that teaching
“emerges from one’s inwardness” and “as I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto
my students, my subject, and our way of being together” (p. 2). The experiences of the
classroom are “often no more or no less than the convolutions of [the teacher’s] inner

life.” In this way, Palmer believes that teaching “holds a mirror” to the teacher’s soul.

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Conversely, Hansen would counter that a teacher’s soul holds a nrirror to one’s teaching.
Both would whole-heartedly agree that a “teacher’s selfhood” (p. 3) must become a
legitimate topic both in education and in the public discourse on educational reform.

In his attempt to describe the person who inhabits the role of teacher, Hansen
began to search for a rhetoric adequate to provide a three-dimensional picture of
successful teachers. He wanted to highlight “teachers’ disposition, attitudes, beliefs and
values more than . . . methods of teaching” (p. 131). The complexity of teaching includes
the intellectual and the moral, and studying one without the other could “truncate” any
description “beyond recognition” (p. 123).

Hansen found the language of “career” and “occupation” often used in the
educational literature inadequate to convey the deeply personal aspects of teaching. “A
language is needed that recognizes and calls attention to the aims, the vision, and the
action of teachers who bring a sense of service to what they do” (p. 147). He was drawn
to two major sources as he sought to construct such a language: the work of
sociologist/philosopher D.M. Emmet (1958) and the religious notion of vocation. (In
many ways, Hansen’s study is as much an autobiography of one educational researcher’s
pursuit for a useful rhetoric as it is the study of teachers’ vocational identity.) Thus,
Hansen calls his study a “book about teaching as a vocation” (p. xiii). Furthermore, in the
mirror of vocation, he has found an adequate reflection of the inner complexity of
teaching that mere occupational language could not provide.

The term, “vocation,” originates from the Latin vocare, which means “to call” or
“to summon for service.” Used often in religious contexts, vocation has been co-opted by

Hansen for an educational context in order to illuminate the working lives of teachers as

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“a form of public service that yields enduring personal fulfillment to those who provide
it” (xiii). Thus, a strong sense of vocation becomes the “inner incentive” or motivation
for successful teachers in even the most difficult educational situations. For Hansen, the
usual terms found in this type of study fail to capture the deeply personal aspects of one’s
vocation and the importance of the individual person inhabiting the role. “The language
of vocation brings us closer to what many teachers do, and why they do it, than does the
language of job, work, occupation, or profession” (p. 8).

From his extensive study of these effective educators, Hansen has phrased his
definition of vocation as a means to highlight what he believes to be the two major
motivating factors involved: (a) public service and (b) personal fulfillment. First,
teachers who view teaching as a vocation see their work in and outside the classroom as
one of service to others. They work for something bigger than self, and potential
financial rewards are a by-product of what they do, rather than a primary goal.

Second, they also find deep personal satisfaction in what they do as teaching
becomes a primary connection to their own personal identity. “Who I am is what I do and
what I do is who I am” (p. 116). Maybe the best description of this twin notion of
vocation comes from the thought of Christian novelist Frederick Buechner (1993) who
describes vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger

meet” (p. 95).

Overview
A helpful way to capture the essence of Mary Poplin’s negotiation of her place as

a Christian professor in a secular graduate university is to frame her work within the

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rhetoric of vocation. Like David Hansen’s four inner-city teachers, Mary, too, has faced
difficult circumstances that could have easily driven her to a safer place to work out her
vocation. But she has chosen to stay at Claremont in order to serve her students, fulfill
her own vocational identity, and ultimately to answer what she perceives to be her divine
calling.

Using the research of Hansen, the thoughtful comments of Palmer, and the
inspiration of Buechner, we begin to construct a helpful framework for making sense of
Mary Poplin’s vocational narrative. First, we look at the radical change in Mary’s own
sense of identity since her conversion in 1992. What brings Mary fulfillment, what
makes her deeply glad is not the same 20 years after her arrival on Claremont’s campus in
1981. Can this new source of joy and fulfillment be expressed in this environment?

Second, we will need to examine the work context itself and how Mary’s
colleagues, administrators, and students have responded to her changing identity. As
Mary seeks some connection between her religious self and secular work place, what are
the barriers and what are the opportunities before her? As Mary seeks to serve her world
at CGU, can she minister effectively while still remaining faithful to her religious
identity?

Finally, we will look at the bridge itself and how Mary has been able to forge a
successful career in often trying circumstances. Where at first she struggled even to show
up for work each day, she now thrives on the opportunity to make a difference with
people she thinks need what she has to offer. She has identified CGU as the place where

God has called her to perform the task she believes He has spent some 50 years preparing

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her to do. Mary can now traverse “from one to the other” because she believes she is

called to give the other the One it so desperately needs.

Filling in the Black Hole

Symbols and icons play a major rhetorical role in Mary’s small but orderly office
as her religious identity reveals itself in obtrusive ways throughout her work space. From
the two small crosses on her desk to the massive cross that fills her long window, it is
obvious Mary has no intentions of hiding her faith. No matter where you sit, you find
evidence of her spiritual commitment. Bibles rest on almost every desktop and table in
the room, and her computer monitor’s screen saver is a single word: “FAITH.” Mary
freely admits she consciously uses her office decor as a means of communication both for
herself and anyone who might visit.

Looking out her one window into the color-filled courtyard of CGU, I cannot miss
three such symbols placed prominently on the windowsill. Occupying the preeminent
position in the middle of the ledge and, in fact, the entire room stands a slender, two-and-
a-half-foot teal—colored, wooden cross. Carved in what Mary refers to as a “southwestern
style,” the black-bordered cross with z-shaped edges not only communicates the centrality
of Mary’s faith to her life and work but also combines with a small saguaro cactus on its
left to remind this “Texas girl” of her southwestern roots.

To the right of the cross rests a 12-inch-high, two-paneled religious that icon Mary
discovered in a small Catholic church in France. She and a friend had visited the chapel
while waiting for a dinner table in a nearby café. While seated in a pew, Mary’s eyes

were repeatedly drawn to a picture hanging on the wall. On the right panel stands a blue-

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robed Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. Their faces are pressed together in a loving
embrace. The left panel contains a portrait of the adult Jesus with the traditional looking
visage of bearded face and long, flowing dark hair.

What catches your gaze in this picture of Jesus are his hands. In the left hand he
holds a hard-cover, ornate-looking box, much like the type of box the Jews of Jesus’ day
might have used to store scrolls of the Torah. Jesus’ right hand is held out toward the
observer in a demonstrative position, his ring finger lightly touching his thumb as if he
were using his hand to communicate some type of blessing.

As Mary looked at this stunning portrait of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, she felt “in
[her] spirit the Lord saying, ‘Teach my people.”’ Knowing nothing about the history of
the icon, Mary approached a priest for an explanation. He replied, “Oh, yes. That’s
entitled ‘Christ, the Teacher.’” For a woman as intuitive and mystical as Mary, she took
this as one more confirmation of God’s leading in her life, and she immediately
purchased a replica of “Christ, the Teacher” for her office back in California.

It stands today in her office window as one more reminder of her divine calling
and what she believes to be her supernatural vocation. With a tan background and
ancient Roman calligraphy written in the upper comers, these two images reflect on
Christianity’s ancient religious heritage. The two wooden sides of the icon are connected
by hinges, allowing the adult Christ and baby Jesus represented to look each other in the
eye. Christ the teacher is united to the Christian image of Jesus the redeemer, and
together they define for Mary her evangelistic vocation as university professor. As Mary

has written, “From the beginning, I knew if I was a Christian it had to do with my work

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. . . that I am to share my experience with everyone God puts in my life, from my sisters

to my colleagues to [my] students.”

Searching for One’s Identity

Mary possesses an intense approach to her work and life. She holds nothing back;
her strong will allows nothing to stand in the way of her passions. Before 1992, Mary
funneled these passions into school reform and empowering the disadvantaged. Since her
conversion to Christianity, Mary has experienced no loss of enthusiasm or conviction
concerning her life path. “I have to be a radical Christian. There isn’t any other choice.”

Defining an amorphous and often overused term like “identity” can become a
challenging task amidst today’s educational literature. It seems every scholar has an idea
of what this notion implies. Psychologist Kenneth Gergen (1991) begins to narrow the
concept by defining identity’s sister term, “self,” as “our ways of understanding who we
are and what we are about” (p. x). When we write or speak of people’s sense of identity,
we are simply describing how they delineate who they are and why they choose that
particular definition.

Referring to identity as a “mystery,” Parker Palmer (1998) tries to communicate
the multitude of influences upon our sense of self as “a moving intersection of the inner
and outer forces that make me who I am, converging in the irreducible mystery of being
human” (p. 13). Some of these forces include our genetic makeup, our family structure,
popular culture, and those influential people within our lives who have marked us, for

good and bad. Certainly, this sense of identity is never a completed task but rather an

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“evolving nexus where all the forces that constitute my life converge in the mystery of
self” (Palmer, 1998, p. 13).

When Buechner (1993) and Hansen (1995) attach a sense of vocation to our “deep
gladness” and sense of fulfillment, they are making a direct connection between what we
do and how we perceive the best of who we are. Our work flows from our identity and is
integral to our nature. What our work requires of us would never go against who we
consider ourselves to be. Or, as Palmer (1998) writes: when vocation connects to
identity and self, our work “fits” who we are and literally “gives [us] life” (p. 31).

A narrative of Mary Poplin’s developing sense of vocation shows that her own
sense of identity has evolved over the last 20 years. She defines herself very differently
today than she did in 1981. As we will see, this makes a noticeable difference in her

approach to her career.

Wilderness Wanderings

Raised in the relatively small north Texas town of Wichita Falls, Mary Poplin
grew up in a stable home where “you already knew what you were supposed to do” when
you became an adult. Even though her father had only an eighth-grade education, school
was a high priority and teaching was a prized profession.

Beginning as an airplane mechanic at the local air force base, Mary’s dad would
eventually work his way up in the civil service career ladder until he became a trainer of
other jet mechanics. His career, along with Mary’s mother’s occupation as a teacher in
the local school, set the vocational pattern for Mary and her three sisters to follow. “You

were supposed to go to school, and you were supposed to complete college . . . become a

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teacher, get married, and have children. That’s what you were supposed to do.”
Ultimately, all four girls would earn bachelor’s degrees in education.

Mr. Poplin attempted to provide the religious direction within the home although
he often sent conflicting messages. Although he often read the Bible to his daughters at
night and made sure the girls went to Sunday School every week at the local United
Methodist congregation, he, himself, never attended. Mary’s mother, on the other hand,
“had an aversion . . . to Christianity” and eventually discontinued the nightly Bible
readings for the entire family.

Even though there was some attempt by one parent to interject religious
instruction and influence, according to Mary’s recollection, her father “wasn’t strong
enough inside to really enforce that in our family.” Consequently, all four daughters left
home without any religious attachments and “just wandered around in the wilderness for
a long time.” Ironically, today, three of the four sisters profess a strong belief in
Christianity, and one of Mary’s siblings attends seminary in Southern California.

Mary will often use a “wilderness” metaphor to describe her pre-conversion life
and career. “I wandered around in every wilderness.” She goes on to identify intellectual
locations within her wilderness excursions: “I tried Buddhism. I tried Transcendental
Meditation.” This nomadic journey also brought lifestyle repercussions as Mary
describes a life attracted to drugs, alcohol, and “everything that people get into.” Her
love for the party lifestyle was one motivation in conring to CGU in 1981. “I moved
here, to California . . . because there was just so much more of it available.”

Mary earned her teaching degree at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls

and then taught elementary and special education for a number of years. She went to the

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University of Texas in Austin to earn her master’s degree in special education. While
there, she performed so well that one of her professors suggested she stay for a Ph.D.
Mary’s first faculty position would be at the University of Kansas in the Department of
Special Education, where she taught for three years before her move to CGU.

The “wilderness” image not only describes Mary’s intellectual and social journey,
but also provides an apt analogy for her developing vocational identity. Looking back on
her career as an educator, Mary confesses, “I taught the wilderness, too.” Trained in
behaviorism as a graduate student, Mary developed an early tendency to “think for
[herself].” Consequently, she has been on the “cutting edge” of educational theory and
practice for the last 20 years. “I would find a new theory, kind of before other people
would find it . . . And I’d get it into education. I’d write about it . . . speak about it . . .
teach about it.”

Continuing an already present tendency to “wander away” from traditional paths,
Mary became thoroughly steeped at an early stage in feminism, feminist pedagogy, and
critical theory. She interacted closely with some of the intellectual revolutionaries of her
day in the educational field, including Peter McClaren, Henry Giroux, Carol Gilligan, and
Paulo Freire. “I was an early admirer of their work and believer in their work.”
Occasionally, Mary would be asked to speak on some of the same panels with these

postmodern scholars and contribute chapters in their books.7 She became good friends

 

7Some of these titles include: “Alternative Instructional Strategies to
Reductionism: Constructive, Critical, Multicultural, and Feminine Pedagogies” (Poplin,
1996); Alternative Views of Learning Disabilities (Poplin, 1996); Methods for Educating
the Handicapped: An Individualized Education Program Approach (Poplin, 1980);
“Multicultural, Critical, Feminine, and Constructive Pedagogies Seen Through the Lives
of Youth: A Call for the Revisioning of These and Beyond: Toward a Pedagogy for the

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with Carol Gilligan and brought Freire to Claremont’s campus a number of times before
his death in 1997.

When Mary first arrived at Claremont, her lifestyle could not have been more
different from what it is today. Described by one long-term colleague at CGU as a “real
party girl,” Mary was “flamboyant,” a “bit outrageous,” a “tad raunchy,” and “really liked
shocking people.” She especially enjoyed “taunting” the straight-laced Lutheran dean of
the school with her feminist ideology and “bawdy” humor. Each Friday afternoon Mary
would host a party at her apartment to end the work week. She called it “The Cantina”
and always had a large supply of food and alcoholic beverages on hand.

Mary made a mark on Claremont’s campus those first 10 years that extended far
beyond her weekly “Cantina,” however. She directed the teacher education program,
increasing its size more than 300% and raising millions of dollars in financial aid.
According to a colleague, Mary did “a wonderful job” by raising the program’s reputation
to one of the best in the state of California.

Along with another colleague in the department, Mary was instrumental in
bringing in a million-dollar grant to create the “Institute for the Transformation of
Schools” at Claremont. Focusing on K-12 reform, Mary spent a year bringing in outside
sources to the university in order to educate the entire faculty through a year-long

discussion on school reform. Stated one colleague: “She was responsible for enriching

 

Next Century” (Poplin, 1995); “Paradigm Shifts in Instructional Strategies: From
Reductionism to Holistic/Constructivism (Poplin, 1992); and“Writing a Difference in the
World: Beyond Ownership and Authorship (DuCharme, 1995).

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our intellectual life [on campus] in a very significant way.” Mary was a major player at
CGU and “a very constructive citizen.”

Mary’s most important scholarly contribution from those days was a report
entitled Voices From the Inside. Along with a team of colleagues, Mary spent two years
studying four inner—city schools, focusing on “the inside of the classroom.” Having been
actively involved in the school reform movement, she thought a vital element was
missing in the literature--what the people inside the schools actually believed their needs
and problems to be. So Mary and her research team wanted to empower the “people
inside the schools-children, secretaries, cafeteria workers, teachers, and parents”--to
speak for themselves. They wanted “to get them to describe their own problems and to

watch how they solved them.”

Please Come and Get Me

 

It was the end of 1991, and Mary Poplin should have felt like she was on the top
of the world. Career-wise, she was. Voices From the Inside had just been published, and,
according to Mary, “Was a big hit.” People “all around the country were happy with the
report” and it was receiving very favorable reviews. More than 60,000 copies were
distributed.

This success, though, did not necessarily translate into inner peace.

Professionally, Mary was “on the top,” but internally she knew “there was something
wrong inside.” Mary was in the midst of a failing marriage with an abusive and
chemically dependent husband. She reflects, “He was an alcoholic, and I was becoming

one.” As Mary realized her success could not fill this inner void, she began to look in

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other places. She received direction in her search from two unlikely sources: a graduate
student and a dream.

For a woman trained to do research with some degree of attention paid to proper
methodology and the value of controlled variables and replicability, Mary has
demonstrated an uncommon reliance on her intuition to make major life decisions. In our
first session together, she alluded to two different occasions when a dream played a
pivotal role in her decision-making process. Mary views dreams as one of God’s modes
of communication: “1 do have dreams every once in a while, and I really feel they are
ways God speaks to me.”

Around November 1991, in the midst of Mary’s conflicting emotions surrounding
her career joys and personal discouragements, she had her first significant dream. She
was standing in an unending line of people all dressed in gray. This lemming-like string
of people were not only dressed alike, but Mary states: “We were all very depressed.”

,With nervous laughter, Mary recounts for me how the line was filing past a table.
The table, along with its occupants, was the only objects in color within this otherwise
monochromatic dream. The table “was like the painting of Da Vinci depicting the ‘Last
Supper.’” Only, in this dream, the occupants of the table were “live.” Unlike the
painting, Jesus was not content to be at the table with his 12 disciples. Instead, “He was
greeting the guests [the line of people] on the other side of the table.”

When Mary finally arrived at Christ’s side of the table, she “looked upon His
face” and “just fell down.” “I felt so awful. I fell down . . . and He put His hands on my
shoulder and I started weeping in the dream. I was still weeping when I woke up, and I

thought, ‘Something has happened here.”’

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Although the dream left an obvious impression on Mary, at the time she still had
little idea what it meant. Even though she had been raised with some nominal religious
instruction at home and in the local Methodist church, she “had no idea what Christianity
was”; consequently, she could not place the significance of Jesus within her dream.
Unsure what to do with the emotions and thoughts her dream had provoked, she looked to
one of her graduate students to help fill in the gaps.

Now teaching at San Diego State and San Diego City College, John Rivera was a
graduate student of Mary. He worked on a number of research projects with her
including Voices. John’s ethnic heritage includes both Mexican American and Native
American roots, and, according to Mary’s observations, he is “a very spiritual” person.
Mary had long watched him carefully and found herself “attracted to his peace.”

Initially, Mary had attributed John’s “peace” to his Native American heritage and
assumed that native religions were the source of his spirituality. At one point in their
relationship, John had told Mary that if she “ever wanted to do anything with [her]
spiritual life, he would help.” Not long after her dream, Mary gave John a call.

He drove up the freeway from San Diego to meet Mary at a restaurant on the
Pacific Coast halfway between his home and Los Angeles. “Why do you think you have
to do something about your spiritual life now?” John’s initial question surprised Mary.
Her graphic answer startled her: “I have a black hole in my chest and something’s
wrong.” John, whose spirituality originated in his Christianity and not Native American
religions, gave Mary 3 simple but direct prescription for her inner ailment. He
recommended that she begin reading the Bible: five Psalms and one chapter of Proverbs a

day. If she wanted to read more, she could begin reading the New Testament as well.

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Returning to Pomona, Mary began to follow John’s instructions. She enjoyed
reading Proverbs and the New Testament but struggled with the book of Psalms. The
violent imagery in this poetic book was an affront to Mary’s New Age sensibilities: she
could not understand why David was “always calling [on] God to kill his enemies.” She
“just couldn’t deal with” the incongruity of the Psalm’s depiction of God as a vengeful
despot and the New Testarnent’s portrait of a loving Servant as seen through the life of
Jesus. Nevertheless, she continued her daily readings.

Meanwhile, in January 1992, Mary had to take a trip out East in order to help her
widowed mother move from Texas to North Carolina. On their final Sunday in this
small, rural town, Mary’s mom wanted to attend the local Methodist church. This request
caught Mary off guard because she remembered her mother as the family member least
interested in religious things.

They attended the Sunday morning worship service and found themselves seated
near the back of this old, country church. Mary remembers little of the preacher’s
sermon, but she retains vivid recollections of what he said in the benediction. They were
about to conclude the service with the ordinance of communion and the preacher called
on anyone who desired to partake of the juice and bread to come down to the front of the
sanctuary. All were free to participate, he said, “but you have to believe that Jesus Christ
lived and died for your sins, and you have to want Him in your life.”

Mary describes those simple words of invitation as the turning point in her
spiritual journey, the impetus for her conversion to Christianity. She made her way down
to the front. “I actually thought,” Mary said, “that [even] if a tornado whips through this

building, I’m going to get to the communion rail.” When Mary got to the front in all of

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her spiritual naivete, she made one simple request of God three successive times: “Please,
come and get me. Please, come and get me. Please, come and get me.”

Returning to California convinced of God’s presence in her life, Mary continued
to struggle with the direction of marriage. She began to pray repeatedly for God’s
guidance. Should she remain in the marriage, or should she leave? The reality of Mary’s
newly found religious identity began to emerge as God seemed to give her a clear answer
through two events. First, Mary received what she thought to be another revelatory
dream. Standing alone in the middle of a desert with nothing but sand surrounding her,
Jesus suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He walked up to her, looked directly into her
eyes, and said, “Don’t look back.”

At the same time, her husband’s alcohol abuse and violent behavior only grew
worse. One morning he woke up and, according to Mary, “he attacked me, just attacked
me.” Shocked and stunned out of her slumber, Mary did not know what to do. In the
terror and pain of the moment, all her mind could cling to were the words of the twenty-
third Psalm. Mary began to recite the verses out loud: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want . . .” As soon as the words left her lips, her husband’s fists stopped their
beating.

That agonizing experience not only convinced Mary to leave her husband, but it
also revealed the very real existence and power of evil in this world. She began to
understand what the psalnrist, David, was doing when he called on God to destroy his
enemies. David had been dealing with evil people who were undertaking evil deeds.

They opposed God, and David was calling for divine retribution.

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Reflecting on the senselessness of her husband’s actions and the words of David,
Mary says, "The scales dropped from [my] eyes . . . I saw that I had never resolved in my
life the existence of evil.” Her world and culture were not inherently good needing only
minor corrections. Rather, at the core, her world, her culture, and yes, even her husband,
were evil and therefore needed transformation. In fact, Mary took the pervasiveness of
evil the final step. "That’s when I saw. That’s when I realized. And then, of course,
you realize . . . [evil] is in you, too.”

While all of this spiritual transformation was taking place in Mary’s life, she also
was preparing for a major shift at work. She had been working nonstop at Claremont for
more than 10 years building the teacher education program and had never bothered to
take a scheduled sabbatical. Finally, she was going to take a full year off from her
professorial duties and rest. Her plan was to separate from her husband, move back to
Austin for a year, and give herself an opportunity to continue her spiritual growth. John
Rivera sent her two brochures he thought might help Mary in her spiritual development.
One brochure advertised a week-long conference in Dallas with a man named Bill
Gothard, who was an extremely conservative fundamentalist Christian minister who
focused his teaching on the renewing of the mind through a better understanding of
biblical principles. The second pamphlet promoted a charismatic, Catholic monastery
located in New Mexico that hosted three-day retreats for “inner healing.”

Both proved helpful to Mary’s young faith. The monastery experience touched
her soul, and the Gothard conference helped to “cleanse” her mind. Mary recounted for
me the power of both. At the Catholic retreat, “every time the nuns sang songs that had

the word ‘soul’ in them, I would start uncontrollably weeping.” Mary would eventually

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make many return trips to the monastery as well as attend eight or nine other Gothard
conferences.

These experiences are only two examples of Mary’s eclectic religious heritage
since her conversion. Where most religious people point to the influence of one
particular denomination or religious sect within their lives, Mary lists a host of spiritual
influences. Furthermore, this variety of religious traditions has helped Mary appreciate
the diversity of the Christian church. “God has sent me Catholics. He sent me
charismatics. He sent me Pentecostals, everybody . . . And I began to appreciate what His
Body [the Church] looks like.” Mary attributes her ability to help students of all religious
backgrounds to this diverse influence. “1 see a lot of His Body in students that I work
with who are Christian and who are struggling . . . from darkest, weirdest backgrounds to
Christians who are Evangelical Catholic or Evangelical Protestants.”

Even though Mary has been influenced theologically from such a wide array of
sources. she would not characterize her own theological beliefs as “elective” but rather as
“biblical.” Rather than holding to a “mish-mash” of unrelated religious ideas, Mary is
able to look at various parts of the Christian church (much like she looked at the varying
approaches to educational theory) and take the best each has to offer. “I think I’m just a
person who can . . .look at [a particular Christian denomination and] see the biblically
based part and appreciate it . . . and then not get hung up on the other stuff they’re doing.”
Mary is her own woman, basing her actions on her conscience. Ultimately, Mary stands
on a “common ground” of theological non negotiables, including the foundational

Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity as well as faith that “He died for [our] sins.”

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Colleagues expressed to me a number of differing reactions to Mary’s conversion.
First, describing her new lifestyle requires a whole new vocabulary. Flamboyant,
outrageous, and bawdy have been replaced by austere, simple, and solitary. The “party
gir ” has been supplanted by a type of woman usually found in a convent. As one
colleague describes the transformation: “She behaves in many ways the way I would
expect a nun to behave,” including her plain attire, scarcity of makeup and jewelry, and
even the manner in which she carries herself down the office hallway. Replacing her
margarita glass with an ever-present bottle of water, Mary has not shown up at a party for
years.

As I talked to one long-term faculty member at CGU, I sensed both a deep respect
for Mary Poplin and a certain amount of confusion. He has known and observed Mary
for almost 20 years and has always been amazed by the “great passion and commitment”
she has brought to each of her intellectual pursuits. “Mary has always been a preacher of
whatever her current intellectual interest is.” The same colleague then broke down
Mary’s shifting professional interests into four separate phases: Mary “went from special
education to feminist psychology to critical pedagogy, and now we are getting New
Testament.” She would “ardently pursue” the new topic with “everything” she had,
including changing her bookshelves, altering her courses, and switching her patterns of
behavior such as her use of sabbaticals.

He remains amazed at Mary’s chamaeleon-like ability to refocus her vocational
pursuits. “There are not that many faculty who change their intellectual commitments in

20 years . . . I haven’t. I still preach the same six things I taught 20 years ago.” And

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because Mary has changed so often and so completely, this self-described “cynical”
colleague wonders “what the next one will be.”

Still, he cannot conclude the discussion about Mary without expressing his deep
respect for her and her work. Even though her academic emphasis has been evolving,
there have been “strong threads of continuity throughout her career. What doesn’t change
is her basic talent, her concern for students, her teaching skills, her commitment to
students and this institution.” Even though her colleagues are sometimes “confused by
her” they continue to “respect her a lot.”

Later, I asked Mary to respond to her colleague’s observation that her embrace of
Christianity was just another intellectual phase--one that may very well be soon replaced
by another vocational passion. She readily agreed with the description of her former life
as a series of intellectual stages: “I was just an idea wagging around.”

In contrast, Mary vehemently disagrees with his doubts about her long-term
commitment to her faith. “I’ve never stayed with anything this long.” She concedes how
someone viewing her life from the outside over the last 20 years rrright drink this way. “I
know externally it might look similar, but internally it wasn’t similar at all.” Mary,
herself, even had doubts about how long her attachment to Christianity would last. But
the years have eroded those doubts. Of all the theories and “isms” Mary Poplin has
experienced and studied in her intellectual journey, she gives clear testimony to
Christianity as the “most intellectually challenging” and the “most consistently
stimulating intellectually as well as in every other way.” For Mary, “there is no way to

plumb the depths of Christianity.”

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By her own account, Mary has studied in detail behaviorism, constructivism,
structuralism, and feminism. None of these intellectually challenging experiences has
compared to her relationship to Christianity. “1 would always get kind of bored with the
[previous] theories.” The difference came because Mary found that Christianity was
more than just a theory, more than an intellectual exercise. Christianity is a relationship,
and the unending challenge of her faith is something Mary is sure will “hold [her] interest
for a lifetime.”

She goes on to describe how God has “transformed [her] life.” She realizes how
desperate she was, and Mary’s memories of that hopelessness without God have
“radicalized” her into a new place in life “where it would be very difficult” for her ever to
go back. “You do become another person,” and Mary believes it is “almost impossible”
to explain that experience to someone on the outside.

When Mary confesses to becoming “another person,” she gives witness to her
changing identity. Who she is today is different from who she was yesterday. On the
other hand, what brings her fulfillment today, what makes her exceedingly glad has
changed from what had previously brought her fulfillment. Mary’s narrative gives clear
testimony to this evolving sense of identity and self. Now, we must ask, can her new
sense of identity find fulfillment in her vocational context of CGU? Will the work
environment that attracted her in 1981 satisfy her longings of today? Can she adequately

fulfill her new calling?

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Being Protected; Feeling Watched

By locating the Claremont Colleges in a neighborhood with Harvard, Yale, and
Columbia Avenues for street names, Claremont’s founders have not hidden their lofty
aspirations. James A. Blaidsell, founder of the schools, traveled from the east coast to
Southern California in the early twentieth century because he believed the meeting of the
East and West within the Claremont Colleges would offer “the best opportunity for a
unique educational experience.”

Through both their form and function, the seven institutions that comprise the
Claremont Colleges have borrowed from the best higher education has to offer. Like
Cambridge and Oxford, the seven form a collection of loosely affiliated schools located
on contiguous campuses, while at the same time functioning as individual institutions
with their own student body, faculty, governance system, curriculum emphasis, style, and
institutional mission. With five’distinguished undergraduate colleges (Pomona, Scripps,
Claremont-McKinna, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer), one institute (Keck Graduate Institute of
Applied Life Science) and one graduate university (Claremont), these seven institutions
serve more than 8,000 students with some 500 faculty.

CGU has been exclusively dedicated to graduate study since 1925. One of the
few independent, private graduate institutions in America, CGU awards master’s and
doctoral degrees in 25 professional and academic disciplines, including the arts,
education, organizational and behavioral sciences, politics and economics, the
humanities, and management. Some of its more famous faculty include Peter Drucker
and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Currently, the school has more than 2,000 graduate

students, with some 84 full-time faculty.

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Aca emic Context for Facult Work

Some writers have been careful to emphasize the importance of a person’s
institutional context as she seeks to carry out her call. By reflecting on the work of J aque
Ellul (1972) and Mary Douglas (1986), Hansen (1995) foreshadows the often contrary
relationship between how one carries out her vocation and the boundaries erected by the
institution in which that work takes place. Both Ellul and Douglas have demonstrated an
often adversarial relationship between the conservative nature of institutions and the
creative impulses of a person possessing a strong sense of vocation. As Hansen
summarizes, “The challenge teachers must address is how to balance their personal aims
and judgment with the public obligations embodied in the life of their institution” (p.
140). Or, as Parker Palmer (1998) asks, does the “academic culture discourage us [as
teachers] from living connected lives?” (p. 35).

Within the faculty narrative of Mary Poplin, the culture of Claremont has a
definitive influence. Unlike the institutions Ellul and Douglas had in mind, CGU’s
liberal culture and strong view of academic freedom provide a helpful context for Mary to
carry out her vocational aims. Yet, as we will see, this freedom does not necessarily

equate an attitude of respect.

We Will Protect Her to the Death
The culture of academic freedom that permeates CGU makes it possible for Mary
Poplin to explore her religious commitment in relation to her work in a depth and detail

that probably would not take place at many other secular institutions. Mary is not naive

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about the opportunity and freedom CGU’s academic culture affords her: “I feel I’m in the
best place I can be for what I’m called to be in terms of a secular university classroom.”

Mary has described the school as “probably the furthest radical ‘grad’ program, by
far, in the country . . . critical theory, radical multiculturalism . . .transsexual studies . . .
all of that stuff you can study here.” From the study of Wicca and the Isis religion in the
Religion Department to the inclusion of a course on “Immigrants and Lesbianism” in the
school of education, Claremont provides a context that values the freedom of its
professors to teach courses some might consider on the edge of the traditional curriculum.

No cuniculum committee exists at the school, and according to one faculty
member, “We have total freedom over what we teach.” The same professor lays out the
acaderrric philosophy of Claremont’s administration: Hire the best faculty you can find,
let them teach what they want to teach, and then allow the students to vote with their feet.
This complete autonomy has become a point of pride at Claremont and is the reason a
colleague of Mary’s can defend her right to teach Christianity in the classroom with this
vow: “We will protect her to the death.”

Other faculty’s viewpoints are protected as well. The same professor who vowed
to protect Mary’s academic freedom also mentioned another professor in the department
of education whom he labeled as a “radical” Buddhist, Marxist, lesbian psychotherapist.
“It is not as though Mary is the only person who has a strong philosophical point of view
and is espousing it publically in her classes and work.” Or, as one student poignantly
suggested, “There are a number of Evangelicals on campus; they just don’t happen to [all]

be Christian.”

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As an institution, Claremont has strong respect for diversity. This pervasive
value both helps and hinders Mary’s distinctly religious mission. She is given the forum
to teach and propagate her views. Yet, there are many on campus who end up being
uncomfortable with what Mary communicates into her open microphone.

One faculty member described for me a recent talk Mary gave at the Claremont
Reading Conference, the university’s annual conference on reading for area school
teachers and other guests. Mary’s topic, unsurprisingly, was on a Christian approach to
teaching. This colleague expressed to me intense discomfort with what he referred to as
Mary’s “sermon.” He mentioned her open Bible on the podium and her continual
reference to it as the text for her “sermon.” Because of his great respect for diversity, he
did not like Mary’s “being so explicitly Christian.” “I’m uncomfortable when anyone
comes in and promotes a particular point of view such as a religious point of view or a

political point of view or a racial point of view” as up view.

Freedom Without Respgt

It seemed like a natural move for Mary to migrate to CGU in the early 19803
when she sought to define her vocational identity and theoretical approach on the fringes
of the established academic culture. With her current religious convictions, Mary once
again finds herself outside the mainstream of academe, and she still relies on Claremont’s
reputation for radicalism to give her the freedom to research, write, and teach about issues
other places might not. She clearly understands how “academic freedom is at the top of

the value structure here.”

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Yet, although Mary may feel protected by the school’s commitment to academic
freedom and diversity, this “covering” does not equal respect. As Mary states with utter
conviction, “You could be anything on the university campus and it would be better than
being a Christian, anything in the world, you name it.”

I asked Mary for an example of this perceived disrespect, and she cited her
exclusion from the Women’s Studies program at CGU. Not only has she not been asked
to teach in this program, but also her courses are not even included on the recommended
course list. Ironically, Mary was the first woman hired at Claremont to a full-time,
tenure-track position. To add further intrigue, the Women’s Studies program is closely
linked to the Religion Department. Yet, Mary’s courses like “The Still Small Voice:
Readings in Spirituality and Education” and “Implications of Judeo-Christian Principles
and Practices for Educators in a Diverse Society,” which make a direct link among
theory, education, and religion, are still excluded from the authorized list.

Mary traces this tension between her and the program to a panel discussion held at
a Borders Bookstore in which she once participated along with the woman who heads up
the Women’s Studies program. The panel was made up of various women who possessed
some type of expertise on feminism and spirituality. Mary was invited because of her
work with Mother Theresa.

The evening’s discussion was arranged so that each participant on the small panel
would respond to questions from the audience. At one point in the evening, the subject
turned to matriarchal religions. As this issue was close to the heart of the Women’s
Studies director (who also happens to “chair” the Religion Department), she used the

opportunity to recommend some books she herself had written on the topic.

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Immediately to her left sat Mary; therefore, Mary was the next person to respond.
Mary recollects the evening: “And I said, ‘Well, I had gotten into those things in my past,
but that, really and truly, I really needed forgiveness for my sins. And, I never found
anybody but one person in the world who ever died for me. And it wasn’t a woman.”’

Mary reports that since that evening, the director “has hardly ever spoken to me.”

Rhetorical Tensions

Mary has found that using religious rhetoric can be a precarious proposition
within the secular academy. She illustrates this through two examples. First, she
explains how many people are much more at ease with calling someone “spiritual” than
with refening to them as “religious.”

In one of Mary’s qualitative research classes, a Christian student was presenting
her dissertation research on handicapped children and their parents. In the midst of her
presentation, she identified the parents of a particular child as “religious.” Right away,
another student whom Mary describes as “way out there” corrected the former student by
saying, “You mean [the parents] were spiritual.” Mary listened to this exchange and
recognized the dynamic taking place. “I knew immediately what that was. I knew that
spirit because it had been me.”

From Mary’s previous personal experience, she had found that people who refer
to themselves as “spiritual” are often those who have no real connection to a particular
religious faith but consider themselves to have a deep personal interest in helping
humanity. They usually do not view God as some relational Being but rather see Him as

a type of energy or divine Love. From Mary’s rhetorical framework, to be “religious”

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means that a person is actively involved in an organized religion. That is what the
Christian student meant when she described these parents as religious.

The objecting student wondered if it was “wise” to use a descriptor like
“religious.” Mary answered forcefully, “We’re researchers number one, and it’s my
feeling that you should always be as accurate as you can in describing what you found.
And it was less accurate for [the Christian student] to say her population was spiritual
than for her to say her population was religious.”

The use of the name Jesus is another example Mary cited in regard to the use of
religious rhetoric on the secular campus. She describes how difficult it was for her when
she first became a Christian to use the name Jesus in the classroom. “It was easy for me
to talk about God and hard for me to use the name Jesus.” And Mary believes the same is
true with people in the academy who call themselves spiritual rather than religious.
“Buddhists don’t have any trouble talking about God even if they don’t believe in Him.”
But with Jesus, “people get really nervous.”

Now that Mary is more comfortable with using strongly religious rhetoric in
pluralistic settings such as the classroom or conferences, she looks for avenues to discuss
God, Jesus, and scripture. She has found her best entry point to be her experiences with
Mother Theresa. “The main place I get away with using scripture is to use Mother
Theresa because every secular humanist accepts her.” And the name of Jesus will often
come up within that context because “that’s all [Mother Theresa] ever talked about.”
Vulnerable or Misunderstood?

It is apparent, at least from Mary’s vantage point, that her colleagues at CGU do

not know how to respond to the “new” Mary and her religious approach to work. From

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the outside looking in, the reaction is completely understandable. In the space of 20
years, Mary has done a l80-degree turn in her career and the manner in which she
conducts her'life. Before 1992, Mary spent all her energies and time to build up the
teacher education program at Claremont. She was its major architect and its most
passionate supporter. She believed that approach to education was the answer to
America’s problems in schooling. She brought in nationally known speakers to spread
the “gospel” of critical theory and feminist pedagogy. She recruited the students and
motivated them to take the “word” to the streets.

Mary’s colleagues and bosses at the school understood where she was coming
from then, even if they all did not necessarily agree with all of her theoretical, intellectual,
and political commitments. They knew what she was talking about and could appreciate
her passion. They had known, seen, or read other scholars like Mary in other institutions
of higher learning or at national conferences. They were familiar with other authors who
shared Mary’s values. They had a frame of reference for Mary Poplin: radical educator.

Many of these same people have no frame of reference for Mary Poplin: radical
Christian educator. Somehow, the gospel according to Paulo Freire is much more
accessible to the average educator than the gospel according to Mother Theresa.
Discussing school reform in terms of power and the majority’s domination of the
underprivileged rolls off the tongue much easier for some secular education faculty than
describing the same issues as a “sin problem.”

Since 1992, Mary and her colleagues can still agree on the symptoms of the
problem when it comes to schooling and education. All are able to see the inherent

inequalities and the vast gulf between the classes. Where the confusion arises is when

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Mary begins to describe the disease in spiritual terms--when she describes prejudice and
oppression as a result of humanity’s refusal to follow the instructions of God. As a result,
where the disagreement ensues is when part of Mary’s anecdote includes spiritual healing
or the need for men and women to fix the problem through a closer connection to God.

It is no wonder Mary describes her relationship with colleagues in terms of
bemused detachment and silent stares. “I feel watched.” She knows many of her more
“radical” colleagues advise their students not to take her classes and to keep their
distance. In faculty meetings, people will sometimes “make nasty little comments” about
“right-wing Christians,” and then all eyes turn to Mary. Whenever Mary brings up
spiritual issues or mentions God as a viable solution, “people will gripe and say, ‘You
know her.’”

One student reported to me that some of Mary’s colleagues, especially those who
knew her well before 1992, have felt “abandoned” by Mary after her conversion to
Christianity. They have felt “personally hurt” because Mary left her former ideologies
which they shared. Rightly or wrongly, these colleagues believe Mary has abandoned
them as well.

At one point in her career, Mary was often used by the administration to connect
with donors who would come to campus. She had a reputation for being able to bring in
the money. Now, she never receives those requests to meet with potential donors. “I’m
not ever paraded out there. I used to be all the time.” From Mary’s perspective, the
administration’s current policy is “to keep [her] in the closet.” When asked to explain the
administration’s response to her dream of an alternative education program based on

Christian principles, Mary simply states, “Silence is a good way to describe it.”

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Mary does not just feel watched, but she also feels “vulnerable” to possible
punitive action. She has heard through the “grapevine” of students who have gone to
other faculty and even to the president of the institution complaining about her blatant
teaching of Christianity in the classroom. Although she heard no negative reports from
her last five year post-tenure review, Mary attributes this more to her Chair’s non-
confrontive leadership style than to her own clean slate. A colleague on the committee
had told Mary of a “troubling” letter sent to the committee from a former student
expressing dissent with Mary’s decidedly religious approach.

It is no stretch to observe that Mary has received mixed signals from her
institution regarding her vocational choices the last eight years. Mary’s boldness,
together with Claremont’s liberal view of the curriculum, provides her the opportunity to
be true to her mission as a Christian professor. Yet, Mary seems to have a nagging
suspicion that her colleagues’ disapproval of her message will some day override the

protection of her right to teach anything she chooses.

An Engaged Ap_ologetic

Located in the lower bowels of Harper Hall, Mary Poplin’s classroom can be
found within a maze of hallways and rooms the graduate students knowingly refer to as
“the catacombs.” As the main classroom used by Mary in a building solely dedicated to
the Center for Educational Studies within CGU, this basement room has been referred to
by Mary as the “cornerstone” of Harper Hall. The Christian heritage of these labels is not

lost on Mary or her students.

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On these small, nondescript institutional beige walls hang three long sections of
white board. I am not surprised to find the tables and chairs arranged as one large
rectangle rather than the more traditional parallel lines of a lecture hall since the room
serves as a classroom for small groups of graduate students whose focus is education and
teaching. The arrangement encourages discussion and active intellectual interchange
rather than a passive acceptance of the authoritative professor. The room’s aesthetics
match the pedagogical assumptions present--at least in Mary’s class.

With only three small windows looking out and up at the outside world, this
basement room could be a classroom in any graduate school in America. The only
reminder that I am in Southern California is the sign placed above the doorway
instructing me what to do in case of an earthquake: “If there is an earthquake . . . duck,
cover, and hold on.”

Today’s class is part of a course entitled “Wisdom, Knowledge and
Understanding: Similarities and Differences Between Dominant World Views in the
Academy and Schools Since the Enlightenment and Judeo-Christianity.” Described in
the catalogue as a course designed to help students analyze particular world views since
the Enlightenment, including existentialism, modernism, humanism, structuralism, and
postmodernism, the course is taught with J udeo-Christianity as the primary lens used to
critique the above philosophies. Held in the first summer school session at CGU for six
hours every Saturday for six weeks, the course is open to any student from any discipline
as long as he or she has “a working knowledge of biblical J udeo-Christianity.”

When Mary anives in the room 10 rrrinutes before class begins, four students are

present. One student has already filled the whiteboard directly across from the entrance

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to the room with dates and names, including information on the birth and history of
Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky, as well as a brief summary of existentialism in
anticipation of his presentation later in the class.

Mary brings with her a file box full of books and articles, her bottle of water, and
a caring visage. She greets each student warmly and immediately inquires about one of
the student’s health, asking about her prescribed medication for allergies. Not satisfied
with the current course of medical action, Mary promises to give the student some of her
own allergy medication after break. The student takes out her purse to reimburse Mary
for the anticipated medication, but Mary politely and firmly declines: “Don’t worry about
it.”

These types of personal exchanges continue throughout the prelude to class as
Mary demonstrates her keen interest in and large awareness of her students’ lives outside
of the classroom context. Her actions and words with these students only reinforce one

’9 6‘

student’s description of Mary’s caring approach as “compassionate, welcoming,” and
“embracing.” Another student has labeled Mary a “student-centered professor.”

Attired in along, flowing red dress with a white sweater, Mary has her hair pulled
back in her trademark bun. Wearing little makeup and only the slightest hint of red
lipstick, Mary’s only trace of worldly connection is her string of pearls and matching
earrings. Tall, with extended features, Mary has long, slender fingers which are only
accentuated by their constant use as she communicates as much with her hands as she

does her mouth. As Mary continues her pre—class patter with individual students, others

slowly file in, taking their place around the rectangle. Mary has staked out a position in

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the middle table on the right side of the room. The dozen or so students have filled in the
other three sides, men on one half and women on the other.

In front of the students lie open notebooks, legal pads, pens, and various copies of
the Bible. The incongruity of students bringing Bibles to class at a secular institution like
CGU is matched only by the three books Mary has prominently placed on her table: a
Spirit Filled New King James Bible, a Dictionary of Philosophy, and a newly arrived
copy of the Humanist Manifesto 2000.

Informally dressed in typical California style of shorts and sandals, the students
range in age from the mid-twenties to early fifties, with most of them being in their early
thirties. All are educational practitioners of some sort, including middle school teachers,
college instructors, and a teacher at a school for delinquent adolescents. Monolithic in
occupation, the group does possess a diverse makeup in gender and ethnicity, including
Asians and African-Americans.

Mary begins the class session with a straightforward question: “How is the course
going for you, and where would you like it to go?” Sensing Mary’s “risk-taking”
authenticity in her question, the class responds quickly and freely. Although all feedback
is uniformly positive, Mary listens intently to each answer, sometimes with a follow-up
question and other times with a knowing nod and a murmur of ascent.

Listening to these exchanges, I am reminded of one student’s description of
Mary’s expert listening skills: “I don’t think I have met a better listener . . . She is an
incredible listener, which testifies to her authenticity.” Such listening skills have served
well this woman devoted to a career of participatory research. Good research and

understanding are as much about listening as they are about asking.

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Having given the students an opportunity to respond, Mary shares her own
thoughts and feelings about the direction of the course. Her central concern expressed to
the class is a worry brought up a couple of times in our conversations the previous two
days. Mary believes that a preoccupation with the intellectual principles behind religion,
culture, and world view can potentially lead to a neglect of the spiritual side of life. She
fears the rational and the logical could drown out the intuitive and the spiritual. Although
our approach to education, religion, and life is not irrational, it must be more than
rational. In light of the concern, Mary tells her students that she is considering airing a
video at the end of class that will “show us out” of that temptation.

The next portion of the class time is given over to a student presentation. One
student uses his hour long lecture to give his classmates a rudimentary understanding of
existentialism, including its proponents, historical development, and essential
philosophical assumptions. He begins with a straightforward question: “What is our
basic purpose in life?” Sprinkled throughout the student responses are references to God,
the Bible, and even the Westminster catechism. The answers sounded to me more like
seminary responses than they did answers given in a graduate course on education. Mary
observed from a detached position the presentation and the discussion that resulted.
Preferring to allow the students room to figure things out on their own, she would speak
up only when asked a direct question.

When she did address the class after the student was finished, Mary spoke to them
as if they were all Christian educators as she motivated and challenged them to become
more sophisticated in their own arguments with what Mary refened to as an increasingly

godless culture. The task of the Christian apologist, according to Mary, is to find the

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holes within the non-Christian philosophy and then formulate the questions to ask in
order to “awaken them to their errors.” She labeled this central task as an “engaged
apologetic.”

To perform the task, Mary challenged her students to work harder and study
deeper. “We have to know the issues of critical theory better than [critical theorists]
know them.” This includes knowing the “holes” as well as what is true about the theory.
Although a secular, educational theory like critical theory has been able to document and
describe the misuse of power within America’s schools and the domination of the
disadvantaged, these same theories, in Mary’s opinion, fall short in proposing adequate
solutions. This is where an engaged Christian apologist/educator could stand in the gap
and offer alternative answers. Mary’s enthusiasm was evident as the class began to sound
more and more like a revival meeting: “We’ve got work to do . . . . Isn’t it exciting? . . . .
You’re not nodding enough.”

Mary uses this reachable moment to challenge her students to become more
knowledgeable about philosophy in general. Noting how the field of education has
historically followed the lead of psychology, Mary bemoans how both education and
psychology have separated themselves from the discipline of philosophy. According to
Mary, as they both have left the deep questions of philosophy and followed the
methodologies of the social sciences, they “have lost the ability to ask questions about the
meaning of life.”

Those who study and practice education in today’s academy need to take it upon
themselves to be educated in philosophy and the philosophical assumptions of the

theories currently in vogue. Agreeing with the postmodernists that knowledge and power

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are related and that no theory of knowledge is neutral, Mary calls on the class to help
people inside and outside of education to analyze their unexamined assumptions.

Interjecting her own biography into the discussion, Mary shares a little of her own
life story and how her pro-conversion life experience strategically prepared her for doing
battle with current educational theory. “I sort of know what they think because I was one
of them.” Or, as she once confessed to me, “I’ve met the enemy and it’s me.” This story
naturally extends to her dramatic conversion narrative which apparently makes a deep
impression on some of the students.

In light of Mary’s intensely personal confession, one of the female students speaks
up and says “it would be a good idea” if each student shared his or her own conversion
story. Recognizing the potentialfor awkwardness, Mary immediately qualifies the
request: “It could be why you are or are not a Christian,” and “anyone who doesn’t want
to share doesn’t have to.” To my surprise, each student around the table takes his or her
turn to explain how he or she was converted. I cannot help but wonder what the class
environment would have been like if the student who describes herself as an “agnostic
Jew” had been in class that day.

Although the student reaction may have been tempered, I do not think I would see
much difference in the way Mary conducts the class. She would be just as open about her
Christian views with a class full of Christian students as she would a room of
nonreligious students or students of other religious persuasions. First, her experience as a
qualitative researcher has taught her to be transparent concerning her own theoretical
dispositions. To hide them would be poor scholarship. Second, Mary believes that, in

order to teach “truth,” she must teach Christianity. “1 just say what is on my mind” within

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the classroom, she avows. According to Mary, there is no such thing as “neutrality” in the
classroom as all proponents of respective theories (religious or secular) advocate their
views in some way. Finally, as one called to teach in a secular context, Mary believes her
role as a professor is to challenge students to examine their own theoretical positions and
discover any weaknesses in their own thinking. Mary is aggressive intellectually in her
pedagogical strategy, yet she counters that aggressiveness with a caring demeanor that
seems to soften any propensity to offend those students who do not share her Christian
presuppositions.

Nearing the middle of the six-hour class, the students and Mary take an hour-long
break for a meal. They all travel to a restaurant in downtown Pomona called Walter’s,
Mary’s favorite hangout. Serving as Mary’s dining room and office, Walter’s provides a
casual context outside of the university where she can make a personal connection with
her students. Whereas many academics go off campus to find themselves a corner to hide
out from the world in order to think and write, Mary uses her “special place” for more
intimate personal connections with her students. The more time I spend with Mary, the
more I am convinced that, even though she still undertakes research and writing projects,
Mary’s most cherished academic work is done one-on-one within the lives of her
students.

For more than an hour, the class sits on Walter’s open-air veranda enjoying food,
beverages, conversation, and laughter. When the main course finally arrives, one of the
students says the blessing. Observing all of this, I begin to wonder if it is here, away from
the classroom and office, where the essence of Mary’s vocation is conducted. It is in this

informal setting where her spirit is able to make a direct connection to the spirit of her

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students. This is where her listening ear, unwavering gaze, and reflective questions can
do their best work. Maybe the classroom and office are simply preludes to what happens
on this veranda. They till the ground and prepare the soil for what Mary believes to be
her life-changing message and favorite academic roles: Mary, “The Evangelist” and
Mary, “The Encourager.”

Sufficiently filled with food and gab, the students and Mary return to campus for
the final section of the day’s class. Because of the fatigue factor involved in a six hour
class session, Mary will often use a video during the final hour that is relevant to the
day’s discussion. She often waits until break time to choose the day’s selection. Oh she
has a few ideas, but she wants to sense the “flow” of the classroom discussion first. Mary
also waits on what she calls the “the leading of the Spirit” in order to use this visual
medium to reinforce the message of the day.

Mary’s pedagogical strategy and style are influenced by both her mystical
sensibility and her caring ethic. Her approach to teaching includes copious preparation
and continual sensitivity to the “Spirit’s leading.” A former student and co-teacher
suggests that Mary “gears [her] teaching to who is taking the course rather than the
subject” being taught. With an approach to the classroom that can best be described as
“intuitive,” Mary will change a lesson plan at the last minute depending on the mood and
reaction of the students.

She takes to class a “ton of material” including articles, books, and videos. Yet,
she is honest in admitting that she enters the classroom not totally knowing “where the
class is going to go.” Mary silently prays through a given class period; consequently, she

has what one student calls “amazing spiritual feelers” that enable Mary to say the right

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thing at the right time. Another former student, who is himself a college professor
describes Mary’s educational approach as “different than any prof I have ever had.”

Today, Mary “is led” to follow up on a theme from the beginning of class. She is
troubled that many American Christian intellectuals focus almost entirely on the mind
without considering the spirit. Although Mary is careful to caution against a false
dichotomy--Christianity is about both the intellectual and the spiritual - she is
increasingly sensitive to those Christians who so emphasize the development of the mind
that they neglect the spirit.

Giving all of us a hint of the personal nature of this struggle, Mary reflects on the
only direct statement made to her by Mother Theresa when she was in Calcutta. Mary
had often seen Mother Theresa, exchanged greetings with her during her two months in
India but had never talked with her. One morning, after Mary ran an errand for one of the
Sisters at the ministry, she sat on a bench outside of the main office. While Mary sat
there, Mother Theresa suddenly walked out the front door, which was only a piece of
cloth. She came directly over to Mary, looked her “straight in the eye,” and began
shaking her finger at Mary “like [she had] done something wrong.” Because Mother
Theresa was extremely small of stature, her eye level while standing was about the same
as Mary’s seated. She gave Mary one simple command: “You fall in love with Jesus more
every day.”

As a faculty person who had long been dependent on her mind, Mary took this as
a sign from God Himself. Mary asked the class, “Have you ever had somebody tell you
something and every cell in your body comes to attention?” Mary felt Mother Theresa’s

words were directly from the Holy Spirit. “1 immediately knew that this was my

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problem--that I’m an intellectual. I like to do Christianity intellectually, and the real issue
is loving Jesus.” For Mary, Mother Theresa had “read that in [Mary’s] spirit,” and those
words still hound Mary today and consequently her choice of videos.

The video was produced by a religious organization seeking to publicize the
transformation of various third-world communities through religious revival. Looking at
four different towns located throughout the world, the film’s narrator paints a sharp black
and white contrast between the villages’ conditions before and after a religious
awakening. Pointing to various markers like reduced crime rates, closed-down saloons,
and increased agricultural production, the producers unabashedly claim spiritual changes
as the source for this radical transformation. Not much consideration is given to possible
conflicting variables.

’ Class discussion following the presentation is not spent debating the veracity or
methodology of the report. Rather, Mary engages the students in an exercise drawing
parallels between third-world communities in the video and first-world locales such as
Southern California. Do they know of any such instances of transformation taking place
locally? Some students, as well as Mary, answer the question affirmatively with
illustrations from their own personal experience.

Mary concludes the discussion and the day’s class with a renewed challenge to
bring the same type of spiritual renewal to the university culture. She reinforces the day’s
two major themes. First, students need to work hard intellectually to know the prevailing
theories and philosophies better than the theorists themselves in order to sift the valid
from the invalid and to be ready to offer alternative solutions when possible. Second, the

spirit must not be sacrificed for the mind. For the Christian scholar, loving Jesus is to be

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done with all one’s mind and all one’s soul. There is no dichotomy. To quote one of
Mary’s favorite maxims: “You cannot do Christianity only in your head, and you can’t do

it without your head.”

Describing Magy’s Integrative Bridge

Living in two worlds that seemingly hold differing world-view perspectives, Mary
Poplin struggles to erect some type of vocational bridge between them. She related to me
her anguish over her own motivation in undertaking such a daunting task: “Some days
you just go home and you feel dirty.” She adds with a chuckle, “You feel like you’ve
heard so much humanistic psychology and rationalization and dark stuff that you just
need a shower or something.” Surprised as I was by the intensity of Mary’s metaphor, the
more I listed to her contrast her current vocational call with her past pursuits, the more I
realized her harsh words captured the intensity of Mary’s inner beliefs.

Observing Mary Poplin at work in the classroom, I begin to see the architectural
design behind her vocational bridge. First, Mary’s interface between her religious
identity and her work at Claremont consists of two lanes, one intellectual and the other
interpersonal. Intellectually, Mary’s faith has affected her use of theory in her research
and the classroom. Interpersonally, her spirituality has made a decided imprint upon the
way she relates to people. Applying her Christianity to her academic work has changed
Mary’s approach to educational theory as well as had a direct effect on her one-on—one
relationships with students and colleagues.

Describing her twin-spanned approach as a unified edifice, Mary is careful to

make a strong connection between her relational ministry and her intellectual mission. “It

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is a spiritual motivation and also an intellectual drive.” God has not called Mary to do
her academic work “just in my head.” No wonder she has such a thriving student
ministry. “He sends me people who are like I was and I know its not an accident.”

Definitely not a one-way street, Mary’s bridge not only has two integrative lanes,
but the traffic across the bridge goes in both directions. Her task as a religious scholar is
not just to bring Christian thought to bear on the academy but also to apply the best
thinking of the academic world to the Church. For example, Mary believes that critical
theory can teach the American church much about issues of race and poverty. Too often,
the “body of Christ” separates itself into black, white, and brown without growing
together as a unified whole.

Before fleshing out Mary’s integrative and holistic strategy in the following pages,
I first need to describe its foundation, which originates in her sense of call. Having then
articulated the enactment of Mary’s call, I would be remiss if I did not end the discussion
without reflecting on the influence of Mother Theresa on Mary’s own approach to her
vocation and her life. If we cannot grasp the essence of Mother Theresa’s sense of

vocation, we cannot begin to understand Mary Poplin’s.

Inc—CED

Historically, vocation has been closely connected to the idea of “call” or the
“awakening” (Hansen, 1995, p. 40) of one’s vocational sense. Also described by Hansen
as a “magnetic pull” (p. 1), one’s call impels a scholar toward a particular type of work.
Describing a “call” as more than a choice amongst competing job opportunities, Emmett

reports that a “called” person believes not only that she should do a particular type of

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work but also that she must do it. At some point in their lives, people who have a strong
sense of call have followed the advice given by Christian Education professor Howard
Hendricks: “You can do many things--find out the one thing you MUST do” (personal
correspondence).

The literature consistently depicts a call that originates both internally and
externally to the person. “The sense of being impelled to act from within is cotcrrrrinous
with a sense of being called by something without” (Hansen, 1995, p. 6). Carrying a
whiff of the mystical, Hansen explanation suggests a person “may feel pressure by a
persistent whisper that seems to say ‘try teaching’” (p. 125).

Yet, this inner pull is socially rooted. Outside influences like friends, mentors,
and even the professional practice itself become part of the calling force. “The practice is
the ‘caller,’ inviting the person to meet its obligations” (Hansen, 1995, p. 124). More
specific to the academic, Palmer renrinisces on the professor’s choice of discipline: “We
did not merely find a subject to teach--the subject also found us” (p. 25). Acknowledging
the emerging nature of the call, Hansen readily admits one’s vocation usually “develops
over time” (p. xi) and relates how most careers associated with vocation (medicine, law,
clergy, education) usually involve a good amount of time preparing for the profession.

We would be wrong to emphasize the passive side of one’s “call” at the expense
of a teacher’s active participation in the role. Referred to in the literature as personal
agency, professionals with a strong sense of vocation and call actively inhabit their roles
by giving them “a distinctive personal stamp” (Hansen, 1995, p. 116). With a strong

belief and confidence that they have something to offer because they have been called to

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their vocation, these professionals actively shape their work and world rather than being
shaped by them.

Relying on the descriptor “architect,” Hansen explains, “teachers conduct
themselves as architects of their learning environments rather than as passive
functionaries carrying out the dictates of others” (p. 12). Self-actualized people with a
strong sense of call and vocation are not so dependent on or influenced by peer pressure
but become their own final critics. Emmet (1958) connects the notion of personal agency
to the idea of creativity as she correlates “call” to professionals “who work in original
kinds of ways” (p. 6).

Still, these professionals are not some robotons or super heroes who live without
doubts, fears, or uncertainties. For them, as with anyone, “doubt and comrrritrnent go
hand in hand” (Hansen, 1995, p. 11). Rather, “their posture means they will have to deal
with, rather than sidestep, the problems and predicaments that accompany serious
attempts to teach” (p. 120). They are able to respond to the surprises of life and work
with a determined flexibility. As Hansen writes, a vocational response to life’s
circumstances becomes “not so much ideological [as] temperamental” (p. 12).

There is no doubt in Mary Poplin’s mind that her work at Claremont comes from
a “sense of call.” In fact, a primary way she contrasts her work before and after her
conversion to Christianity is to explain that profound sense of call on her life: She
believes she is where she is today because this is where God wants her to be. Before
1992, Mary considered her academic career “an accident.” As an elementary teacher she
had gone on to get her master’s degree and, while there, “ended up” in a Ph.D. program

because some professor encouraged her to stay. Today, she sees nothing as an accident.

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Her perspective on work is not “what are you doing” but rather “what is God calling you
to do?” As Mary answers that primary question in her vocational life, she has focused on

two integrative avenue, one intellectual and the other relational.

Intellectual Bridge

Mary’s two-lane bridge includes her approach to educational theory. As
mentioned above, Mary’s educational biography reveals a woman on the “cutting edge”
of educational theory throughout the last 20 years. She rejected behaviorism for critical
theory, constructivism, and feminist theory and traded in quantitative methods for
participatory research. As Mary describes her past use of theory, “I would find a new
theory, kind of before other people would find it . . . and I’d try to get it into education.”

Post-conversion, Mary continues to teach critical theory and feminist pedagogy,
but she does it “in a little bit more healthy way.” Recounting her struggles with
educational theory and her desire to discover what was happening inside American
schools, Mary reflects on a lessening reliance on postmodern theory and increasing
doubts about its ability to fulfill her expectations. “Inside me, I’d find [critical theory]
was a lot weaker than I thought it was and . . . there were a lot of questions that were still
unanswered, and it wasn’t going to go exactly where I thought it would go.”

Later in our conversation, Mary picks up on this destination theme with her
critique of critical theory: “It just doesn’t go anywhere”(even though she spent years as a
proponent of critical theory and like ideas). She explains, “Critical theory is probably one
of the best natural explanations of inequality and poverty and racism that there is.

There’s just no solution there.” When Mary uses the descriptor “natural,” she is refening

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to the theory of “naturalism” and its proponents’ convictions that natural laws are
sufficient to account for all phenomena.

It is here that Mary’s newfound theological understandings of evil and sin begin to
influence her view of educational theories. In her thinking, solutions are faulty because
the critical theorists fail to recognize the power of evil in the world and humanity’s
inability to fix these problems they themselves have created. Critical theory, according to
Mary, offers “no solutions” because it is at best just a “natural” solution; we live in
something more than a “natural,” materialistic world. Mary goes on to comment on the
anger she has seen in so much of the work in critical theory and attributes that to a
fundamental lack of hope in critical theorists’ “natural” approach to what is ultimately a
supernatural problem.

Mary has consciously chosen to teach Christianity in her classroom, both
implicitly and explicitly. She believes that “if I’m going to teach the truth, I have to teach
something about Christianity.” As she once told me, “A Christian view can complete
these [educational] theories in ways they can never [be completed] by themselves.”

Mary’s faith provides her with an alternative as she seeks to motive her Christian
students to take the disciplines of the spiritual life into their work. Believing only a
supernatural answer will change the fundamental problems of our schools, Mary urges the
Christian teachers who take her classes to apply scripture, prayer, and fasting to their lives
as teachers. As they seek to teach students with great needs, interact with colleagues
under tremendous stress, and support parents with little means, these teachers need to
seek God’s guidance first. This strategy will supply them a difference-making approach

to education.

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Mary still carries an intellectual allegiance, however, to critical theory because she
believes it is the secular theory on campus closest to the truth. “If you’re talking about
‘natural’ powers, they have the best explanations of what’s going on.” Critical theorists
have the “most accurate, ‘natural’ interpretation” of the power struggle taking place in
American culture. Mary agrees with their description of American society through the
lens of power. Historically, the dominant class has oppressed the lower class in order to
achieve more power. “There’s a lot of truth to that.”

Even with these basic misgivings, Mary still makes qualified use of the theories in
her classroom and research. For example, she teaches what she refers to as “critical
feminist pedagogy” by using Carol Gilligan’s work to demonstrate the different “voices”
genders use within education. Highlighting these differences, Mary stresses to her
students the need for society “to value these differences.”

Mary also makes use of individual pieces of qualitative research that value the
Opinions and viewpoints of all and not just those in positions of power. Citing Lisa
Delpit’s (1995) Other People ’s Children as one example, Mary wants to impress on her
students that helpful critical research does not have to place the values of the researcher
on the people being studied.

One major objection Mary has with the current practice of critical theory is what
she believes to be its selective procedure. “What I find is that critical theorists don’t ask
everybody because the poor don’t [always] think like the critical theorists.” Mary has
found that, sometimes, critical theorists will transpose their own political agendas directly

onto their research subjects. For example, she thinks they often downplay the religiosity

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of African-Americans in order to emphasize a perceived revolutionary stance already
adopted by the researcher.

Mary is concerned that so much of educational theory wants to “bracket out”
people’s faith in its research. She points to two noteworthy examples: Marie Montessori
and Martin Luther King, Jr. Both had strong religious faith, yet many who study their
lives and work focus on variables like intellectual principles, psychological explanations,
and political causations. For Mary, as a conscientious researcher and as a Christian, no
scholar can understand Montessori or King without a thorough appreciation of their faith.
“The problem that we have as academics is that we don’t understand . . . that faith has an
intellectual basis.”

Although Mary freely adopts and adapts the authorized educational theory of
much of today’s academy, she still has serious reservations about the epistemological
assumptions undergirding these theories, as well as a pronounced hesitation in following
the findings of said research to its ultimate conclusions. “There is no there, there.” With
this cryptic phrase Mary makes a comment on what she believes to be postmodern
theory’s shallow epistemological foundation. Often, the postmodern assumptions that
undergird qualitative research assume “we’re [just] constructing [our own] meaning.”
Mary is not bashful to disagree. While she does tell her students that “we do construct
our own meanings,” she is equally forceful in holding on to the idea of absolute truth
apart from the knower. “I’ll say . . . if there isn’t any [absolute] truth, why are you in
graduate school? What are you looking for if you don’t think there’s something you can

find that’s true?”

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Mary models for her students and then attempts to motivate them to bring their
Christianity and scholarship together as they explore their discipline in a Christian way.
As one student has observed about Mary, “It’s not a question of being an outstanding
scholar or being an outstanding Christian.” This same student confessed, “I used to feel
like a schizophrenic,” but Mary challenged her to combine her spirituality with her

teaching profession and therefore to “glorify God in everything [she] does.”

Relational Bridge

“Lord, get this women out of my office.” One would not expect this kind of
prayer from a woman like Mary Poplin, a professor motivated to reach out to students of
all persuasions. But that is exactly what Mary thought when visited by a student from the
Women’s Studies Program at Claremont. Even though this female graduate student was
not an advisee or student of Mary’s, she had heard of Mary’s skills in participatory
research and needed help doing a particular survey in her dissertation research. The
student explained to Mary, “I’m doing my research on my coven.” This woman sitting in
Mary’s office then identified herself as a “witch.”

It was at this point in the conversation when Mary prayed to be spared this
encounter. God did not answer Mary’s request in quite the way she expected. It was as
if, according to Mary, the Lord told her to “Treat [this student] like I would [treat her].”
So Mary continued to ask questions about the woman’s research. Immediately, Mary
recognized many of the literature sources the student was using in her project--sources
about white witchcraft. In an earlier academic life, Mary used to teach courses on the

history of feminism and would require readings in feminist theology and the worship of

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women deities. These were the very same writings the student was reading. Mary’s past
had prepared her to enter the conversation and her present spiritual motivation was
keeping Mary from avoiding it.

During the initial discussion, the student noticed the screen saver on Mary’s
computer: “FAITH.” She asked Mary about it, and Mary proceeded to share her own
spiritual journey. Identifying with the student’s spiritual hunger, Mary explained her own
search for spiritual truth and how roughly seven years before, she had done “what [she]
never thought [she] would ever do” and “became a Christian.”

Now, it was time for the student to feel intimidated by the conversation. Mary
recounts how “you could just see terror strike” the woman because she had shared with
Mary intimate details of the coven, including the name of the high priestess. Yet, she
stayed for another half hour as Mary continued to ask her questions about her spiritual
needs. This would not be the last conversation between Mary and this particular graduate
student, and as Mary reflects today on the incident, “I know [God] didn’t send her to me
just to help her with her survey.”

Every person I interviewed about Mary Poplin, including colleagues and students,
painted a portrait of a woman who loves people and has an uncanny ability to forge a
friendship with anyone and everyone. As one student offered, “She made me feel like
one of her favorite students, and she made everyone feel like that.” Due to Mary’s
interpersonal genius, classes with her are described as a “community” and even a
“family.”

Mary is the kind of person with whom you intended to spend 60 minutes with, but

when the conversation is finished, you find three hours have passed and you wonder

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where the time has gone. There is no underestimating the influence of Mary’s personality
on her uncommon ability to form powerful relationships with students. She is by nature a
warm and inviting person. As Mary proudly states, “Texas girls are all friendly.”

Words used to describe Mary’s relational style of teaching and mentoring include

’9 66 9’ 6‘ 99 u

“compassionate,” “magnetic, encouraging, accepting, welcoming,” and
“embracing.” One student has labeled Mary a “student-centered professor,” and that
characterization has been reinforced time and time again as various students would
recollect a previous meal with Mary, 3 prior email from Mary, or a visit with Mary in her
office. Even her colleagues commented on Mary’s “amazing relationship with students.”
One fellow faculty member described the restaurant, Walter’s, as Mary’s “second office,”
where she habitually meets with students for meals. Mary is “always with a student.”

One student in her late twenties had been kept from her course work for a number
of weeks due to severe health problems requiring hospitalization. This young woman
was so sick she was unable to contact the university administration to explain her lengthy
absence. She was concerned what might happen to her course work, her completion of
the program, and her scholarships. Finally, when she was well enough to make contact
with the administration, she was surprised to hear them say, “Mary already told [us] and
we’ve fixed the situation.”

Needless to say, this recovering student was overwhelmed with Mary’s proactive
act of kindness. She had never even asked Mary for help and was even unsure how Mary
had discovered her problem in the first place. From “Good Samaritan” acts like this to

calling a student at home just to invite her husband to attend a class, instances of gracious

living permeate Mary Poplin’s life. Mary is genuinely interested in other people’s

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welfare, especially her students. She communicates this caring ethic through thoughtful
acts, sensitive ears, and insightful questions.

Even students who do not share Mary’s Christian stance feel comfortable enough
to visit her office, share a meal with her, or send an unsolicited email expressing their
dissent or to ask a question. Mary’s acceptance of the whole person no matter his or her
own viewpoint creates a classroom climate that allows students freedom to express
difference.

To assume Mary’s caring relationships with her students is done at the expense of
a demanding standard for their educational performance would be a mistake. Many of
her students concur. As an advisor and mentor, Mary, “at the right moment,” can be
“very curt” and “hit you over the head” if your thinking skills are not meeting her tough
standards, whether it be written or oral arguments. As one advisee said, “If she spots
something, she’ll nail you.”

This low tolerance of shoddy thinking and subpar academic work pushes students
to successfully complete their programs. Mary’s reputation is that her students finish
their degrees. “She tells you how to finish” and “she holds you up to a standard that will
push you and help you finish.” Many students at CGU vie to get Mary as their advisor
because of her excellent mentoring reputation, and this interest is not limited to Christian
students. Mary saw four of her students finish their dissertations in 1999, three of them
Jewish and one an agnostic. Mary’s attractive and caring personality combine with her
research expertise to provide an ideal mentor for many Claremont graduate students.

Mary’s predisposition to close personal relationships is only intensified by her

sense of call and her inner memories of her former life before conversion. Emotionally

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identifying with her students, Mary sees it as her “responsibility” to “at least show them
there is an alternative.” Labeling one of her major vocational roles as an “evangelist,”
one who shares the love of God with others - Mary says, “I think I’m an evangelist
because I realize how empty I was before” and “when I look at these students . . . it makes
me hurt.”

Mary does wonder, at times, about the context of this risky mission. She asks,
“Lord, why did you put me here [CGU] as an evangelist? Why am I not out on the street
corner where it’s more legal?” Neither Mary nor I miss the irony of the question. First,
we both know there is no law explicitly against teaching Christian truth in a secular
university, although there are many unstated pressures against bringing one’s religious
self into the academic community. Furthermore, both of us know such pressures have
little effect on Mary in the first place. She quickly confesses, “I’m very bold . . . and I
just say what is on my mind in classes.” From her early days as a “radical feminist,”
Mary has never shied away from advocating the minority opinion within a majority
context.

I do ask Mary whether she gets worried that colleagues might label her aggressive
brand of Christian witness as a type of proselytizing. Mary gives me two somewhat
contradictory answers. First, she redefines her mission not as proselytizing but “trying to
help [students] get through [life].” She views her students as “bound” by their despair
and depression; she believes her Christian message to be their only hope of escaping their
predicament.

Still, even after her attempt at redefinition, Mary admits that someone else might

interpret her activities as proselytizing. She then lays out her second line of defense: “I

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don’t proselytize any more [now] than I ever did before.” According to her viewpoint,
“Everyone does [it].” Secular theories are no more neutral than Christianity and anyone
who argues for a particular theoretical perspective does so as an advocate hoping to
convince others of his or her position, whether it is behaviorist, feminist, Marxist, or
Buddhist.

Recently, Claremont has adopted a new motto for the institution: “The Quiet
Revolution.” When Mary first heard the motto unveiled, she looked at a friend sitting
beside her and nodded knowingly at her. Mary had been claiming that credo long before
CGU. At one point after her conversion, Mary had dreamed of writing some grand
treatise on education and religion that would change both the Church and the secular
academy. She even explored the possibility of starting an “altemative” teacher education
program at CGU geared exclusively for Christian teachers.

Now, she thinks God is content to “hide” her away at Claremont and send her
students who will eventually change the world “one by one.” Many students are conring
to CGU from other institutions in order to study with Mary Poplin because they share her
Christian faith. Her dream of an alternative teacher education program for Christian
teachers is becoming an unofficial reality. As one recent alumnus observed, “1 think they
[CGU administration] are in denial [about] how many students are coming from a
Christian viewpoint.” Mary’s relational skills, together with her love for students, have
only been magnified through her obedience to her divine call to take the teachings of

Jesus to every comer of the earth.

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Two—Way Street

Mary Poplin’s call as a Christian academic works itself out in two opposite but
complementary directions. She tries to use her Christian world view to bring “truth” to
the academy and its prevailing philosophies. She has spent the last seven years since her
conversion being immersed in the Bible in order to understand God’s truth. This
scriptural focus has created for Mary, however, an “intellectual, academic crisis” because
“you have seven years where you’re really not doing what the academic world tells you to
do.”

In contrast, Mary’s academic call also extends in the opposite direction as she
uses truth found in secular, academic theories to correct what she perceives as problems
in the Christian church. Critical theory “helps” Mary aid Christians in “understanding
where Christianity [in America] has gone wrong.” It points to the “unconscious
assumptions that privileged people go around with” and spells out the actual results of
those assumptions. Mary believes ideas like social reproduction theory could teach many
white middle-class believers that they do live in a divided society and how often they are
“unconscious” of their bias and racism against the underprivileged. Secular theories can
help the Church understand “how to better equip those [people] out of poverty and into a
more abundant life in every way--spiritually, economically, education-wise.”

Living between these two worlds has also created a vocational tension in Mary’s
present career at CGU. She has begun to feel “sort of caught in between” the academic
and religious worlds and unsure of which direction she is headed at times. She wonders
if she can carry out this twin-pronged mission. For the last five years she has experienced

what she refers to as a “writing crisis” where she has struggled with her publication

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expectations. She has not produced much in the way of articles or books since her last
five-year review at the university, and “it’s frightening” for Mary to think about going
into that post-tenure evaluation with so little to show for her work.

Knowing what she wants to write, Mary is unsure which audience to write for and
what publisher would want to produce such work. The Claremont administration would
not be too impressed with work published in religious publications, but Mary questions
what secular publisher would want to take her distinctly Christian perspective public.
Yet, Mary thinks she would be less than authentic to mute her religious voice in order to
get something on the printed page. “I feel like I’m supposed to publish certain things in
Christian publications and certain things in secular work. I just kind of have . . . to trust
the Lor .”

What Mary is describing with her metaphor of two worlds is the historic tension
Jesus laid out for His disciples when He commanded them to be “in” the world but not
“of” the world. How is the disciple to live simultaneously under God’s leading within a
culture that does not value God’s perspective? For Mary, she has “consciously” kept
herself “out of a lot of worldly things” in order to spent time with God and scripture. She
does not “do a lot of shopping . . . [or] go to secular movies” so she can find more time to
spend with God. However, this conscious separation from the secular world can make it
difficult for Mary to bring in her Christian world’s message. “I feel a little bit like a
foreigner in both worlds in a way. That’s OK. It gives me strength.” Although the
tension of living in two worlds at the same time may bring Mary spiritual strength, it still
creates a vocational tension as she struggles to produce the research and writing expected

of a university professor in the American academy.

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Mother Theresa

Mary often describes her vocational mission with such integrative phases as
“penetrating the university” and “looking at the issues of social justice through the lens of
Christianity.” Yet, the clearest illustration of what she means by integration comes from
her reflections on the life and work of Mother Theresa. Mary used part of a sabbatical in
1996 to work with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Having been exposed to the
ministry through books, videos, and speeches, Mary had gone to investigate why Mother
Theresa constantly referred to her ministry with the poor as “religious wor ” and not
“social work.”

Mary did not yet understand this distinction, but she knew there must be a
connection between her own desire for social justice in American schooling and Mother
Theresa’s view of ministry to the poor in India. So she went to Calcutta for a little more
than two months “to try and figure it out.” Mary has since published a small article in the
Catholic journal Commonweal (Poplin, 1997) which reveals some of Mary’s most
cherished lessons learned at the feet of Mother Theresa. At the same time, these lessons
provide for us a glimpse of Mary’s own vocational assumptions.

Her thesis is straightforward: An “enormous gulf” exists between the West’s
approach to helping the poor and disadvantaged and the way Mother Theresa went about
her work with the poor in India. (Mary includes a number of professions in her
description of the West’s “approach,” including nursing, social work, and of course,
education.) From her two-month experience in India, Mary observed a sharp difference
between the western volunteers and the Sisters who belonged to the Order. Although

both groups might live in the same time and space attempting to help the same people,

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“two different sets of assumptions and beliefs about reality [were] at work” (Poplin,
1996, p. 11).

Motivation becomes a primary difference between the two sets of assumptions.
Those of the western mind set are often drawn to serve the disenfranchised “out of
empathy or pity” (p. 12); thus, they often help out of guilt, their own energy and
manufactured goodness. They are attempting to balance the moral scales of their life by
using good works to make up for those things in their past for which they are ashamed.
In sharp contrast, Mother Theresa and the other nuns saw their work as obedience to
God’s call rather than acting out of some “social conscience.” They “served the poor not
because [the poor] needed them but because God called them to do the wor ” (p. 12).
Serving the poor for the poor’s sake is social work; serving the poor for God’s sake is a
distinctly religious vocation.

Thus, when Mary describes the vocational lives of the Missionaries of Charity,
she chooses an adjective of deep spiritual significance: “sacred.” They sought to love
God through every function of their work, as well as to see Jesus in every person they
served. “A firm acceptance of divine providence” shaped their reactions to life’s ebbs
and flows. Prayer became the primary “technology” used to change the world’s
circumstances. Choosing to live the lives of the people they served, the Sisters took a
vow of poverty both to follow Christ’s example and to avoid any materialistic
temptations. Furthermore, they chose to see suffering as a “gift from God” (p. 13) to
draw them toward holiness rather than as a symptom to avoid.

Mary had gone to Calcutta “hoping to find new methods and procedures that

could be applied in schools.” She found no new methods. She only found a unique and

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“sacred” approach to one’s call. Mother Theresa’s most famous quote originated with her
namesake, Theresa of Lisieux: “While most of us think our lives should be doing great
things, we rather are called to do small things with great love” (p. 14).

In the end, the difference between western social work and the Missionaries of
Charity is not found in strategy or methodology. The distinction rests in attitude, an
attitude which “emanates from a profound faith [that] they are fulfilling God’s purpose
for their lives through His grace and all their attention is intensely concentrated on this
vision” (p. 10). In the same way, as Mary seeks to live out her sacred call, it could be
said that she does not “do” education, but rather she does religious work by training
teachers to teach and to care for the neediest in America’s schools. “My personal
fulfillment comes from what God is calling me to do and the degree to which I am

obedient to that call.”

Reflections

In his book The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer (1998) holds up as his ideal the
“undivided life” in which one’s “inner” world and “outer” world are in perfect harmony.
For a Christian scholar like Mary Poplin, her identity as a woman of deep faith in God
would be completely free to interact with a work place she believes needs her message.
However, as Palmer warns, in the “human condition” we can never expect such perfect
harmony. Therefore, he recommends that the teacher find her “center” for life external to
the institutional demands and totally consistent with one’s internal convictions. Mary’s

story has been the search for that center.

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Mary makes no secret of the fact that, after her conversion, the last place she
wanted to be was CGU. “When I first became a Christian, I wanted [God] to send me to
Africa where people didn’t know me.” He did not oblige Mary’s request. Even though
Mary’s changing value structure developed within her an unease and distaste for what she
labels the “darkness” of the secular university, she began to see her own role in creating
that darkness. “I got into feminist theory and all the intellectual dark spots, and I taught
them.” Consequently, Mary began to see her vocational call as one of reclamation and
retribution. “I think that’s why God wouldn’t let me go to Africa after my conversion.
He’s making me stay . . . in the mess that I created.”

Mary remains at CGU to enact her own strategy of engagement with her culture.
She believes “you’d better know your enemy better than your friend.” Claremont is “a
good place to do that.” Mary believes a Christian should be an “engaged apologist” who
knows as much‘ about the other position as she does her own. She knows the opposition’s
strengths and weaknesses and is honest about both. Although monasteries have been
helpful in Mary’s own spiritual growth, she feels no call to work in one because she
would lose her ability to participate actively in the spiritual battles taking place all around
her. Like Mother Theresa, who eschewed the convent for the gutters, Mary has entered a
difficult place to undertake what she believes to be a life-changing vocation. In the
language of Frederich Buechner, we might say that by locating the world’s deep hunger

within the secular academy, Mary has found a place to express her deepest gladness.

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CHAPTER FOUR

REBEL WITH A CAUSE
On the Frontline of American Culture Wars
Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
Introduction

Huddled with Robert George, Princeton University professor of politics, in his
cramped, cluttered office, I am thoroughly enjoying our 90-minute interview. We begin
with the usual pleasantries and immediately explore Professor George’s own academic
journey that has led to his prestigious position as a full professor on an Ivy League
faculty. As a graduate of Swarthmore, Harvard, and Oxford, George is no stranger to the
academic elite.

Everywhere I look I see evidence of a scholar at work. Boxes of papers and books
cover almost every square inch of office real estate, with only a two-foot-wide carpet trail
left to guide a visitor through this researcher’s maze to an empty chair. Table space,
cluttered with double-parked journal articles and open texts, is at a premium, with only a
small square of work area available adjacent to Professor George’s computer monitor.
The walls are no less crowded with rows and rows of shelves holding books--an
academic’s most precious commodity.

Absorbing the ambiance around me, I am left with two initial impressions about
this youngish-looking 45-year-old professor. First, he does not suffer from

claustrophobia; second, he certainly has his finger in many “intellectual pots.” Assuring

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me he knows the exact location of any item of importance, “Robby” tells me of his wife’s
fear that he would ever expose a guest to this work space turned natural disaster.

I find Robby easy to converse with and willing to share his own academic
encounters and scholarly experience. Words come easily to him, and our interview has
few spots of dead air. As the flow of dialogue picks up steam, I get perturbed when our
conversation is interrupted by a ringing telephone two times within 15 minutes. Robby
has been describing for me what he perceives to be the prejudice against religion on many
college campuses, and how that prejudice could become an enormous impediment to a
Christian scholar’s career. He can only hope that other religious believers who aspire to
be professors will experience the same “good luck” he himself has enjoyed at Princeton.

As the professor answers the phone, I begin to feel like an interloper and turn off
my tape recorder, attempting to blend in with the books and stacks of paper surrounding
my chair. I try not to eavesdrop. But when you are sitting across the desk from someone
in an office not much larger than a household bathroom, it becomes difficult not to hear at
least half the conversation. I pretend to peruse the bookshelf on the wall directly beside
me.

Even trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, I cannot help but be drawn into the
conversation taking place over Robby’s phone line. By the sudden change in his
expression, together with the increased pitch in his voice, I gather the caller is either
unexpected or unwanted. Short and powerful, the three-minute conversation transforms
Robert George right before my eyes. This erudite Princeton professor, who could
communicate with ease in the lecture hall or on the printed page, was now fumbling for

words. Flustered by the person on the other end of the line, Robby’s answers to the

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caller’s questions evolve from “Yes, President Shapiro” to “Thank you, thank you,
President Shapiro.” His body is almost shaking. Is it excitement or fright.

Clearly stunned, he hangs up the phone, stands up at his desk, and stares into
space while running his fingers through his short black hair. With a slightly glazed
expression, Robby looks at me, someone he had only met the previous hour and the only
other person in the room. “Scott,” he says, “I don’t believe it. That was the president of
the university.”

Slowly emerging from his shock, Robby now almost bounds over to his bookcase
and pulls off the shelf an official-looking book emblazoned with the Princeton seal.
Excitedly flipping through the pages, he stops at some sort of list and holds up the page
for me to see. It is a list of the endowed professorships held by distinguished faculty at
Princeton along with the names and dates of previous holders of the “chairs.”

“Scott, look at this.” Robby is pointing to one of the few chairs left unfilled--the
Cyrus Hall McCormick Professorship of Jurisprudence. In its almost lOO-year existence,
the McCormick chair had been held by only five people and had not been filled since the
1990's. “Scott,” Robby exclaims breathlessly, “President Shapiro has offered me the
McCormick chair if I will agree to remain at Princeton.” (Robby had been mulling over
an offer from Vanderbilt to fill an open, endowed chair there).

Then, with an added note of solemnity, Robby runs his finger down the list to the
very first holder of the McCormick professorship. “Look at this,” he announces. His
finger is resting by the name of Woodrow Wilson. Now I begin to understand how a
decision Robby and his wife had been considering for weeks could be settled in a matter

of rrrinutes.

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Princeton’s Reigping Conservative

Referred to by one Princeton student as “Princeton’s reigning conservative,”
Professor Robert George prefers to embrace the description rather than flee such a
countercultural identity on an Ivy League campus. Using any scholarly means at his
disposal, whether it be a lecture on Griswold v. Connecticut in his course on
Constitutional Interpretation, an article for the Yale Law Review on the legal viability of
the prolife position (1997b), an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on the “Clinton
Puzzle” (2000a), or testimony before a congressional committee on behalf of a bill
protecting the life of a child who survives an abortion, Dr. George is more than happy “to
serve as a foil against academia’s monolithic secular liberal orthodoxy” (Colson, 1999).

An orthodox Catholic and an outspoken defender of a conservative, Christian
world view, George does not hide his beliefs as he confronts liberalism “with rational
philosophical objections and defends Christian morality with philosophical arguments”
(Colson, 1999). Yet, students still consider him to be “an excellent, engaging professor”
who teaches some of Princeton’s “most challenging and potentially . . . most rewarding”
classes.

If, as Professor George himself has stated, there exists “a lot of prejudice against
faith” on university campuses, how could a conservative have been awarded one of
Princeton’s most prestigious professorships? I ask Robby whether the administration
knows of his conservative, religious views. “Yes,” he answers without hesitation or hint
of embarrassment. “I am notorious. I’m the guy around here who defends the Pope . . .

I’ve defended the prolife position in the pages of the Yale Law Journal. I’ve criticized

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the idea of same sex-marriage in [other] publications.” Commenting on his very public
persona on campus, he adds, “I guess [my colleagues] are getting accustomed to me.”

It is one thing for people to “grow accustomed” to contrary opinions and dissonant
voices; it is quite another thing for these “foils” to be rewarded with promotion by the
very targets they seek to oppose. How has Robert George not only survived an often
hostile environment for his political and moral views, but actually thrived in it? How has
he managed to be so successful in his profession, even reaching what most perceive to be
the top of the academic pyramid?

And, to turn the question around, how has Professor George been able keep up his
morale and intellectual stamina when faced with such opposition? When Robby begins
to describe the tense relationship between the secular academy and a conservative,
religious point of view, he uses phrases like “under assault” and words such as
“discrimination” and “prejudice.” According to George and his 20 years in the most
influential sector of the American university, “many principles of Christian morality are
under assault from elite opinion and within . . . the academy.”

In a study of the interaction between religious people and an academic culture that
does not often share their faith-based assumptions, a person like Robert George can help
us understand not only the tensions inherent in such situations, but also how people can
be successful waging this type of guerilla warfare. Not all religious academics have taken
such an “in-your-face” strategy as Robert George. Some would even suggest that his
tactics are offensive and ineffective. Others would predict only abject failure for George
and urge him to retreat into Christian higher education and protect himself from the

temptations that exist in the secular academy.

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Christians have long debated the place of religion amid culture. Whereas some
theologians and leaders have advised seclusion for the religious voice, others have
advocated a complete immersion in the cultural conflict. Each stance holds possible
benefits along with potential difficulties. Christian faculty in the secular academy face
similar choices with equally conflicting results. Maybe the best place to begin describing
the academic life of Robert George is to trace how religious people have sought to do

battle with a secular world and the relationship of the Church to culture.

Christ and Culture

One of the most famous Christian models formulated to describe the relationship
between religion and culture as a whole originates in the work of twentieth-century
theologian H. Richard Niebuhr. ‘ A long-time professor at Yale in the early to mid—1900s,
N iebuhr taught courses on the history of Christian ethics. Niebuhr’s ethics were clearly
rooted in his German-American heritage and his own experience during the Great
Depression and two world wars. His own struggle of faith within a deeply troubled
society motivated Niebuhr to search out how a religious person could influence his or her
culture without being consumed by the culture. He recognized that within culture various
values compete for people’s loyalties in politics, economics, aesthetics, science, and
religion, and he felt compelled to establish an ethical position and strategy for the
Christian church to deal with those competing values.

Reflecting on Jesus’ command to be “in” the world but not “of” the world,
Niebuhr questioned how the “other-worldly” and the “this-worldly” could exist in

creative tension. How is the world of the Church (God’s kingdom) to interface and

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interact with the world of culture (man’s achievements)? What is the relationship
between a sovereign God and what Niebuhr considered to be a sinful and sick society?
Niebuhr was searching for a moral stance to make sense of these competing loyalties as
well as a strategy to transform the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man into a
doxological whole.

At one point, early in his intellectual journey, Niebuhr wrote an essay entitled
“Back to Benedict,” in which he questioned whether the Church should retreat from a
troubled culture into monasticism. But, through his dissertation study at Yale, Niebuhr
began to expand his vision and set out to develop a model of how Christians throughout
ecclesiastical history have responded to the “Church/world” problem. In his best-known
work, Christ and Culture (Niebuhr, 1956), Niebuhr was able to delineate five separate
positions Christians have developed in response to the relationship between “Christ”
(Church) and “culture” (world).

The first two positions are found on opposite poles of the perceived tension. The
“exclusivists” (Christ against Culture) believed all culture to be evil and therefore isolated
themselves from the world (much like the monks). The “accomodators” (Christ of
Culture) sought to make the Church accountable to its society, and thus became a
“worldly church.” Niebuhr believed the Church’s relationship to God and its relationship
to the world should not be separate from each other (problem of the “against” position),
nor should they be confused with each other (problem with the “of” position).

Between these two poles N iebuhr described three mediating categories that sought
to hold Christ and culture in a type of dialectical tension. “Christ above Culture” holds

the two together in a hierarchical “synthesis of the realm of the spiritual and the physical”

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(p. 57). The two are complementary of each other although still separate from each other.
“Christ and Culture in Paradox” relates the two realms together dualistically as both
believer and nonbeliever live together “under two distinct moralities though both are
exercised under one God” (p. 57). Niebuhr found the former mediating position too
institutionalized and the latter too fragmenting.

His fifth position and third mediating motif stood as his own preferred ethical
approach: “Christ the Transformer of Culture.” In this view, Niebuhr “located the world
of man within the world of God,” and thus the presence of God within the world through
His Church is able to transform a sick and fallen world into a renewed society.

How is the kingdom of man to relate to the kingdom of God? How is the
Christian to exercise the Lordship of Christ over all of creation? What is the Church’s
moral obligation to its society? As Niebuhr developed his model to answer these
questions, he made two important provisos. First, none of these categories is exclusive to
one historical era, but each is based on significant people, movements, and ideas
throughout church history.

Second, these categories should not necessarily be arranged in a linear
progression. Rather, the situations described are often present at the same time. And,
although Niebuhr did clearly side with the “Christ the Transformer” position, he hesitated
in describing any of the five as “the” correct ethical stance but thought each should be
held in tension with the others. In N iebuhr’s view, each of the five provides a needed
voice within the discussion of the relationship between religion and culture. Humans are

too unique and God too mysterious for one solution to suffice.

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Robert George, however, feels no such hesitation in proclaiming which ethical
stance he has chosen. One of the reasons he espouses his faith so boldly in the academic
community is Robby’s firm conviction in Christ’s and the Christian’s transforming role
within culture. For George, “Christianity is a world view and not simply a faith whose
implications are purely personal,” and therefore, the Christian has a responsibility to
“bring the Gospel values to bear in the culture-~all parts of culture - not just politics, but
arts [and] communication.” Unlike the medieval monks who secluded themselves for the
sake of purity, Robby and his confrontational style of interaction seek to transform the

outer world as well as the inner person.

Overview

This faculty narrative is about one man’s attempt to live out a scholarly life
through a transformative ethical strategy. Robert George proudly claims to “wear [his]
faith on his sleeve” and take the Gospel into the halls and journals of the secular
academy. We can gain much insight from studying his transformative strategy and how
he practices his scholarship. Not only do we flesh out possible tensions inherent within
this approach, but also we learn more about a successful negotiation of a such a difficult
and complex task.

To capture George’s story, I first want to describe in detail his scholarly stance.
Seen from the religious angle, George’s approach can be depicted as a transformative
strategy; viewed from the academy’s vantage point, Robert George stands out as an
isolated, contrarian voice unwilling to espouse the party line. By looking at his

vocational calling within three interrelated spheres (classroom, faculty lounge, and public

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square), we will learn more about George’s academic devotion and scholarly method.
Finally, reflecting on Robby’s faculty narrative, we will be able to explore why he has
achieved prominence. How has Robert George, faculty rebel, become Robert George,

distinguished teacher-scholar?

Bizzaro World

In the Superman comic book series, the story of Clark Kent is fundamentally
changed in one episode when the arch-villain, Lex Luthor, steals a strand of Superman’s
DNA and tries to clone his own “Superman.” Unfortunately for Luthor, the cloning
process was unstable, and the Superman clone mutates into a fascinating parody of the
Man of Steel, who is dubbed “Bizzaro” by the people of Metropolis. Although the clone
is similar to the original in many respects, his actions are sometimes the exact opposite of
what the real Superman would do. Strangely familiar in the blue cape and leotards with a
big red “8’ on his chest, the hero turns out to be the anti-hero and shocks Metropolis.

Sometimes, when I listen to Robert George explain his own intellectual position
and academic mission, I think he would be an ideal Clark Kent in a “Bizzaro World”
rendition of the university in the 1960s. Not that he is some mutant clone gone bad, but
rather, much of what he says and does is strangely familiar, but at the same time certain
fundamental tenets have been drastically altered.

Playing the recognizable role of the outspoken, controversial scholar rebelling
against the enduring orthodoxy on campus, George wants his students to question
authority, think differently, and not be content with the intellectual status quo. Yet, when

you listen to or read the doctrine espoused by this radical voice, you quickly realize this

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Clark Kent is no Timothy Leary in disguise. Borrowing from the political attitude of an
earlier generation’s provocateurs, George has completely disavowed their liberal
orthodoxy. Robert George is the 19603’ “anti-professor.”

George’s rebellion against liberalism and what he now refers to as “the prevailing
secular orthodoxy” on campus began, like that of many of the sixties’ radicals, in his
undergraduate years. While at Swarthmore, he “found [himself] rebelling; but rebelling
against the liberalism of the college.” Even though Robby had been raised a Roman
Catholic and educated partly in parochial schools, he entered college having adopted a
“liberal interpretation of things,” including politics, and to a much lesser extent morals,
and his religion. Extremely active in the Democratic party at a young age, he had twice
been elected governor of the West Virginia Democratic Youth Conference.

Arriving at a “very” liberal college, Robby quickly thought that his own Christian
faith was under attack. Although he had come to college believing liberalism was the
appropriate path, the liberal establishment’s evident dogrnatism and hypocrisy pushed
him toward those few conservative voices on campus who did respect his faith. Two of
these professors, in particular, fanned Robby’s own tendency to think for himself and not
be content with the majority opinion.

To gain a more critical perspective on the “dominant world view” at Swarthmore,
Robby began a renewed quest to draw on the resources of his Catholic upbringing.
Studying the writings of “great Christian thinkers” like Augustine and Aquinas, he
became more and more “persuaded” of a conservative, Christian world view and more
and more skeptical of the received position within the academic elite. Therefore, he

began an intellectual quest he continues to this day: to use Christianity as a resource for

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his own critique of “secularist, liberal orthodoxy” and at the same time, to have his own
faith “reinforced” by his philosophical critique.

As Robert George continued to work out these intellectual tensions within
politics, law, religion, and moral philosophy throughout his educational journey at
Swarthmore, Harvard, and Oxford, his liberal sympathies as an 18 year old were
converted into an increasingly conservative world view. The more inadequate he found
the liberalism of the elite academy, the more compelling he found his own Christian faith.
His conservatism and his faith began to exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship.

What George found intellectually disconcerting about the liberal, secular
orthodoxy of the cultural left was the prevailing assumption that all “right thinking”
intellectuals ought to view and evaluate all alternative world views through the
supposedly “neutral lens” of liberalism. Through his study, Robby began to see
liberalism, not as a form of moral neutrality, but rather as “just a mask for an alternative
world view.” He believed the liberal elite were conducting some type of “masquera ”
where liberalism as philosophy “gets a lot of mileage out of pretending to be the umpire
when it is actually a competitor.”

This fundamental inconsistency, this masquerade, within the liberal position
began to “undermine” within Robby’s own mind any persuasive power of the liberal,
secularist critique of Christianity. A few professors at Swarthmore, Harvard, and Oxford
who were serious scholars and serious Christians reinforced his belief that Christianity as
“a plausible intellectual world view” could withstand any critique offered by liberalism.

And, as he subjected the liberal scholars to the same skeptical arguments liberalism once

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used on religion, he quickly became convinced this supposedly neutral position could not
withstand reason’s rigorous examination.

Role models like John Finnis at Oxford, Mary Ann Glendenon of Harvard Law
School, and James Kurth at Swarthmore have challenged Robby to be a truly faithful
Christian academic and to develop his own views “about [the] fundamental principles of
ethics and [the] relationship of philosophy and faith.” They have taught him and modeled
for him that it was possible to be “a very good Christian” and “a very fine scholar” and
also “very public” within the academy about one’s faith. It is possible to be a scholar
“whose faith clearly influences what [one] does” and also motivates what one teaches.

As Robby explains his “rebellion” against the liberal, secular orthodoxy at
Swarthmore, I ask him if he is continuing that rebellion as a faculty member at Princeton.
His eyes lighting up and hands channeling his growing intensity, he quickly makes it clear
he is not content just to continue his own rebellious stance. “I’m trying to spread it. I tell
my students to question authority just like my teachers told me.” Trying to clarify, I
suggest he means something very different from his radical professors of the
counterculture movement in the early seventies. “No,” he says, “I mean the same thing.”
He genuinely wants the students to “question the conventional opinion of the day”--to
“subject it” to a “little scrutiny.”

What has changed, Robby is quick to add, is the “authority” of the day, the
“conventional opinion.” Now students enter Princeton assuming the liberal opinion of
the “cultural elite” is correct. They have soaked up the “atmosphere of the celebrities”
and the liberal biases of the New York Times editorial page without subjecting them to

rigorous intellectual criticism.

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Within his own sphere of influence, Robert George “look(s) for opportunities” to
challenge the existing orthodoxy on campus and in American popular culture. Claiming
the task is part of his responsibility in fulfilling Jesus’ “Great Commission,” Robby does
his best to “unnerve” people and motivate them to defend the reasonableness of their
secular world view. He fulfills his academic calling in three overlapping areas of
influence: (1) the classroom, (2) the faculty lounge, and (3) the public square. But, before
we attempt a detailed explanation of Robert George’s academic call, we need a fuller
account of his central academic devotion: a commitment to what Robby refers to as “the

truth.”

Academic Devotion--To Know the Truth

If Robby’s academic calling is best described as a rebellious voice amidst the
predominant liberal, secular world view in today’s academy, then his academic devotion
might best be characterized as a faithful spokesman for the primary goal of scholarly
work: “to know the truth.” To understand his calling as an academic “rebel,” we need
first to capture a clear picture of his devotion to truth above all else.

For Robert George, his academic identity and scholarly mission are intertwined
with his deep devotion to what he refers to as “the truth.” When I asked him to reflect on
some of the formative influences in his own intellectual development, he quickly
responds by citing a platonic dialogue called “The Gorgias.” George’s interaction with
this piece of ancient political literature as an undergraduate at Swarthmore began to teach
him the difference between “true intellectual inquiry” and what he calls “rhetoric.” Using

the words of Samuel Johnson, Robby draws a further distinction between the two paths

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by describing them as “the difference between arguing for victory and arguing for truth.”
His desire to argue for truth is what ultimately led Robby into academia rather than
politics or law.

Anticipating a text or person with more of a religious bent, I am taken aback that
George’s initial response regarding his most formative intellectual factors focused on an
ancient Greek philosopher. But the more I have interacted with Robert George through
interviews and his writings, the closer connection I see between his religious comrrritrnent
and his devotion to “the truth.” To treat these twin passions as separate paths in Robby’s
scholarly journey would be to bifurcate his own academic mission and oversimplify a
complex and deeply textured task. To discuss Robert George’s Christianity without
mentioning his passion for truth would not be a fair representation of the man.

Sitting in his office and discussing possible tensions in the academic life for a
deeply religious and very conservative professor, Robby finds utterly contemptible the
claim that it is impossible to be both a serious Christian and a serious scholar in today’s
secular university. “I don’t see what the problem is,” replies George. “You just go out
there and you try to find out what’s true.” If the research led to a conclusion incompatible
with Christianity, “then it is impossible to be a [scholar] and a Christian.” But in his own
20 years of searching for truth as a professional scholar, he has “never been led to such a
conclusion.”

Denying any hint of intellectual tension between his faith and his disciplinary
research, George makes explicit his tacit assumption that a scholar’s loyalty to the truth
will not conflict with his or her devotion to Christianity. We both keep searching for the

best way to describe accurately this connection between his twin commitments. Are they

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equal in scope, or is one primary? Is it even valid to build a hierarchical model of this

relationship? Yet, there are times when Robby seems to do just that: “I want to know the
truth. I’m willing to pursue the truth, and I’m willing to even consider the possibility that
Christianity is untrue because [and now he is almost shouting] I want to know the truth!”

Considering this piety to truth as “a very Christian attitude to take,” Professor
George seeks to be “as rigorous as possible” in his intellectual pursuits, including his
religious beliefs. “I don’t want to be tricked into rejecting Christianity on the basis of
some fallacious but attractive argument.” Robby’s scholarly ideals are in his mind
“entirely compatible” with his Christian scruples. “We [Christians] ought to be about the
business of truth, let the chips fall where they may.” The final arbiter of what is true,
according to George, is reason. By the “application of our faculty of reason” we can think
carefully about all the data presented to us through our experience, whether it be the study
of physics or ethics, and that reasonable search will lead us “to truth in all areas of human
inquiry” including religion.

Robby practices what he preaches. His devotion to the truth manifests itself in
every area of his scholarly calling. From the lecture hall where he engages his students,
to the printed page where he dialogues with peers, George’s stated aim is “to show the
reasonableness of the Christian position.” He engages others on “fundamental questions
of truth” and assumes they will “follow the argument where it leads.”

Of course, his own experience as a scholar has taught him that engaging others
with truth does not always lead to reasonable conclusions. Here, Robby refers to the

primary detour on the scholarly path: prejudice. Prejudice, in George’s understanding, is

simply “prejudging the truth of the matter” and therefore creating an artificial

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“impediment to understanding the truth.” Prejudice will lead scholars to “tailor our
conception of truth to fit our pre-existing views.”

One prime example of this prejudice at work in the academy is the classroom.
According to Professor George, even the bright and well-informed Princeton undergrad
enters class with an often blind acceptance of the liberal view handed down by the secular
orthodoxy of the academic elite and media. In Robby’s experience, students often do not
want to think about the most difficult ideas, and the “great[est] impediment to thinking is
that students will simply go on the basis of the opinions they have picked up out of the
intellectual ether.”

At this point, Robby’s academic devotion to the truth, and his academic calling in
the classroom, work together to establish his academic strategy: to get people (and his
students) to think reasonably about the issue. Therefore, he is not so concerned that his
students come up with the “right answer” but that they learn to think through issues
critically and reflectively. If he can motivate and challenge them to think through the
tough moral dilemmas of the day, Robby is confident the path of reason will lead them
down the road to truth.

George’s commitment to truth and corresponding antagonism towards prejudice
inform his advice to prospective Christian scholars. To “break through the screen of
prejudice” against religion in the secular academy, he counsels would-be religious faculty
to be “as good a scholar as you can possibly be” so that those in charge will have “no
excuse” to dismiss your work. Christian scholars have “to be more rigorous than the
standard in the field” and must meet a higher standard of reasonableness in order to break

through the screen and receive a hearing.

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And, Robby warns, Christian acadenrics, both young and old, must never be
tempted to compromise, to “adjust [their] opinions to conform to secular orthodoxy.” For
Robert George, that would be “an offense against the truth”--the scholar’s unpardonable
sin--because if one is willing to offend against the truth, he or she has “no business being
in this business.”

A scholar’s goal is to pursue “knowledge of the truth” without fear of
repercussions. Preserving the truth is the scholar’s “special responsibility” in our society;
consequently, loyalty to the truth must be “fierce” and “jealous.” Sounding less and less
like the politicians he often studies, Robby adrnonishes academics never to allow their
scholarship to “denigrate into ideology” for pragmatic means, but to be careful “to tell the
truth . . . the whole truth, and nothing but the truth even when the whole truth might not
be as helpful to our cause as only giving the partial truth.” This scholarly mission is

exemplified throughout Robert George’s career as teacher, writer, and colleague.

Rebel in the Classroom

As I make my way across the campus of Princeton University to attend a class
taught by Professor Robert George, I am continually reminded of Princeton’s long,
historic identity as one of America’s premier institutions of higher learning. From the
stunning array of classic architecture, to buildings with names like Burr, Hamilton, and
Madison, as well as residential colleges christened Rockefeller and Forbes, Princeton
announces both its distinguished legacy and its highly influential position within our
nation’s heritage. When U. S. News and World Report habitually ranks Princeton along

with Harvard and Yale as the top three universities of the country, one wonders whether

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the editors are reflecting the institutions’ prestigious traditions as much as their present
educational achievements.

A large two-story white building with 58 stately white pillars surrounding its
exterior walls, Robertson Hall is located on the northeast side of campus adjacent to
James Fitzgerald’s “Fountain of Freedom.” With a cafeteria on the first floor named after
George Schultz, former Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, it comes as no
surprise to learn that Robertson Hall stands as the primary structure housing the
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The Harold Dobbs
Auditorium, located on the first floor of Robertson, serves as the Wilson School’s main
lecture hall. It is in this vast room where Professor George gives his weekly 90-minute
lecture in “Politics 315" or “Constitutional Interpretation.”

When I enter through one of the auditorium’s two doorways, my eyes take time to
adjust to the dimly lit room. If the original namers of the Ivy League schools had focused
their attention on the interior walls rather than those on the outside, Columbia, Brown,
and Princeton might be called the “Wood Paneling League.” The 10 ascending semi-
circle rows of deep—brown wooden desks, along with the lush golden carpeting only add
to the rich ambiance of the place. A cross between a Wall Street conference room and a
local, state park amphitheater, the room and its architects have drawn all eyes to the
bottom center of the room, where the CEO-professor will give his weekly presentation.

Obviously doubling as staging ground for university news conferences, Dodds
Auditorium’s prime real estate at the bottom center of the room contains a large black
dais consisting of a tall, thick podium with two tables attached to either side. Never shy

about proclaiming its legacy through a little name dropping, Princeton has the school

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name emblazoned in large white letters across the front of the granite podium: “Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.” A large 10-by12-foot white screen
fills the space directly above the dais on the wood-paneled front wall. Numerous
theatrical spotlights hang from the ceiling, ready to highlight any honored guest.

The 100-plus upperclassmen who have filed into Dodds Auditorium are
representative of the 5,000 undergraduates enrolled at Princeton. Although I see no
noticeable difference in the percentages of men and women present, I do observe a
preponderance of white faces in the room. On this fall day near the end of September,
these 19 and 20 year olds are dressed in the warm, casual Abercrombie & Fitch fashions
of their generation, including jeans, khakis, sweaters, and sweatshirts--all with multiple
layers. Water bottles, cappuccino cups, and backward baseball caps are sprinkled
throughout the crowd.

Many have arrived early for today’s class, toting their ever-present backpacks.
With their primary textbook, American Constitutional Interpretation, along with an open
spiral notebook and ready pen placed on the desktop in front of them, they are prepared
for the day’s discussion. A few are perusing the New York Times as they wait for the
professor’s appearance; others have laid tape recorders beside their notebooks. I am a
little surprised to see no evidence of laptop computers. Evidently, classroom
technological culture has yet to catch up with that of the dorm room.

Arriving at 11:01, Professor George places his black cloth briefcase and charcoal-
colored umbrella on the front dais and walks over to his three teaching assistants (or
preceptors, as they are known at Princeton) sitting in the front row of desks. Consisting

of a junior faculty member in the Politics Department, a graduate student, and a local

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lawyer, these three white males are dressed more formally than the students surrounding
them. They chat amicably with George as they briefly discuss today’s lecture and
strategize for the follow-up discussion groups (precepts) coming later in the week.

Looking as much like a downtown Philadelphia lawyer on his way to court as a
university professor, George wears a dark gray suit with subtle white pinstripes. His light
blue shirt is adorned with a traditional-looking red and blue striped tie. Nicely polished
burgundy shoes finish off this professional ensemble befitting an Ivy League professor
who holds one of the most prestigious chairs on campus. Dr. George’s choice of
wardrobe is surpassed in its conservativism only by his preferred political stance. In his
mid-forties, Robby evidences his transition into middle-age through his lightly graying
hair. Wearing large, reddish rimmed glasses on his cleanly shaven face, while still a bit
youthful in appearance, George conforms to my stereotypical image of a judicial scholar.

Robby’s fit and trim appearance may have more to do with his weekly workout in
the lecture hall as it does his diet. He paces back and forth across the front of the room,
as well as up and down the two aisles that divide the auditorium. The podium at the front
of the room serves merely as an unused backdrop to Professor George’s roving
pedagogical style. He uses none of the technology at his disposal, choosing instead to
rely on his booming voice, pacing feet, and quick mind that dramatizes each question and
follow-up response.

If Dodds Auditorium’s aesthetics are designed to prepare the students for the
teacher’s command performance, Robby George does not disappoint. In a scene straight
from the movie, Paper Chase, and its depiction of Harvard Law School, Robby eschews

the traditional lecture and uses directive questions based on the previous week’s 200 to

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300 pages of reading to elicit the students’ thinking on the topic of the day. Refened to
as “a direct descendant of Socrates,” by one student, George and his use of class
discussion is no less scripted than a pure lecture as each question has a preordained
purpose.

Demonstrating the mental agility appropriate to a man who earned his Harvard
Law and Harvard Divinity degrees concurrently in four years, Robby uses no notes or
prompts during his 90-minute dialogue with the students. Flying solo, George is forced
to double-check a date or case name with his assistants down front only a couple of times
while exhibiting an encyclopedic grasp of law and American judicial history. From an
off-hand quotation of the Federalist Papers to a word-for-word quote from the dissenting
opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, the professor demonstrates to all present who the
expert in this auditorium is.

As I watch him teach these hundred undergraduates for an hour and a half, my
imagination is drawn to an image of F. Lee Bailey performing at Carnegie Hall. Part
lawyer and part conductor, Robert George builds his case before the class, part jury - part
orchestra. Nothing happens by accident in the classroom as he carefully and
meticulously lays out the evidence. But in this trial he calls no witnesses and gives no
summation. Ironically, he uses the jury itself to present the pieces of the case as he
interrogatively leads the students toward the final conclusion. Like any good lawyer, he
never asks a question without knowing the answer beforehand, and like any world-class
conductor, he knows exactly when to ask for a particular note and precisely how long to

hold it.

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Adding a little more incongruity to the performance, Robby knows before he even
enters the classroom that his jury is already biased against his position. Influenced by the
liberal elite of the culture, these young, impressionable students enter the auditorium
predisposed toward what George refers to as “liberal secularism.” But, Robby will
unearth the students’ uncritical assumptions through his pedagogical strategy and force
the students to think their way through the intricate moral and judicial disputes presented
in class.

The students. Comprising some of the best and brightest tertiary students in the
world, only 10% of those high school seniors who apply to Princeton are accepted.
Ninety-two percent of Princeton’s incoming freshman class were in the top 10% of their
high school classes with some 25% scoring well over 1,500 on their SAT scores. Given
the extremely competitive entrance requirements and the cost of a Princeton education
(which exceeded $35,000 in the 2000-2001 academic year), I came to this class expecting
to see students who take their education and learning seriously. I am not disappointed.
Many students contribute to the class discussion, while only two or three struggle to stay
awake. And although a few are more eloquent than the rest, most exhibit a reflective
understanding of the issues at hand.

Unlike the pressures faced by his colleagues teaching undergraduates at many
state universities, Robert George need not worry about his students’ reading levels and
fundamental learning skills, nor does he have to bother with remedial instruction. Yet, as
he later told me, his challenge to his students is no less basic: “1 want them to think.” The
essence of George’s pedagogical strategy originates from his fundamental assumption

that most people, including the highly intelligent students at Ivy League institutions, resist

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thinking critically about the difficult moral issues of the day. “They’ll put off thinking as
long as possible-even these wonderful Princeton students with their magnificent SAT
scores and fabulous high school grades . . . If they had their way, they’ll just think
whatever ‘right-thinking’ people think. They’ll get it out of the New York Times and
Hollywood.”

In Robby’s own terms, his pedagogical plan to promote student thinking is “to pit
the student’s passions against each other.” He is not talking about pitting the passions of
one student against those of a fellow student, but rather setting “one set of passions or
prejudices that the student has against another set of passions or prejudices” believed by
the same student. When the students are shown the inconsistency in holding on to both
simultaneously, they have a moral and cognitive dilemma. And “the only way out of the
dilemma is for them to think their way out of [it].” Robby concludes, “That’s how I try to
teach them to think.”

The lecture. “Lochner against the state of New York--when is the case handed
down?” To Professor George’s question comes a student’s succinct reply, “1905.”
Robby pushes the student further down the road of historical contextualization: “Tell me
about 1905.” After the same student expands on his previous answer, Robby opens the
discussion up to the floor, “Everybody agree with this?”

With this opening salvo, George begins to lead his students to the presenting
constitutional question of the day’s class: “Are courts the appropriate vehicle for settling
large-scaled disputes about morality where there is disagreement among apparently
reasonable people--at least in the absence of a clear constitutional resolution of the

problem one way or another?” How proactive can judges be in setting moral policy for

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the country? Has the Supreme Court become some sort of “super legislature” usurping
the power of democratically elected officials?

But Robby does not begin by revealing this foundational question to his class. In
fact, he does not even raise the question until a full 60 minutes into the class period.
Rather, he chooses a serendipitous route through judicial case history to motivate his
students to think out the question and potential answers for themselves.

He takes two historic Supreme Court decisions [Lochner v. New York (1905) and
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)] and plays them against each other. In both cases the
majority of the Court voted to overturn a state statute they deemed unconstitutional, based
primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment. Both cases have garnered their fair share of
criticism over the use of the Fourteenth Amendment in this way. However, each case is
distinctly different in its political application.

Robby spends the first hour exploring the judicial history and reasoning of
Lochner. At the turn of the twentieth century, as the country was moving from an
agrarian society to an industrial one, state courts were beginning to enact laws protecting
the rights of workers against exploitive employers. One such law in New York mandated
that a work week could not exceed 60 hours. Mr. Lochner, a bakery owner, took
exception to the law and sued the state of New York. Lochner’s lawyers argued that the
law infringed on his right to free contract with his employees. He has the right to enter
into contract with them without interference of a “big brother” government. If the
employees do not like the working conditions, they can choose to work for someone else.

Lawyers for the state argued that the constitution gave state legislatures certain

police powers, which allowed them to create laws protecting individual rights—~in this

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case, employees’ rights. In a democratic government, people are able to impose the moral
preferences of the majority through their elected officials. And without a clear
constitutional conflict or procedural error in enacting the law, the court has no power to
overturn such a law. To do so would be to make the Supreme Court some type of “super
legislature” and take away the rights of the state legislatures within a representative
democracy.

The Court’s majority sided with Lochner and voted to overturn the law because
they believed the statute did take away the rights of employers. Because there is no
“freedom of contract” clause in the constitution, the majority had to take the unusual step
of using the “due process” clause located in the Fourteenth Amendment and interpreting
it as more than a procedural guarantee. Even if the state used proper procedure in making
a law (which New York did), the law must not violate certain substantive liberties. In the
Lochner case, the Court decided New York’s law had violated employers’ substantive
liberties.

As the students think their way through the judicial reasoning of the case, Robby
uses other cases to help flesh out the thought processes involved. Rehearsing various
majority opinions, minority opinions, and dissenting opinions, he lays out all the options.
And although Robby never comes out and says it, anyone following his line of
questioning can see he does not think too highly of the Lochner decision. In fact, as he
later reveals, the decision itself was overturned some 30 years later in 1937.

Just as the class reaches a crescendo of agreement over the weakness of Lochner,
George immediately turns the discussion to Griswold v. Connecticut in which the

majority would vote to overturn the state’s 100-year-old ban against the sale and use of

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contraceptives. And where would the lawyers for Griswold and the procontraception
groups turn to justify their position--to something uncomfortably like the due process
doctrine of Lochner.

Robby has different students read some of the opinions given in the case.
Knowing the disrepute of Lochner, Justices Douglas and Goldberg tried to run away from
“substantive” due process as fast as they could and establish other means for overturning
the law. Yet, Justice Black, writing for the minority, suggested they were (to use Robby’s
words) just “Lochnerizing by another name.” No matter if the law was a good law or a
bad law, the Court was guilty of substituting its opinion for that of the elected legislature.

At this point, Robby looks directly at his students and asks a simple question: “Is
there a double standard?” Can we have the results of Griswold without the reasoning of
Lochner? Or has the court overstepped its constitutional restraints in Griswold much like
it did in Lockner? Robby does not attempt to answer the dilemma. Rather, he switches
the melody to a minor key by creating cognitive dissonance in his students’ minds. As
the students leave Dodds Auditorium, Robert George (professor/lawyer/conductor) has
his class right where he wants them. He has called into question a leading case at the
heart of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960's.

The strategy. Later that day, over lunch at Princeton’s faculty dining room in
Prospect House, Robby uses the morning’s class to illustrate for me how his pedagogical
strategy actually works. He could have begun the discussion of the high court’s power to
overturn state laws with the Griswold case. In this particular instance, the students’
liberal passions would have drawn them whole-heartedly behind the court’s decision to

overturn the ban on consenting adults’ right to use contraception. As Robby observes,

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“They want it to be right. They think contraception is a great thing - as much sex as
possible - sexual liberation.” But, he did not begin with Griswold; Robby started with
Lochner. Here, the courts did exactly what they would later do in Griswold, “but this
time not in a liberal moral cause but in a conservative economic cause.”

Reflecting on Lochner, students are quick to denounce what seems to be a “pure
judicial usurpation” of the American democratic system of political authority. As George
concurs, the Lochner decision was the “imposition” of a political “elite’s” moral opinion
on the rest of society. Yet, when the students fast forward to Griswold, a decision that
fits their own moral biases, they begin to understand the inconsistency of denouncing the
court’s usurpation of judicial power for a conservative economic cause, while at the same
time supporting the same invasive action for a result more to their liking. At this point, as
Robby notes, “passions are beginning to stir.”

If he had begun the class by asking only their opinion of Griswold, the students
would have been overwhelmingly supportive. But by backlighting the case with Lochner,
Robby has caused the students to walk out of the auditorium still happy with Griswold’s
results but wondering how--or even if—- they can justify the decision constitutionally.
Robert George has these Princeton undergraduate students right where he wants them:

“If you pit [their] passions against one another, you leave them no choice. They have to
think, and once you start thinking, the world can look pretty different. It might be that
The New York Times and the beautiful people aren’t always right.”

Precept exmrience. Unique to Princeton, the preceptorial system was begun in

1905 at the suggestion of Woodrow Wilson, who was at that time president of the

university. Precepts are small groups consisting of an instructor and approximately a

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dozen students. These discussion groups are held in order to promote active discussion of
the week’s readings and lectures. A typical humanities or social science course at
Princeton would include two lectures and one precept each week. Most of the precepts
are taught by teaching assistants, otherwise known as preceptors. Usually, the professor
will lead only one of the precepts.

Twelve Princeton undergraduates are seated around eight small tables arranged in
one large rectangle. Quietly conversing amongst themselves, they await the arrival of
their professor/preceptor--Robert George. By the luck of the draw, the students assigned
to this precept will be able to interact with one of Princeton’s most popular professors in
a much more intimate setting.

As evidenced by the computer portals on top of each table, Frist Hall is one of the
newest buildings at Princeton. This being the first precept of the semester in a new
building, Robby gets lost on the way to class and arrives almost 10 nrinutes late.
Apologizing for his tardiness, Professor George takes his seat at the middle table in the
front of the room.

Due as much to a still-adjusting thermostat as the informal air of the gathering,
Robby slips off his suit coat and begins to take roll. Throughout the 90 minute precept he
will make a concerted effort to attach the right names to the proper students because this
1-on-12 discussion group will be his only opportunity to interact with students on a more
personal level. His three teaching assistants will handle the rest of the precepts.

Both the students and the teacher spend the next hour and a half feeling out their
respective roles in this unique pedagogical environment. The undergraduates, eight males

and four females, are still unsure which of Robby’s questions are genuine invitations for a

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response and which are simply rhetorical. They want to participate as knowledgeable
contributors to the discussion, but, at the same time, they do not want to appear too eager
to impress. As professor/preceptor, Robby walks a pedagogical tightrope between a
discussion leader eliciting students’ observations and analyses, and a teacher who seizes
the teachable moments to emphasize points made in the lecture hall earlier in the day.

He begins the discussion by asking if anyone has any questions from the
morning’s class. One student brings up the notion of substantive due process. Robby
then inquires whether another student might be able to explain the concept: “Ok, who
thinks they got it? Let’s see if somebody can do a better job than I did.” One student
takes up Robby’s offer, and the class begins rehashing the same question discussed
earlier: What constrains the authority a judge has to strike down a law enacted by the
legislature?

Jumping from case to case and opinion to opinion, George challenges his students
to think through these difficult legal issues. From Marbury v. Madison (1803) in the
early nineteenth century to a 1989 case labeled Michael H. v. Gerald D., Robby quotes
liberally from memory excerpts from majority and minority opinions. He wants his
students to grapple with the extent of judicial power and to be able to give a reasonable
explanation for their answers.

Sometimes, it seems that Robby’s quest for scholarly precision overwhelms his
teaching strategy. Although he makes it clear that he wants as much student participation
as possible, he also communicates in not-so-subtle ways that student comments should be
well considered and accurate. A couple of times he makes open pleas for student

involvement: “1 don’t want anyone to hesitate to speak up.” Yet, his own qualifying

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rejoinders to student comments warn them to think before speaking: “That’s not quite
right . . . Fill out Shana’s answer . . . I want more precision.” Try as he might, Robby
cannot hide his own opinion of student answers as the dozen undergrads compete to
receive an “excellent” or “exactly, exactly.”

As with the morning lecture, his conservative political voice speaks louder than
his religious voice. Although Robby does make a point to compare a recent California
case regarding a husband’s right to his wife’s child conceived in an adulterous affair to
the Old Testament story of David, Bathsheeba, and Uriah the Hittite, his editorial
comments in front of the students focus much more on his conservative views. For
example, expressing his disagreement with the Senate’s consideration of a mere censure
for President Clinton, Robby makes it clear to the class that he was “all for
impeachment.” Both he and the students respond with knowing laughter.

For 90 minutes, Robby keeps the students on their toes as he pokes and prods their
own opinions about the issue at hand. He wants them to feel free to talk, but more
important, he wants them to connect their opinions to the facts and to sound, logical
reasoning. No one’s comments are left unevaluated (however subtly) by the professor;
therefore, few students feel free to ask questions that might expose their own ignorance.
This is not a discussion whose themes arise from the students’ opinions about the reading
and lecture; this is another lecture in the guise of a discussion, another opportunity for
Robby to build his own case about the rightful use of the courts. Because newly formed
notions can rarely compete with ideas that are 20 years old, students choose not to
challenge Robby’s points but simply seek to use their own learning to concur with his

position.

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Praying at Princeton. Sometimes conservative religious groups will warn entering
college freshmen and their parents about the dangers in the secular university, where
some agnostic or atheistic professor might take it as his or her mission to disabuse
Christian students of their naive religious faith. Robert George, with some degree of
pride, recounts a quotation from a colleague at Princeton who playfully accused Robby of
“destroy(ing) the liberal faith” of impressionable Princeton students who hailed from
good families and good high schools “where they [were] taught the principles of liberal
toleration and pluralism.” As Robby reflects on the common concern of conservative
religious families about secular professors, he states, “If my colleague’s allegations
against me are true . . . I am happy to return the favor.”

Asked for a specific illustration of how his faith informs his classroom
performance, George recounts the day he began his class with a moment of silent prayer.
It was the very first lecture in a course on civil liberties. With a lecture hall full of 200
undergraduates, Professor George began by reading lines from the opening paragraph of
the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness . . .”

Given that these students were about to embark on a study of the American
tradition of civil liberties and that the Declaration is America’s founding document,
Robby suggested to his students that “perhaps it wouldn’t be inappropriate if we begin by
giving thanks to the Creator for our most cherished rights and liberties.” So he
encouraged the students to do just that, “according to their own faith tradition.” And he

added, for those students who were not believers in some form of Creator, they “might

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take this opportunity to reflect on the source and origin of [the] liberties that I’m sure you
cherish as much as the rest of us.”

As Robby reflects on the moment, “I saw a look of terror on the faces of my eight
teaching assistants who were senior graduate students and junior members of the faculty.”
But most of the students seemed to put their heads down and pray some type of prayer.
After the moment of silent reflection, Professor George launched into his first lecture on
American civil liberties with a discussion of school prayer.

George wondered what might happen in reaction to his creative and potentially
controversial introduction to class that day. “I came back to my office and waited for the
phone to ring” just in case the president of the ACLU was going to call. Robby even
“hung around downstairs” near the department office to see what his colleagues might
say. He did run into his chairman, who asked, “Robby, did you begin your course this
morning with prayer?” After Robby confirmed the rumor, the chairman asked, “Well,
what are we going to do with you?” That was the last Robby heard of the episode, and
that was the last time he used such an introduction. Interestingly, as I talked to other
people on campus about Processor George, that incident continues to be brought up when
discussing his religious identity at Princeton.

Although Robby takes great pride in this story as one way he as a Christian
professor has been able to challenge the liberalism of the university in his classroom, I
think his most effective tactic has been his constant challenge to his students in the
classroom to think for themselves and not just to accept the intellectual status quo (as

seen above). In none of his classes, which cover many controversial moral issues

including abortion, sexuality, marriage, free speech, church and state relations, and the

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place of religion in the public life, does Professor George “privilege the liberal view.” On
the other hand, he does not “privilege” the Christian view either, preferring to allow it to
compete on its own terms.

George might advocate the Christian stance at times on a given topic, but he will
also play “devil’s advocate” and argue the alternative side so that “the students will have
to sort out for themselves where they think they stand on the issues.” Robby’s
Christianity does not necessarily mean that he argues for the religious viewpoint as the
correct one, but rather that he posits Christianity as a valid alternative. His goal is not
necessarily to convince a student to change his or her liberal viewpoint, but at least to
reconsider it and realize “there’s a lot more to be said about the other side than I ever
imagined.” Christianity is to be taken as seriously as the liberal perspective with which it
competes. As George proudly states, “There are no free rides in my classroom.”

George has found the student response to be largely positive, and he relates to me
how religious students, particularly Orthodox Jews and Evangelical students, “enjoy” his
classes because there is an openness “to the possibility of there being a Supreme Being
and of that mattering to us as individuals.” These students find that both “refreshing” and
“reassuring.” Even those secular students who are “hostile” to religious faith do not
create a stir because Robby is careful not “to jam Christianity” down their throats. In the
end, according to Robby, “students get more focused on the fact that I’m a hard grader
and they complain about that rather than my making them pray.”

This same pedagogical perspective carries over into Robby’s advising duties as
well. In his responsibility as a faculty advisor, George is required to help both undergrads

and graduate students work on research projects. He brings the same motivation and

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strategy to these tasks. For example, trying to expose a student to the best argument on

all sides of an issue, Robby will have a student studying abortion look into the science of
embryogenesis and interuterine human development. Although the advisee may continue
to hold the same viewpoint, he or she is “going to see that, ‘Gee, this is a lot harder to
defend than I thought it was.”’ Robert George not only seeks to interact with students
from his decidedly Christian, conservative world view, but also he makes a concerted
effort to take confrontational strategy to the faculty lounge, both through conversation and

his writings.

Rebel in the Faculty Lounge - A Dialectical Engagement

I ask Robby to share an incident in which his faith has influenced his interaction
with colleagues. He tells me about a student meeting he conducted with a fellow faculty
person in the department. They were meeting with all of the junior politics majors in
order to explain to them the process of preparing their required junior independent papers
(which is required of all Princeton third-year students).

With the advent of the Internet, the potential for plagiarism and cheating has
increased, and the two men were careful to warn the students against this possible snare.
Robby “warned them to avoid the occasions of sin” and cautioned his students not “to put
themselves in the way of temptation.” One practical tip offered was to do their work
earlier rather than later, when panic might entice them beyond their ability to resist.

Then, effectively taking all the air out of the room, Robby gave them a final
caution: Even if cheating students could avoid the prying eyes of their professor and

escape undetected, they needed to know that “God would be watching.” Immediately,

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George’s colleague, who was standing beside him at the front of the room, chimed in with
his own secularist qualification, “Well, I don’t think that.” Robby retorted, “Well, I want
to make it clear that I do.”

I ask Professor George why he felt compelled to bring God into a seemingly
innocuous conversation with a group of students. “I wanted the students to see,” Robby
tells me, “that not every professor is a secularist.” He wanted his junior majors and his
colleague to know there was at least one professor at Princeton who was willing to say,
right in the presence of a fellow faculty member, that “God is in control of this thing” and
that we are all “ultimately answerable . . . to Him.” Robert George takes seriously his
position as a role model on campus. He wants his colleagues and students to see “a smart
person who had looked secularism in the face and said, ‘I’m not buying this.”’

George’s up-front, in-your-face presence as a Christian scholar is bold and
confrontational, both within his collegial relationships at Princeton and in his discipline
nationally. Unlike a chemist holed up in the lab every day for 80 hours a week, Robby
readily admits that his research topics afford him no such insulation. “If you teach
constitutional law, it’s hard to hide your views on homosexuality or abortion.” Therefore,
aggressive, mind-to-mind combat comes with the vocational territory. “People want to
take me on, but I want to take them on.” George adds, “I’m as aggressive toward their
liberalism as they are to my Christianity.”

Referring to his running dialogue with faculty colleagues as the “dialectical
engagement of professional scholars,” George is happy to make his argument as best he
can, listen to the other side’s argument, and then be “willing to follow reason wherever it

leads.” He confidently adds, “I think it leads to faith. They don’t.” This combative

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approach holds true in his discipline as well. Speaking of his secular fellow scholars in
political theory, “We want to argue with you. It’s not that we want you to leave us alone.
Don’t leave us alone. Challenge us . . . we want to debate. We want to have the
argument.”

In fact, in his own disciplinary field of political theory as well as in philosophy,
George finds increased “openness” to the religious point of view. “While one does run
into people who are hostile toward Christianity, you might run into many, many people
who are either Christian themselves or [believing] Jews, or open to the arguments of
believing Christians and Jews.” Certainly, the standing of religious ideas in Robby’s
discipline has been aided by a number of prestigious people who are avowed Christians,
including Alasdair McIntyre, Charles Taylor, Mary Ann Glenden, and Jean Bethke
Elshtain. According to Robby, these “out of the closet” Christians in the discipline give
more credibility to the idea of Christianity as a “plausible intellectual position.”

Also, the critique of the secular, liberal position has gained more and more
adherents, including scholars who “have come to see that liberalism’s putative neutrality
is really a kind of mask.” Some of these scholars are Michael Sande] at Harvard and the
late Christopher Lasch. George credits scholars in the fields of philosophy and political
theory like Glendon, Finnis, Stephen Carter of Yale, and Gerard Bradley of Notre Dame,
among others, with an effective attack against the “radical, old fashioned ACLU
liberalism,” which demarcates a sharp break between religious faith and public life. As
Robby states with confident anticipation, “It has been brutally, savagely, and I think

probably fatally attacked intellectually in the literature of these disciplines.”

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Thus, for George and other scholars like him, the intellectual climate for the
religious scholar has improved in the last 20 years. Critics of liberal secularism, both
believers and nonbelievers, have forced people to realize that “they can’t just stand up
and say mindless, anti-Christian things and not be met with serious intellectual
responses.” It is no longer so easy to silence the Christian voice in the public square.
“Radical, old-fashioned ACLU liberalism” has become tougher to defend.

When Robert George describes his scholarly strategy as a “dialectical
engagement,” I want to know what intellectual means he uses to engage others in public
debate. As seen above, a central tension in the academic career of a Christian scholar is
the place of revelation (the Bible) in his or her arguments. So when George recounts his
skirmishes with the secular liberalism that controls the American academy, I want to find
out more about his favored arsenal, as well as the manner in which he deploys it.

Robby is clear about his objective: “I want to show that the Judeo—Christian
tradition is rationally defensible in a way that liberal secularism is not rationally
defensible.” In the religious journal First Things, George (1999) writes, “I shall argue
that the Christian moral view is rationally defensible. Indeed, my claim is that the
Christian moral teaching can be shown to be rationally superior to orthodox secular moral
beliefs” (p. 1). Carrying this fundamental strategy into both religious and nonreligious
arenas, Robby uses contentious moral issues to demonstrate what he believes to be the
superiority of the Christian world view.

How does George do this? Where does Scripture fit into his strategy? He readily
admits that his position on these divisive issues in American culture is biblically

informed. Robby believes the Bible to be a “source of tremendous wisdom.” For

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example, when exploring the concept of marriage, he attempts to show how “the Bible
teaches us something important” when it describes marriage as “a one flesh communion
of a man and a woman ordained toward their own fulfillment as a couple and as parents
of children who came into the world by virtue of their bodily unity and then are raised in
context of the family.”

Yet, while Robby uses the wisdom of Scripture to form his own position on the
issue at hand and believes it “implausible” that a souree of such tremendous wisdom
could be true “without it being a divinely inspired source,” he still refuses “to appeal to
biblical revelation” as the final arbiter in the intellectual and moral disputes. “I don’t
presuppose the authority of biblical faith because that is what is in question; that is what
is in dispute.” He does not wish to beat secularists “over the head with the Bible,” but
rather to discourse with them “on the [intellectual] plane where they say they want to
have the argument--the plane of rationality.”

So, although the Bible might teach us something important about marriage, “we
can’t simply rely on the Bible’s statement that marriage is a one-flesh communion of
persons.” Rather, Robby’s preferred umpire in these arguments remains reason. “By the
application of our faculty of reason,” scholars can affirm something as valid or invalid.
Reason “leads to truth in all areas of human inquiry” according to Robby; therefore, even
in the arena of moral philosophy and political theory, “we have to reason our way to the
truth.”

Now he returns to a reasonable defense of the Christian view of marriage and the
role of sexual intimacy. Is marriage, George (1999) asks, simply a social and legal

convention which serves as “a purely emotional bond between two persons”? Or are

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there reasons to believe otherwise? Without going too deeply into Robby’s complex
argument, he tries to show the centrality of sex to a person’s psychosomatic integrity by
going back to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, the Roman stoic Musonis Rufus,
and the Jewish tradition.

Because humans are “embodied” beings and “not simply inhabitors of a suit of
flesh,” the biological union of spouses “consummates” and “actualizes” their marriage.
The union of a man and a woman for reproduction literally makes the two “one flesh” or
one organism. As an essential aspect of marriage, the sexual union of husband and wife
is “the biological matrix of the multi-level (bodily, emotional, dispositional, spiritual)
sharing of life and commitment that marriage is.” The whole person is involved. To use
sex apart from the holistic commitment of marriage purely for pleasure, feelings of
intimacy, or any other extrinsic goal would disrupt the unity of the self and the body and
the full relational communion of the two people involved.

Another, more easily accessible illustration of Professor George’s
“reasonableness” strategy is his exchange with Stanley Fish at the American Political
Science Association convention in September 1998. Fish, then of Duke University, and
famed proponent of literary deconstructionism and opponent of the idea of absolute truth
apart from the knower, was participating on a panel with George. The panel’s task was to
debate whether or not “moral truth can be attained by reason and whether deep
differences of moral opinion can be solved by rational argument” (personal
correspondence).

Within Fish’s presentation, he had suggested that the pro-choice advocates of

abortion rights had used scientific evidence to support their view, whereas the pro-life

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side simply relied on religious doctrine. Robby quickly corrected Fish and presented
scientific evidence supporting the pro-life side. After listening to George’s evidence
about exactly “when a new member of homo sapiens comes into existence as a self-
integrating organism,” Fish “graciously conceded the point” and suggested that abortion
supporters needed to “shift tactics” in light of this evidence and go “elsewhere in search
of rhetorical weaponry.”

It must be noted that even though Fish was persuaded to change his mind on the
abortion arguments, he still did not abandon his skepticism about the capacity of moral
arguments to resolve moral disagreements. When Robby suggested that many people
exist who are “open mind ” about such moral issues, Fish insisted that “there is no such
thing as an open mind.” And, in characteristically witty fashion, Robby has since written,
“I don’t think [Fish] is right about that; but I’m trying to remain open minded about it.”

When he goes on the intellectual and rhetorical attack in his role as a professor of
political philosophy and defender of a conservative, religious world view, Robby often
deploys two lines of argumentation simultaneously. As he defends the rational
superiority of the conservative, religious stance on issues of public morality, he also
attacks secular orthodoxy as an inferior, alternative world view that has taken on the
disguise of a neutral arbiter. He calls out those who would claim secularism “to be a
neutral” doctrine that deserves privileged status as the national, public philosophy.

If liberalism/secularism is itself a “tradition of thought about personal and
political morality,” then it must compete with the other traditions including the J udeo-
Christian tradition. Its proponents must be able to defend secularism’s set of

metaphysical and moral propositions in the court of reason. To accede to its claims of

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neutrality would be, according to Robby, like accepting the claims of a baseball pitcher
who during a game takes it upon himself to start calling balls and strikes.

George also uses reason and logic to demonstrate the “massive philosophical
problem” of those relativistic secularists who resist the possibility of any absolute moral
truth. Relativistic secularism as manifested in liberalism, preaches tolerance, pluralism,
and the necessity of respecting the rights of others. But, George asks, “Why on a liberal
secular premise should anyone respect the rights of others?” Behind the liberal virtues of
tolerance and pluralism lies a moral standard. What is the source of that standard, and
how can anyone defend the standard in a completely relativistic world? Thus, Robby,
along with the moral philosopher Alasdair McIntyre, labels the relativistic tradition of
orthodox secularism a “tradition in crisis.”

George is comfortable with reason as his epistemic authority for at least two
reasons. First, he believes passionately that the attempt to treat faith and reason as
competing adjudicators of truth or even as separate intellectual paths is a false dichotomy.
Along with his Swarthmore mentor, James Kurth (1994), Robby claims that orthodox
secularism has attempted to marginalize religious judgment as an irrational argument
based on a nonrational faith. We have “reasons to believe the authority of the Bible.”
Religious convictions are not some Kierkegaardian leap of faith, but “an elaborate case
has to be made.” Therefore, he uses reason to defend the rationality of biblically
informed views and to knock secular orthodoxy off its privileged rationalistic pedestal.

Following the thought of his Oxford mentor, John Finnis, Robby then uses the
principles of “natural law” and “natural justice” to prove that “religiously informed moral

judgment” can be based on and defended “by appeal to publicly accessible reasons.” He

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wants “to do battle with secularism on the field of rational debate” because he genuinely
believes his religiously informed position to be rationally superior.

A second factor George gives in citing reason rather than revelation as his
fundamental authority is that most of his audience, including his opponents, does not
accept the premise that the Bible is a divinely inspired source of wisdom and truth.
Consequently, he chooses to use an authority recognized by most involved: reason and
“philosophical analysis.” However, George wants to make it clear that he is not
deni grating the Bible’s identity as an inspired text. “I don’t run or hide from the Bible

.. . . On the other hand, for purposes of philosophical argument (because that is what
philosophy is) I don’t cite it simply as true by virtue of its revealed status.”

Even though Robby does not explicitly use Scripture in building his dialectical
strategy to debate moral issues, he still possesses an implicit commitment to the Bible as
his final authority in all issues of faith and practice. Hence, George’s dialectical strategy
is not an end in itself but simply a means to an end. Robby is not satisfied just to
convince others that a conservative moral stance on abortion or homosexuality is the
rationally defensible one. He also wants to point them to the “truth of the Christian
tradition” in all areas of life.

If those on the other side begin to credit Christianity with some authority on the
controversial moral issues and begin to appreciate how Christians have tenaciously held
onto these positions despite tremendous opposition and ridicule, maybe those people
agnostic to the faith will give some consideration to other biblical claims, including its
identity as a divinely inspired text. Robby begins to describe his use of reason as a type

of scholarly proselytization: “I think I have persuaded some people of the falsehood of

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the opposing position and, perhaps, even some people to look beyond the conversion of
their [moral] views to, perhaps, the conversion of their hearts to faith in Christ.”

Even with his dialectical strategy and conviction of the reasonableness of the
Christian world view, George has a realistic outlook on his prospects for success.
“There’s a lot of prejudice against religion,” and “that prejudice is an impediment to
understanding in this arena just as it is in any other arena.”

Given these strong barriers, Robby prefers to define success with a focus on
faithfulness. “Our task is to make the argument, put the case before them, listen to what
they have to say, engage it, try to think it through with them, try to cooperate in the
enterprise of learning [and] conring to know the truth.” “And the rest,” George adds, “is
in God’s hands.” In the end, this dialectical strategy is a supernatural exercise in which
scholars can only be effective as “instruments” in the hands of God. ‘If people are going
to come to faith, it’s going to be God bringing them to faith. We’re just . . . screwdrivers

and hammers and Chisels and wrenches in God’s hands.”

Rebel in the Public Square

With his recent appointment to the McCormick professorship, Robert George’s
status as an intellectual voice for conservatism has been elevated both in the university
community and in the cultural debate in the public square. Increased visibility has
brought more attention to his scholarly work, as well as more invitations to speak. In just
the last six months since his appointment he has testified before Congress in support of a

bill protecting the lives of babies who survive an abortion procedure, addressed a

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conference of judges of the fifth circuit of the US. Court of Appeals, and lectured to
numerous religious and educational groups.

Because there are so few conservatives in the secular academy today, Robby often
finds himself called on to represent the conservative side at places like Yale and
Cambridge on topics ranging from religious liberty and the sanctity of human life to
constitutional interpretation. Interestingly, because there are so many scholars willing to
represent the other side, Robby observes, “I very rarely find myself opposite the same
person twice.” One such example of George’s identity as m; conservative voice on
campus recently took place at Princeton.

Flipping through the cable news channels late one Friday evening, a viewer is
caught off guard when Bill O’Reilly of Fox News leads off an interview segment with the
words: “Censorship at Princeton University.” He then introduces a distinguished
professor from the school who is also the director of the James Madison Program of
American Ideals and Institutions, none other than Robert George.

Robby had written an article sharply critical of President Bill Clinton and his
liberal supporters that was to be run in the Princeton student newspaper on the same day
Clinton was to visit the campus to give a major policy address. At the last minute, for
reasons still under dispute, the editors of the student paper had pulled George’s piece.

Undeterred, George sent his essay to the editors of the Wall Street Journal who
decided to publish George’s article themselves. Here is how the editors of the Journal
prefaced Robby’s article (George, 2000a):

In advance of Bill Clinton’s visit to Princeton University yesterday, the

campus newspaper agreed to publish an opinion piece by jurisprudence
professor Robert P. George that was critical of the president. When

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conference planners learned of the agreement, they prevailed upon the

editors of the Daily Princetonian not to publish his piece on the day of the

visit. We are pleased to print it here. (A22)

George uses his article, “The Clinton Puzzle: Why Do Liberals Love Him So?” to
ask two basic questions. First, why do liberals support a president who has sided with the
conservative agenda on quite a few issues including welfare reform, free trade, and
various economic policies? Second, Robby also wonders why conservatives still “think
so ill of Bill Clinton.”

As a self-described “conservative academic,” Robby gives his reasons for his own
utter contempt for the president: “He is an unprincipled and deeply dishonorable man.”
Robby then seeks to prove his point by running through the list of “Mr. Clinton’s
knavery,” including his vetoes of congressional acts banning partial-birth abortion, his
long record as a “master of prevarication,” and his many instances of “reckless sexual
immorality.”

Given this long list of moral failures, as well as Clinton’s frequent conservative
policy decisions, George returns to his critical question: “Why do liberals like him so?”
How could liberals and feminists adulate a man with such a long history of treating
individual women in such a dishonorable way? How could adoring crowds of liberals at
Princeton or in Hollywood cheer the man as a conquering hero when, as George writes,
this man of “bad character would sell them out in an instant if it would serve his
ambitions and his appetites?”

Answering his own question, George gives two possible answers. First, while
Clinton has “sold out” the liberal agenda at various points, he still remains true in his

protection of basic “lifestyle freedoms” like abortion. And second, the more Clinton is

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disliked by those on the right, the more those on the left love him. “The enemy of their
enemy must, they suppose, be their friend.” From the liberal perspective, Clinton still is,
after all, the only barrier between them and “the ayatollahs” of the religious right.

Fox News had picked up on the controversy and was conducting an interview with
Robby. After a quick rehearsal of the facts of the case as well as George’s basic
argument presented in the editorial, O’Reilly asks the professor: “You are rare in that not
too many academics criticize the liberal power structure in this country. Do you feel any
heat?”

Robby answers quickly and firmly, “Oh, no,” and he gives an explanation of the
progress he has experienced in his own academic career despite his deeply conservative
views. And although he is criticized for his positions, Robby makes it clear to O’Reilly
that he welcomes criticism because it promotes debate on the issues, which is one of his
major objectives as a scholar: “I’m delighted. I”m all for robust debate.”

Clearly, the furor created by the Wall Street Journal piece has provided Robert
George one more opportunity to create such debate on campus as well as in the public
square. Whatever criticism he himself may receive is secondary to the very fact that
people are taking the time and energy to discuss the issues, and, he hopes, viewing the

conservative religious stance as a viable alternative.

Why a Success?
To be on the conservative side in the academy on many of the moral issues

debated today is to be in a distinctly minority position. “I mean, if you’re pro-life,”

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George explains, “it’s not something that is going to do you good to advertise if you are
applying for a beginning job in political theory or if you’re up for tenure.”

Careful to provide some qualification to his explicit claim of discrimination,
Robby admits that a more private exercise of one’s religious faith would not be
something to cause worry. Simply attending church on Sunday is not a problem. But if
“they are inferring from that church attendance that you might be pro-life or you might be
in favor of traditional marriage, [or] you might have a problem with homosexuality, you
can expect harassment.”

When pressed for particular illustrations of this charge, Robby refused to name
names, only to reassure me he has known faculty to be denied a job, tenure, or promotion
based on their conservative, religious stance. He did pass on one piece of heresay
evidence he received from a nonbelieving colleague who reported conversations with
other nonbelieving faculty whohad experienced great joy because they had “stopped so
and so from getting a position because he’s pro-life.”

Still, in his own personal experience in the university, Robby has found “a lot of
prejudice against faith.” When faced with an argument from a Christian perspective,
people have already made up their minds. They have prejudged the truth and
automatically discounted a nonsecular position. For George, a scholar who desperately
desires to engage people in reasonable arguments and who is convinced of the
reasonableness of his own position, this prejudice becomes almost “omnipresent.”

Comparing this biased, liberal stance to the Soviet Union during the Cold War,
Robby calls it an “apparently impregnable barrier” as it dominates journalism,

Hollywood, and certainly the American university. He fears for young Christian scholars

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who will face this prejudice. “If they are hired, they still might not be tenured. If they are
tenured, they still might not be promoted and . . . given a good salary.” Robby worries
about encouraging these young academics to pursue academic careers: “I can only hope
they have had the good luck that I’ve bad. But I can’t guarantee it.”

When Robby George refers to his own “good luck,” I remember something he had
told me earlier in our conversation about the hurdles conservative Christian scholars face.
If one has a strong conservative moral view, Robby said, one should not advertise it,
although Robby himself had “gotten away with it.” How had he gotten away with it?
Was it a circumstance based purely on “good luck?” I cannot buy that simplistic answer,
and somehow I know Robby does not buy it either.

In Robert George’s case at Princeton, a number of variables have converged to
provide this conservative, moral voice a unique and prestigious soapbox to make his
decidedly anti-liberal argument in the midst of the liberal establishment. For one, Robby
himself believes there still exists a type of liberal who is liberal in the best sense of the
word. Not only are they appalled at any stream of discrimination, but they also believe it
to be of utmost importance to have alternative views present on controversial moral
issues. Knowledge itself is advanced by encouraging tolerance of opposing voices.

George believes this old-style liberalism still has some hold in his own department
because he would never have been hired if this were not the case. Sometimes, Robby will
refer to himself as the token conservative on Princeton’s campus: “I think [the
administration] probably likes to point to me when they are criticized for liberal bias and

say, ‘Well, we have one.”’

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A second factor contributing to his own successful climb within the secular
academy, according to Robby, is his identity as a conservative Catholic scholar rather
than as an Evangelical Protestant. Although, “there is certainly prejudice in the academy
against Catholics, it’s not nearly as severe as the prejudice against Evangelicals.”

Through the writings of Augustine, Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, and other Catholic
scholars, the Catholic religious tradition has maintained a “distinguished intellectual
tradition” that cannot be “waved off as meaningless” by others in the university. But
Evangelical Protestants do not carry the same history of intellectual substance in the eyes
of the academy. So, although Catholics may be regarded as “misguided and retrogra ,”
unlike the Evangelicals, Catholic professors are not seen as “dumb and ignorant”--Bible
bashers on “the side of darkness.”

Knowing his strong Catholic sentiments, I asked Robby if he could ever imagine
himself at a Catholic university. He told me he had considered an offer from Notre Dame
a few years before, but his wife was reluctant to leave the Princeton environment. In
addition, his close friends and advisors cautioned him not to throw away the opportunity
he had as an “out-of-the-closet Christian” working at a place like Princeton.

During another part of the same conversation, George made a startling
observation: He believes he would face “more animosity” at a Catholic institution like
Georgetown or Boston College than he does at Princeton. As a conservative Catholic he
“would be more threatening to the liberal Catholics who dominate Catholic university
faculties” than at a secular Princeton. In George’s estimation, the historic Catholic
universities have “accommodated” to the secular liberalism of today’s academy in order

“to be accepted” by the elite institutions like Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. They have

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repudiated the conservatism of their forebearers in order to embrace the liberalism of the
elite. Anyone who would suggest otherwise, including the Pope, is not welcome.

Revealing his own values and motivation, Robby then comments on these
schools’ desire to be accepted: “Why? So, they are accepted by Harvard, so what? Is that
worth it?” “In the end,” he continues, “I don’t think that will be what matters.” “I never
would have made it,” Robby exclaims, at a place like Georgetown because “at Princeton,
I’m an oddity [while] at a liberal Catholic institution I’m the enemy.”

Third, George has been successful because he is exceedingly good at what he
does. He is properly credentialed with degrees from all the right places. In an academic
aristocracy that sometimes is based as much on location as ideas, you cannot do much
better than Harvard and Oxford. He has also been published in many of his discipline’s
prestigious journals, including the Harvard Law Review (1997a), the Yale Law Journal
(1997b), and the American Journal of Jurisprudence (2000b). In an academic universe in
which a conservative religious view “does not receive a discount,” George has proved
(with a scholarly record second to few) time and time again that he belongs.

Last, Robby attributes his “good luck” to his own combative and extremely verbal
personality. With Robert George, you never have to wonder where he stands or what he
thinks about an issue. Since his youth, he has always found it “difficult to keep [his]
mouth shut or hold [his] views to [himself].” If anyone had ever suggested to him as an
assistant professor that he keep his Christian faith and conservative world view to himself
(at least until tenure), Robby’s personality would never have allowed him to follow the

advice. “It is not in my nature,” explains Robby, “I just can’t contain myself.”

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And, in the end, Robby firmly believes his bombastic, in-your-face style actually
helped him. His “very public record of hostility” to the conventional orthodoxy was
impossible to miss. And, given his outstanding body of work including his publication
and teaching record, for the administration to deny him tenure “could have been viewed
[a] very public display of their prejudice.” A more quiet, “under the table” Christian
could have been rejected for his religious views without anyone on the outside knowing
it. As Robby astutely observes, “In a way, my high visibility and high visibility of my
faith commitments made it harder for them to practice discrimination.”

Or, to put it another way, Robby’s scholarly identity as rebel-professor may have
actually helped him achieve his current wave of success as an outspoken conservative
religious voice within a decidedly secular and liberal academic universe. In the end, his
choice of ethical stance, his desire to use Christ to transform culture, has combined with
Robby’s own combative personality and his immense scholarly talent to provide him a
strategic place to carry out his vocational mission.

Professor George could never be content to retreat into some academic monastery
to ply his trade in religious isolation, nor would his conscience allow him to become
immersed in a secular culture without speaking out. Rather, Robby holds Christ and
culture in continual tension. His faith-informed, conservative world view combines with
his academically trained approach to scholarship to enable Robby to thrive in an arena in

which others have failed even to survive.

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CHAPTER FIVE
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A PARADOX?

Introduction

“When the Word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship
can go to Hell” (Hofstadter, 1963, p. 122). This stark quote from the lips of evangelist
Billy Sunday (the Billy Graham of the early twentieth century) is used by historian
Richard Hofstadter in his 1963 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Anti-Intellectualism in
American Life, to identify the conservative religious mind as one source of anti-
intellectualism in America. With the likes of Sunday ranting against the “degenerates” in
higher education and William Jennings Bryan using the Scopes Trial to denounce the
simian-worshiping evolutionary scientists, Hofstadter was simply describing popular
fundamentalist religion’s increasing detachment from the secular, educational elite.

This pattern was not necessarily new to the 1900s, as Sidney Mead notes in his
remarks about the early history of the Evangelical movement since 1800: “Americans
have in effect been given the hard choice between being intelligent according to standards
prevailing in their intellectual centers, and being religious according to the standards
prevailing in their denominations” (as cited in Hofstadter, 1963, p. 119).

Although most conservative Christian faculty would continue to hold Sunday’s
high view of the Bible as divine revelation, few, if any, would espouse his false
dichotomy between scripture and scholarship. The more intriguing question is not

whether today’s conservative religious scholars side with Billy Sunday; rather, we ask

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how many in the academy continue to agree with Richard Hofstadter. Does his
indictment still have legs?

Can a professor be a Christian and still be considered an intellectual by his
disciplinary brethren? Can she be an outspoken Christian whose faith and theology
clearly influence her research and teaching without being accused by the secular academy
of bias, which leads to second class scholarship? As Alan Wolfe (2000) has remarked,
“Liberals have long assumed that [conservative] Christians cannot sustain disinterested
inquiry” (p. 7). Is it possible for the Christian scholar to be smart and devout at the same
time?

“How does it feel to be a paradox?” (Gates, 1997, p. xix). In his introduction to
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, Henry Gates asks this rhetorical question to
highlight the plight of being a successful African-American male in white America.
Gates returns to the question three times in fewer than 20 pages in order to stress the
“competing impostures” (p. xix) adopted by a greup of people who feel forced to live
their lives between cultures that are apparently at odds-people asked to don two
seemingly contradictory identities.

Are Christian scholars also asked to live lives of paradox? Are they caught
between the questioning and sometimes cynical world of the academic intelligentsia and
the devout fervor of their religious faith? Are the spirit and the mind at odds? Can faith
and reason be complementary paths toward understanding?

“Why, in a culture where so many academics profess to believe in God, do so few
reflect on the academic implications of that belief?” (Marsden, 1997, p. 4). When George

Marsden asks this paradoxical question, he reveals the schizophrenic tendencies of people

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who must continually negotiate between what they perceive to be “alternative
inauthenticities” (Gates, 1997). If the two worlds of their existence seem to be
antithetical to each other, they abandon any attempt to integrate the two into an authentic
whole and adopt a compartmentalized approach to life.

Our three storytellers have encountered the paradox of life in the secular academy.
Michael Behe has come face to face with the long and eventful battle between science
and religion. From Darwin in the 18603 to Scopes in the 1920s, and now to the Kansas
state school board, people from all walks of life struggle to integrate the findings of
science and the teaching of scripture. Religious scientists like Behe are forced to
synthesize the supernatural assumptions of their faith with the naturalistic world view of
their discipline. How can the universe be closed and open at the same time?

Expressed more as an internal tension and personal negotiation than Behe’s
disciplinary tete-e-tete, Mary Poplin’s struggle continues as she attempts to connect the
hopefulness of her new found faith with her own pessimistic evaluation of higher
education’s ability to solve the many societal problems its researchers uncover. Is it
possible for her to respond to community illnesses, which have been exposed by critical
theorists, with antidotes supplied by the New Testament?

In a very proactive stance, Robert George embraces the incongruity of a
conservative ideologue teaching within the lairs of one of the liberal establishment’s most
cherished academic institutions. Could William F. Buckley be hired at Princeton? What
about Rush Limbaugh? George’s aggressive confrontation of his career’s dual realities

begins to answer such outlandish suggestions.

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Each of these religious professors has a story to tell and lessons to teach us. In the
following pages, we will first look at a recap of those lessons grouped around common
themes. Having taken the time to look across the narratives for further observations
about life in the academy, we will then offer some words of advice for those involved in
the scholarly enterprise. Finally, we will end with the question that began our journey
outside of Wells Hall: What does it mean to be a Christian scholar within a secular

academy?

Reading Across the Lives

Two men and one woman, each serious academics and all devoted to their faith,
have opened the windows to their minds and souls and allowed us a glimpse of life in the
academy. By giving each professor the freedom and time to tell his or her story, we have
been able to “situate our work in present social contexts,” which Tierney (1997) claims is
necessary to reveal the institutionalization of a minority group by a more powerful
majority (p. 12). Unlike other research approaches, which may give a broad scope
without the necessary depth, biography “is a sensitive enough instrument” (Dews & Law,
1995, p. 5) to give voice to oppressed groups in social contexts where such prejudice
might otherwise be ignored.

Spending time with these storytellers in their offices as well as observing them at
work, I begin to hear and see what Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994) calls the “narrator’s central
preoccupation” (p. 613). Through the stories and the silence, we can find the “driving

current that flows through his or her life story.” Through the portal of the single life

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(times three) and each traveler’s “lifetime of awareness,” we can learn intriguing lessons
about the academy and gain revealing insights into the life of the religious scholar.

Now we move from a narrative analysis of the individual life to an analysis across
the narratives, which begins to inform our understanding with themes common to the
three. They help to answer our central questions: (a) externally, what discriminatory
barriers have they faced, and (b) internally, what conflicting tensions have they felt?
What academic dreams and aspirations cannot be reached, and what religious
commitments cannot be expressed? These more universal themes, some broad and others
more detailed, will allow us the freedom to generalize some of the experiences of a few to

a wider audience.

Merging Doubt and Belief

When a Newsweek reporter (Begley, 1998) admits that the profoundly religious
and the deeply scientific are both “driven” to understand the same world, yet the writer
still questions whether science and religion can ever be reconciled because “the default
setting of science is eternal doubt” and “the core of religion is faith,” she is
acknowledging the central epistemic tension for any religious scholar (p. 51). Are reason
and faith at war, as Thomas Hume implied? Can religious orientations exist alongside a
set of academic disciplines that originate from largely scientific methodologies? Is there
a conflict between what Freeman Dyson (1998) calls “the old fashioned family religion
that commands [people] to believe without question” and “the ethics of science that

commands them to question everything” (p. 8)?

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One of the major tensions that has consistently shown up across all three faculty
narratives as well as much of the literature on Christian faculty within the secular
academy has been epistemological in nature. How do Christian acaderrrics who recognize
the Bible as a source of knowledge interact with secular scholars who consider Scripture
as nothing more than a nice piece of literature? How do religious faculty who claim
allegiance to a supernatural world view relate to scholars who hold to a closed universe
with no possibility of divine intervention? Questions about the nature of knowledge and
reality can become major points of contention.

Using our three academic journeys, along with some related thoughts from other
scholars, we will reflect on these possible epistemological tensions through two
interrelated questions: (a) What types of questions are being asked? Can we cleanly
separate religion’s quest from that of science? Is the one focused on the mystical whereas
the latter is concerned only with the empirical? and (b) What methodology is being used
in the search for understanding? What is the role of divine revelation for the Christian
scholar?

Questions. Religion and the academic sciences, although often operating as
polarities in our culture, actually attempt to organize the same material in order to answer
similar questions. John Horgan (1996) uses his book The End of Science to describe
science’s quest for what he refers to as “the answer.” “The ostensible goal of science,
philosophy, religion, and all forms of knowledge,” Horgan states, “is to transform the
great ‘Huh?’ of mystical wonder into an even greater ‘Aha!’ of understanding” (p. 266).

Still, there are those who attempt to contrast the quest of religion with the role of

science by relegating the mystical and the ethical to religion while emphasizing science’s

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search for the empirical and the verifiable. In a type of “Kantian divide” (Kant
differentiated the phenomena from the noumena), they seek to protect the intellectual
credibility of both science and religion by giving the former the domain of nature and the
latter the realm of metaphysics. “Science [is] based on reason and knowledge while
religion is based on faith and belief” (Whitney, 1986, pp. 2829).

Having investigated the work of three religious scholars, however, it becomes
increasingly difficult to find a sharp demarcation between the questions asked by
scientists and concerns voiced by a person of faith. Michael Behe has shown us how
closely the quest of Darwin aligns with the questions of Genesis. As Behe notes, “science
. . . has theological implications.”

Even scholars without a religious bent have pointed out the overlap between
physics and metaphysics. Like theology and philosophy, notes philosopher of science
John Greene (1981), the study of science brings you “face to face with the deepest
questions human beings can ask” (p. 196). A theory takes in the whole of reality and an
academic cannot seek to understand what Greene calls the “facts out there” without also
making sense of the “facts in here” (p. 132). Observations about the nature of the
physical world go hand in hand with assumptions about one’s own existence and sense of
moral accountability. Metaphysical and ontological presuppositions stand behind one’s
stated academic theories as well as the methodologies used to propose those theories.

m. Maybe the most perplexing epistemological tension for the Christian
professor is the role of revelation in his or her work. Whereas the nonreligious scientist
has only the empirical means of the scientific method as his or her guide, the Christian

scientist holds to a second epistemic authority: revelation. Scripture becomes a source of

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knowledge for the religious academic, which is not shared by everyone. How do we
include religious voices in the university’s conversation if divine revelation is
automatically considered to be out of bounds due to its inaccessible starting points and
inaccessible methodologies?

Many Christian scholars serving in the secular academy have chosen to play by
the naturalistic rules adopted by the university. Marsden (1997) compares the scholarly
conversation to a court of law in which a lawyer cannot argue on the basis of evidence or
an authority not acceptable to the court. So, in academic life, “it simply does not advance
the discussion to introduce an authority that other people do not accept (p. 48). Robert
George concurs with Marsden’s plea to play by the academic rules. Even though George
freely admits to his belief in the divine origin of the Bible and its formative influence on
his moral views, he still chooses to do intellectual battle on the field of rational debate.
For George, it would be logically indefensible to begin an argument assuming the
authority of the Bible when that premise is already in dispute.

George is also comfortable with reason as his epistemic authority because of his
conviction that reason and faith go hand in hand in the search for truth. The false
dichotomy between reason and faith that some have proposed originated, according to
George, with orthodox secularists’ attempt to marginalize religious ideas as nonrational
and illegitimate tools in the field of scholarship. As George bluntly states, “We have
reasons to believe.” He is not content to stop there, however, as he goes on to claim that
his conservative, religiously informed world view is “rationally defensible in a way that
liberal secularism is not.” He harbors no doubts or hesitancy in advancing his intellectual

causes within the “plane of rationality.”

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Behe concurs with George’s position: “You have to have reasons,” says Behe;
“nobody has blind faith.” Rationality must be the standard of all viewpoints--religious or
scientific. Therefore, Behe is happy to sum up his own research approach with one basic
question: “Where does our common experience lead us?”

Behe does take the debate over epistemology into a more postmodern direction
when he admits that no one’s views, including his own, are acquired in an emotional
vacuum. As other scholars have shown, no method is completely neutral or value-free.
John Greene (1981) has suggested that no scholar exists “uncontaminated” by the
“preconditions of his age and culture” (p. 7). With the work of Kuhn (1970), Merton
(1973), and other post-Enlightenment scholars, the supposedly neutral and objective
methods of science have been exposed as “frameworks of assumptions” (Marsden, 1997,
p. 27) that themselves have not necessarily been established on scientific grounds. Part of
the scholarly process is to bring those nonrational factors to the surface and admit them,
while submitting them to the light of reasonable debate.

What happens, however, when religiously informed beliefs alter a scholar’s
position or argument? Granted, in most cases the Bible has little to say regarding many
theoretical or factual discussions taking place. Isaiah remains silent about the historical
fact of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and Matthew makes no comment
on the make-up of a particular nucleic acid. What happens, however, when Michael Behe
is willing to contemplate the possibility that there is more to this universe than pure
matter? What happens when Robert George argues for marriage as an institution solely
for one man and one woman? What happens when Mary Poplin suggests the primary

problem of inequitable power structures in American schools is, at root, a sin issue?

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At the end of the day, some religious academics wonder if it is not the method
that is the problem, but the conclusion. Would an Episcopal political science professor
who bases his support for homosexual rights on the religious doctrine that all men are
created in God’s image be treated the same as a conservative Evangelical in the same
department who speaks out against the gay rights movement based on her reading of

Scripture?

Exotic or Toxic?

In her book about religion’s place in the elite universities, Finding God at
Harvard (1996), Kelly Monroe recounts a trip she and a friend took to Dartmouth. While
visiting its chapel near the center of campus, they were astonished to find some of the
beautiful stained glass windows in the building boarded over with plywood. Later, they
discovered these widows had not been excluded randomly. With more than a hint of
irony, Monroe tries to make sense of why a university whose motto, Vox Clamantis in
Deserto (“voice crying in the wilderness”), reflects its original mission to take religious
instruction to Native Americans would now choose to conceal only those windows
featuring Jesus.

“In a place with so many words, we learn by asking what the university is silent
about” (Monroe, 1996, p. 17). Christian faculty frequently have commented on the
academy’s reluctance to mention the religious point of view except in the blandest of
terms. Sometimes the power of the majority over the minority is felt more with silent
stares than verbal rants. The effect of the shrugged shoulders or the diverted glance can

be just as powerful as a slap in the face. Dews (1995) describes this as “fac[ing] the

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erasure that the academy attempts to impose on those whom it accepts within its ranks but
then asks to forget their pasts, to deny their stories” (pp. 334-335). Why do lists of
oppressed groups in the American university seldom, if ever, include religious scholars?
The silence can be deafening.

When Robert George describes the academy’s prejudice against religious ideas as
“omnipresent,” he is reflecting its subtle pervasiveness more than overt acts of
discrimination. Like Mary Poplin’s confession of feeling “watched” by her “bemused”
colleagues and Mike Behe’s account of a loss of face rather than loss of a job, George
points us away from accusations of blatant intolerance and toward a university culture of
tacit acknowledgment without a commitment to respectful acceptance.

Maybe the reason Stephen Carter’s claim of “anti-religious slurs” on the part of
the academy are met with such incredulous replies can be found in the muffled nature of
the academy’s prejudice. Although many of the Christian faculty I interviewed knew of
someone who had suffered overt acts of discrimination, such as loss of job or denial of
promotion for his or her religious beliefs, very few offered first-person testimonials to
blatant bigotry.

Mary P0plin’s name was taken off the donor entertainment list, and her classes
were never added to the Women’s Studies recommended course list. Michael Behe
received one negative vote in his promotion review, mostly due to his controversial book.
Yet, each of them has earned the rank of full professor and neither of them is in any
danger of having his or her tenure revoked. And Robert George, who is never shy about

expressing his religiously informed political views, has received one of the highest honors

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a university can bestow on a scholar. Maybe in a sophisticated atmosphere like the
American university, potential prejudice is not so much seen as it is felt.

Perhaps the issue is not so much tolerance as it is respect. If Becher (1989) is
correct when he identifies the academic’s fundamental currency as “reputation,” then
achieving tolerance without respect is never enough. Carter (1993) describes the
powerlessness of the “tolerated’ when he comments on the arena of political rhetoric:
“Tolerance without respect means little--if I tolerate you but do not respect you, the
message of my tolerance, day after day, is that it is my forbearance, not your right . . . that
frees you to practice your religion . . . . The language of tolerance is the language of
power” (pp. 93—96).

Prejudice against the conservative religious voice in the academy comes in the
form of tolerance without respect. To mix metaphors from the civil rights movement,
although few Christian faculty have been denied a place at the lunch counter, more than a
few have been shunned to the back of the bus. Although “God-talk” may not necessarily
be labeled toxic, it certainly qualifies as an exotic loyalty in a post-Enlightenment,
naturalistic culture. It is difficult to stop this type of subtle prejudice with rallies or
marches. Respect cannot be demanded; respect can only be earned. Of course this begs

the question—eamed at what price?

Making a Space

What do Christian scholars want from the secular academy? What do they hope
to accomplish though their presence? None of the almost 30 faculty I interviewed were

lobbying for a return to the eighteenth century, when Christianity exercised a position of

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privilege over every other world view in the American college. None wanted to re-
establish a religious hegemony to replace the cunent secular dominance of the university
but used rhetoric much like William Tierney (1997) when he comments on the majority—
driven dominance he has experienced as a gay man in the academy: “We need to break
those structures rather than merely reinvent them for ourselves” (p. 175).

These men and women who wish to have a religious presence in their workplace
used more subtle language, such as trying “to unnerve” the other side and motivating the
secularists “to defend their view.” Robert George repeatedly spoke to his resistance of
“forcing” anything on his students or colleagues. Instead, he would allow the
conservative, religious world view to “compete on its own terms.” If given the
opportunity to “engage” the other views on a topic and offered the space to hold up
Christianity as a valid alternative, George is confident his position could win the day
based on its inherent validity.

When Behe asks if Darwinian science can make room for the religious point of
view, he, too, is simply asking for a space in the academy’s ongoing theoretical debates.
Behe’s definition of a healthy scholarly conversation is when “real intellectual
arguments” are given on behalf of all sides along with a spirit of “conviviality,”
“comradery,” and “mutual acceptance.” Behe reserves his professional disgust, not for
someone who rejects his argument, but for the academic who refuses to engage him and
his argument without even a hearing, an anti-intellectual attitude Behe considers to be
“disrespectful.”

Both Behe and George just want a hearing for their arguments. They want to be

intellectually engaged by those who hold other perspectives. The ultimate sign of

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disrespect is the all too pervasive attitude demonstrated in what Behe (1996b) calls
“scientific chauvinism” (p. 235) where one side automatically confers on the other side an
inferior identity based on stereotypical conclusions.

Our three storytellers have done more than request a space--they have all set out to
create a space by using their bold personalities, deep convictions, and immense talents.
They have taken advantage of many fortuitous opportunities to make a dent in the barriers
against the religious voice. From Michael Behe’s letter to the editor in Science to Mary
Poplin’s offering of a summer course on Christianity and education and Robert George’s
testimony to a congressional subcommittee on behalf of the unborn, these three have

sought to create a space for intellectual engagement by sheer force of will.

Being Exclusive in an Inclusive World

How do Christian faculty respond to objections made by those who fear religious
academics will use their position of power in the classroom to proselytize and
indoctrinate their students? A close reading of our three narratives reveals scant concern
regarding these accusations. Robert George is unequivocal in his belief that the Christian
has a responsibility “to bring the Gospel’s values to bear in the culture,” including
“politics, [the] arts, and communication.” Referring to herself as an “evangelist,” Mary
Poplin fervently believes God has called her to share her conversion experience “with
everyone [He] puts in [her] life,” including family, colleagues, and students.

Although none of these three well-spoken professors argues for a privileged
Christian voice in the mainstream academy, all of them are determined to argue forcibly

for the correctness of their viewpoints in various disciplinary issues. George proudly

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claims to have “persuaded” others of the falseness of their views, and has attempted to
“disabuse” students of the “secular, liberal bias” they often bring unthinkingly into the
classroom. Is this an improper pedagogical strategy on Professor George’s part? Has

Mary Poplin overstepped her boundaries in a pluralistic academy?

One of Mary’s colleagues certainly thought she had. He related to me an incident
in which he grew very uncomfortable with one of Mary’s public presentations. Speaking
to a large gathering of people of many religious and nonreligious persuasions, Mary gave
a direct talk on the application of Christianity’s values to teaching. He thought her
rhetoric sounded too much like “a sermon,” as well as being ill at ease with her use of an
open Bible at the podium. As he told me, “I’m uncomfortable when anyone comes in and
promotes a particular point of view such as a religious point of view, or a political point
of view or a racial point of view as THE view.”

If the opinion of this Claremont faculty member is representative of others in the
academy, this attitude brings up an important question for any scholar: How are faculty to
communicate their points of view on a topic in a campus weltanschauung that places such
a high value on diversity, multiculturalism, and pluralism? How are religious scholars to
communicate potentially exclusive notions in an inclusive context? How do they
advocate a religious view that claims truth to the exclusion of other views within a
university that often considers such an exclusive approach to be arrogant and
condescending? Or, more to the point: How can a professor who has invested great
amounts of time, resources, and personal energy in a particular area of study avoid the
temptation to persuade others that his or her conclusions cany some degree of merit? Is a

faculty member limited to presenting his or her findings as only one of many possible

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conclusions? Are we allowed to narrow the options? Can we have pluralism without
relativism?

It seems that the elephant sitting in the comer of the classroom is not just the
scholar’s right to argue for the correctness of his or her position. The sticking point is
also the appropriateness of a professor declaring that someone else’s position is
potentially wrong. This is especially true in an area as sensitive and deeply personal as
religion and spirituality.

Journalist Michael Kinsley captures the difficulty of trying to hold a potentially
exclusivistic position in an inclusivistic world. As a self-described “ethnically Jewish
nonbeliever,” Kinsley comments on the current controversy over proselytization between
Jewish Americans and conservative Christians. A number of Jewish groups have
complained about some Christian organizations trying to convert Jews to Christianity.
Kinsley (2001) wonders about the appropriateness of these complaints: “All religions
claim to have answers to life’s most central questions. Any one of them may be right, but
all of them can’t be right.” He goes on to conclude, “And each one’s claim to be right
necessarily implies that others are wrong” (p. 43).

Following Kinsley’s line of argument, many Christian scholars answer the charge
of proselytization, not by denying it, but by suggesting that all scholars do it. As Mary
Poplin concedes, “I don’t proselytize any more [now] than I ever did [before converting
to Christianity].” Mary’s Claremont colleague corroborates Mary’s admission by
referring to her as a “preacher” whose sermon has changed from the glories of critical
theory and feminism to the truths of the New Testament. He even refers to himself as a

professor who has “preached” the same message for more than 20 years.

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When Behe suggests “atheism” as “a professional hazard in science,” he is
arguing along these same lines. In science’s “noble pursuit” to explain the physical
world, Behe implies that scientists dismiss other explanations (such as philosophy or
theology) that might conflict with their own naturalistic assumptions. In his own
discipline, Behe finds little pretense of a hearing for all possible views when it comes to '
origins.

Often, conservative religious voices get a second-rate scholarly reputation because
they hold to exclusivist doctrines. Michael Behe is asking whether these religious
arguments are any more dogmatic that those of supporters of Darwin and naturalism.
Mary Poplin wonders whether her approach to education is any more confident or
imperial than that of a critical theorist. Maybe the foundational question is not whether
such exclusive theories should be taught in the American university because they already
are in abundance. Maybe the more fundamental concern is n93! these theories should be
taught.

George Marsden (1997) offers some advice in this regard. Although he also
questions whether any scholar can hold to a purely pluralistic perspective, he is careful to
disavow what he labels “tendentious scholarship” (p. 54), which is a temptation for all
groups with strong opinions (witness the uproar on campus in the political-correctness
debates). Rather than espousing strict adherence to some doctrinal formula, Marsden
recommends that professors practice scholarly rigor, original thinking, and continual self-
critique. Willing to listen as well as to speak, scholars should present opposing views
with fairness and grace. Addressing Christian faculty, Marsden holds up the scholar’s

“golden rule” as the standard--religious faculty should cany out their work in the

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academy’s public square like they would want “scholars holding other strong ideological

convictions to act” (p. 53).

Integrating Faith and Work

Referring to Jon Butler’s book Awash in a Sea of Faith (1990), Stephen Carter
(1993) argues, “Most Americans have never drawn a neat line between the religious and
secular, either on questions of politics and morality or on questions about the natural
world” (p. 160). Tierney (1997) also argues against the notion that faculty can
compartmentalize the private and the public: “To argue in this manner rejects the notion
that we are able to conduct research in the pristine condition of the laboratory, or to
believe that the university itself is in an ivory tower removed from the daily life of
society” (p. xviii). This inability and unwillingness to separate the religious and the
secular is played out in the lives of our three Christian scholars as they seek to integrate
their faith and work. The question changes from “if” they will integrate the two to “how”
they choose to incorporate them.

Reflecting on Niebuhr’s ethical strategies, we can see why “Christ transforming
Culture” has become such an effective strategy for George, Behe, and Poplin. Rather
than abdicating their responsibility to influence their scholarship with their faith (“Christ
against Culture”) or assimilating their faith in their scholarship so completely that it has
no noticeable effect (“Christ in Culture”), these three academics have chosen to integrate
the two in a holistic yet respectful manner. They have entered the scholarly conversation

using the acceptable rules of engagement while still representing their religious identity

with authenticity.

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They seem to be “Christian scholars” in the fullest sense of the phrase. Each has
staked out a visible role as a person of faith in his or her scholarly community. All three
faculty roles, including teaching, research, and service, have been affected. Whether it be
Robert George’s defense of traditional maniage as “Princeton’s reigning conservative,”
Michael Behe’s direct assault on Darwin’s ateological theory of origins, or Mary Poplin’s
unofficial establishment of a Christian teacher education program in her private, secular
university, their religious faith is being worked out as a significant part of their academic
vocation and not solely for personal enrichment.

Yet, they remain true to their scholarly training. George uses reason and
philosophy “to just go out and find what’s true.” Behe’s academic journey has been
guided all along by his perception of the scientific profession: “I just view it as my job
. . . . I’m a biochemist . . . I’m supposed to understand how biochemical systems got
here.” In the same way, Mary Poplin still uses critical theory and feminism to point out
the plight of the powerless and the problems endemic to public education. The difference
now rests in her belief that “a Christian view can complete these [educational] theories in
ways they can never [be completed] by themselves.”

By choosing a transformative stance and full integration of their faith and work,
they have recognized that the best defense is a good offense. With boldness of
personality and a type of intellectual swagger, they are doing more than asking for a
hearing of their religious views, they are proactively creating a space to express those

convictions.

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Academic Freedom and Loose Couplings

The more I research and write about faculty lives in today’s American colleges
and universities, the more I think my study may have as much to do with the make-up of
modern academic culture as it does individual academic careers. These stories of
Christian faculty who are seeking to define their vocational lives often reveal poignant
insights into the academic context in which they work. Like a postmodern art critic, I
sometimes find it difficult to distinguish the figure from the ground.

Although some of the normative pressures exerted by the academy on Christian
faculty have already been discussed in the introduction and demonstrated in the individual
stories, it should be acknowledged that parts of the academic culture actually aid religious
scholars in their mission to integrate faith and work. At least two of these supportive
beams have been present in our three test cases: (a) the university community’s
fundamental allegiance to acaderrric freedom, and (b) the “loose-coupling” inherent in
faculty self-govemance.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) published a
statement in 1940 that articulated the faculty’s view on academic freedom: “Institutions
of higher education are conducted for the common good . . . not to further the interest of
either the individual teacher or the institutions as a whole,” and this “common good
depends upon the free search for truth and its free expression” (Hofstadter & Metzger,
1955,p.487)

Long considered a “bedrock” of the academic profession (Nelson & Watt, 1999)
and a “key legitimating concept of the entire enterprise” (Menand, 1996, p. 4), tenure has

been offered as security for this “free search for truth.” Tenure “protects a treasured

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space for intellectual experiment” (Kennedy, 1997, p. l), and as such, “discussions about
changing tenure are as welcome in academia as discussions of women priests are in the
Catholic Church” (Karabell, 1998, p. 127).8

In the nineteenth century, college presidents (often ministers by training) claimed
as one of their essential duties the firing of faculty who failed to conform to the religious
ideals of the institution. By the turn of the century, the fight for academic freedom
became a central focus for faculty and the granting of tenure became the norm. Now seen
as more than a luxury or vocational perk, tenure is described by its defenders as an
“article of scholarly faith” (Karabell, 1998, p. 126), and “virtually every practice of
academic life that we take granted . . . derives from it” (Menand, 1996, p. 4).

Ironically, the fight for the right of faculty to teach their convictions which was
once used against the religious hegemony of the academy is now procured to protect the
rights of religious faculty against the predominantly secular university. When one of
Mary Poplin’s colleagues announces that he and the Claremont community “will protect”
Mary’s right to teach what she wants “to the death,” he is communicating the stronghold
of acadenric freedom on the university. What Robert George refers to as “old-style
liberalism” still exists on campus as many scholars assume that knowledge itself is
advanced through the tolerance and encouragement of alternative views.

The concept of academic freedom makes universities somewhat different from

other workplaces because this latitude allows faculty to be essentially self-regulating.

 

3Three recommended texts explaining and defending tenure are Walter Metzger’s
essay, “Academic Freedom in Delocalized Academic Institutions” (Metzger, 1994),
Matthew Finkin’s The Case for Tenure (Finkin, 1996), and Louis Menand’s The Limits of
Academic Freedom (Menand, 1996).

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Karl Weick (1976, 1984) describes faculty self-govemance as a “loose coupling” where
individuals work on their own, as opposed to the “tight coupling” of a factory where co-
workers toil hand in hand.

Critics of higher education have wondered whether this system of governance has
hurt academic culture. When Tierney (1999) calls the phrase “academic community” an
oxymoron, he is reflecting on one of the academy’s unstated rules: “I’ll let you alone if
you let me alone” (Kennedy, 1997, p. x). Alan Wolfe (1996) has questioned whether a
“Mafia code” exists in which no one inquires too deeply into the activity of others for fear
of making waves over the entire enterprise. Writers use phrases like “internal emigres”
(Graff, 1987) and “idiot savants” (Nelson & Berube, 1995) to describe how faculty
function as “hyper individualists” (Damrosch, 1995) in their vocational communities.

Yet, what some consider a curse, others call a blessing. When Michael Behe
comments on how his crusade against Darwin has affected his professional focus and
priorities, he also describes his colleagues’ underwhelming response: “Nobody has said
‘Boo’ to me.” Behe goes on to explain his colleagues’ lack of reaction with an
observation of the academy’s system of governance: “When you’re a full professor, you
can do whatever you want.” This includes, in the cases of Behe, Poplin, and George, the
right to integrate one’s religious beliefs into his or her teaching and research. Although
we hear some in the academy questioning in the abstract the appropriateness of religious
voices in a secular university, when it comes down to specific instances, many respond
like Behe’s dean reacted to objections to Mike’s attack on Darwin: “This seems like none

of my business.”

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If You are Good Enough

Scholarly excellence covers a multitude of sins. When university administrators
throw out rhetoric like Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and Total Quality
Management (TQM) and announce a desire to run higher education “more like a
business” (N. Draper, 1996), we begin to see the enterprise of the academy as a
marketplace where basic commodities include knowledge and people. As in many
businesses, there are certain pragmatic tendencies in higher education. If a professor
brings in enough research dollars, services enough students, or publishes enough articles
in the right journals, the powers-that-be are often willing to look past more personal
issues that might otherwise not be acceptable.

The achievements of our three professors do nothing to dispel this observation.
Each has earned the rank of full professor, and each has been recognized as a scholar in
good standing. They are all exceedingly good at their profession. As one of Mary’s
colleagues has observed, even though her theoretical allegiances have evolved over time,
“What hasn’t changed is her basic talent.”

Scholarly excellence does cover a multitude of sins. Yet, one question still
remains: Does the Christian scholar have to be better than the nonreligious scholar in
order to earn success? Is Robert George correct when he claims that the conservative
religious view “does not receive a discount” within the business of academia? Do holders
of minority identities have to work harder to be accepted in a majority driven community?
That question might require more comparative studies between similar faculty of both

religious and nonreligious persuasions.

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Advice From the Panel

If the secular academic culture provides a ripe context for Christian professors
who desire both an integrative and a transformative approach to scholarship, what words
of advice might our panel of three faculty give other religious acadenrics? Given the
potential obstacles and pressures to compromise one’s inner beliefs, what suggestions
might our narratives of ascent give to those who aspire to a similar vocational path?
What can be done to encourage the Christian professor and enlighten the acaderrric
community? What are some of the career strategies that have emerged, possible
institutional changes suggested, and unexplored avenues of study discovered? Being
reminded that no individual life can serve as an authoritative guide for all, the following

thoughts are offered:

Finite Fallible and Fallen

 

“I believe in absolute truth, but I don’t believe I personally will ever know any
truth absolutely.” One of my former college professors penned these words in a letter to
me, and they begin to capture the essence of what it means to know as finite creatures.
The more we know, the more we know we do not know. Yet, these doubts about the
extent of our knowledge do not preclude a level of certainty. We do not have to know
everything in order to know something.

This quotation also captures the epistemic tension for Christian faculty caught
between the Enlightenment’s almost arrogant dependence on reason alone for truth, and
the postmodem’s overcompensation in the direction of relativism. The birth of post-

Enlightenment epistemology has helped to bring more humility into the enterprise of

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research. Modernism has failed to prove that reason alone can get us to the truth, and
now “the dominant temper of our age is fallibilistic” (Bernstein, 1983, p. 12). The
postmodern has pointed us back to our own finiteness and fallibility as humans. “Where
modernism was a manifesto of human self-confidence and self-congratulation,
postmodernism is a confession of modesty, if not despair” (Guinness, 1994, p. 105).

Postmodernism has reminded the Christian academic of the subjectivity involved
in the research process. Reason is not “some antiseptic tool that can function simply in
terms of itself” (Lintz, 1993, p. 118). As limited, finite humans, we cannot participate in
the research process without our fingerprints showing up all over it. Interpretation does
not take place in a vacuum as our own historical context and experiences of life will
affect our ability to do the job.

Scholars are finite; they cannot know everything. Furthermore, scholars are
fallible; many of the things they think they know are wrong. Charles Taylor (1987)
illustrates this limited capacity to know:

As men we are self-defined beings, and we are partly what we are in virtue

of the self-definitions which we have accepted, however we have come by

them . . . . It is nevertheless hard to deny that we have great difficulty

grasping definitions whose terms structure the world in ways that we are

utterly different from, incompatible with, our own (p. 77).

The epistemic revolution that has affected many disciplines during the last 20
years has provided a needed dose of humility for many scholars, including religious ones.
As Stephen Carter (2000) studies the political spectrum, he notes that conservative

religious voices are not immune to tunnel vision: “On the right, too, are religious leaders

who believe that they already know all the answers, who want no new arguments, who

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refuse to accept the possibility that traditions other than their own might possess a piece
of the truth” (p. 192).

If postmodern theorists have reminded us of our finiteness and fallibility, then
what hope do we have to find anything worth knowing? If nothing can be known for
sure, what point is there in participating in research and scholarship? Maybe the
following illustration can demonstrate lessons about knowing for the Christian scholar.

Ten people are at various positions around a busy intersection when two cars
collide. What happened? Most likely, 10 different versions of the event will be shared.
What “really” happened? Of course, only one collision took place, but now 10 “socially
construct ” realities exist to describe it. And so goes the search for truth.

The Enlightenment scholar correctly notes the existence of an actual collision but
is so intent on imposing her version of the event on the others that she fails to realize that
her sight line to the crash was no better than anyone else’s. The post-Enlightenment
researcher recognizes the 10 perspectives on the crash but fails to seek a valid consensus
in order that no voice grow dominant and thus leaves reality as a collection of private
perceptions. One leans toward imperialism, whereas the other comes close to nihilism.
Both sides have failed to understand that truth requires that we listen to each other,
acknowledge each other’s perspective, and then move on to find common ground as
finite, limited seekers of the truth.

For the Christian academic, we are not only finite and fallible but also fallen. Our
noetic structure has been handicapped by our desire to seek knowledge apart from God.
Where Eve desired an ability to know God without need of God (Genesis 3), Solomon

wrote that true wisdom begins with a clear understanding of man’s dependence on God

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(Proverbs 1:7). Adam and Eve’s problem did not rest in their desire to know but in their
desire to know apart from God. G. K. Chesterton has defined pride as “seeing onself out
of proportion to the universe.” Pride leads the creature on a search for truth without the
Creator. Learning begins with hurrrility’s twin admissions of ignorance and dependence.
Or, to paraphrase Parker Palmer (1993), we make the move toward truth as we realize
that we not only know but are also known. And it is in this being known that we
ultimately learn to know.

For the Christian scholar within the academy, we live in a world someplace
between Genesis 3 and Proverbs l. Education’s epistemological skirmishes are fought
between those who believe in the possibility of an absolute truth worth knowing and
those who recognize we cannot find that truth on our own. Ironically, both the Hebrew
language of the Old Testament and the Greek words of the New Testament use forms of
the verb “to know” to describe the conjugal relations between a man and a woman.
Relationships and the search for truth go hand in hand.

For the Christian faculty person, their ability to know truth is dependent on the
light of revelation including creation, the written word (Scripture), and the living Word
(Christ our logos). It is this light, as well as their God-given scholarly abilities and their
relationship with their fellow learners, that ultimately informs their practice as
researchers. Also, it is on this foundation of revelation, reason, and community that they
build their structure of knowledge.

Egual Opmrtunity?
One marked dissimilarity between Christian faculty and other potentially

identified “oppressed” groups remains the largely muted response of the academy to the

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religious voice. Although higher education announces its intentions to include all groups
through new curriculum, avant garde pedagogies, and critical use of theory, few are
clamoring for Christian-study programs on secular university campuses. Although the
academy uses its many public documents to announce its promise of “equal opportunity,”
one still wonders whether all groups receive the same chance to express their differences.
To locate one’s identity within gender, race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation is
consistently encouraged, but the same sensitivity is not always present for the Christian
academic even though religion often involves “affirrnations about reality and values that
are far more specific and far ranging than [these other] beliefs” (Marsden, 1997, p. 5).

Whereas Tierney (1997) can cite the existence of texts like Academic Outlaws as
evidence of his group’s forward strides “from shame to pride, from submissive to
confrontation, and from a stigma to a source of strength” (p. 166), Christian faculty
continue to describe decertification and delegitirrrization of their own religious point of
view. Do the current university ideals of pluralism and academic freedom extend to all
parties equally? How much will the academy help those religious academics who desire
to create a space for their world view on campus?

There does exist evidence of the secular university doing just this. The fact that
Marsden’s books were published by a major university press like Oxford is a positive
step. The freedom given to do this particular dissertation project in fulfillment of a Ph.D.
requirement shows that some in the university are interested in the experiences of
Christian faculty. Certainly, the liberty provided to Behe, Poplin, and George by Lehigh,

CGU, and Princeton cannot be ignored. Yet, it does not seem out of line to inquire about

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the disparity between the attention given to other minority groups and conservative,
religious faculty. Could more be done? Should more be done?

Addressing a public institution like the academy, however, one needs to recognize
the tension some feel due to the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.
If the public university would sponsor, establish, or encourage more interaction between
scholarship and religious faculty, would that constitute a breach of the United States
Constitution?

Historian Phillip Schaff has called the religious establishment clause in the
constitution the “Magna Carta of religious freedom,” serving as “the first example in
history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control over
religion” (as cited in Carter, 1993, p. 108). Having experienced the religious persecution
of Europe, the founding fathers wanted to guarantee a separation of church and state
where the government could neither force people into particular religious rules or
Observances nor punish them for their individual religious beliefs.

The writers of the First Amendment erected a wall between the church and state in
order to protect religion from the control of government. Yet, today, there are some
religious scholars who complain that the establishment clause has now been transformed
“from a guardian of religious liberty into a guarantor of public secularism” (Carter, 1993,
pp. 122-123). Rather than guard religion from undue government influence, the concern
is that the First Amendment has been used to shield public institutions like the university
from any religious influence.

For religious faculty, the separation of church and state has become the

“separation of church and self” (Carter, 1993, p. 127). Although a Republican or a

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communist is free to use his or her world view to reflect on issues of political or academic
interest, a person of faith is taught to keep his or her religious viewpoints private in public
conversations. It would be helpful for the university to spend more time and research

considering the best application of the First Amendment to public discourse.

Where Do We Go From H_ere_?

Having read an in-depth report on the experiences of our three protagonists, we
begin to form one dominant answer to our primary questions about the external and
internal tensions faced by Christian scholars: “It depends.” Listing only a few of the
complex variables involved in a faculty career, including disciplinary field, institutional
type, geographical location of campus, particular religious commitment of professor,
credentials earned by professor, and the academic’s inherent scholarly ability and
personality traits, we quickly realize that a one-size-fits-all approach will not suffice.

Not the end but only a small part of the beginning, this particular study toils in a
particularly fruitful area of educational research. Those who study the lives of faculty,
research academic culture, and investigate the complicated relationship between religion
and the academy can find many possible avenues for further exploration. Two or three
directions immediately come to mind.

How do the disciplines differ in their response to arguments and ideas based on
religious convictions? How do the social constructs and the epistemological assumptions
unique to specific fields of study inhibit or advance a religious faculty member’s desire to
integrate faith and work? In a cursory way, we have used Becher’s frame to begin to

contrast Behe’s experience within a hard/pure and urban/convergent discipline like

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biochemistry and George’s life in a more soft/applied and rural/divergent area of study
like the social sciences. More combinations of disciplines need to be examined,
compared, and contrasted. Does Becher’s frame hold true to form? Why or why not?

Although quantitative researchers such as Wuthnow (1989) have begun to lay out
possible reasons for these differences, there remains a need for qualitative studies that use
the individual faculty life to put flesh on the numbers produced by the surveys. By telling
the stories of biologists, geographers, historians, and economists, we begin to discover
why they are or are not integrating their weekend worship with the activities of their work
week. By contextualizing research within life experience, researchers will be able to
supply possible causes and motives for already demonstrated differences.

A second territory ripe for further study is different religious traditions. Our three
storytellers have already given some insight into possible differences in the Christian
tradition--specifically, Catholic and Protestant scholars. One would anticipate even more
variety in the experience of Jewish scholars (believing and nonbelieving), Muslim
faculty, and Hindu professors. How would the very real social and theological
differences among the major world religions interact with the predominantly secular
world view in American academic culture?

Finally, who is recording the voices of Christian faculty who have not successfully
integrated their religiosity and scholarship? We need more stories than ones that emulate
Lawrence-Lightfoot’s “narratives of ascent.” Where are the stories recorded of junior
faculty denied tenure or graduate students refused jobs based explicitly (or, more likely,

implicitly) on their religious identity? Where are the narratives of descent?

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Who are the religious faculty who have effectively hidden one part of their
identity from the other--who would be willing to check the response labeling themselves
as religious on some anonymous questionnaire, but whose colleagues would be shocked
to discover such self-disclosure? What other tensions present themselves when a person
works so hard to separate private devotion from public behavior? Many more subgroups

under the heading of “religious scholar” remain to be explored.

Living and Working Without Regmt

The pressure to compromise comes at the Christian scholar from both sides.
Although the secular university may ask her to sacrifice her theological convictions for
larger acceptance, the pietistic faithful can shame her into questioning her scholarly ideals
for religious devotion. In response to the former temptation, the religious professor needs
to ask, “Is the compromise worth it?” Faced with the second accusation, she needs to
determine, “Will my work make a difference beyond a provincialized religious
community?” How will the Christian professor deal with what Noll (1994) calls
“creeping secularism” on the one hand and “incipient Gnosticism” on the other? (p. 30).

Commenting on the tendency of historic Catholic institutions like Georgetown
and Boston College to emulate Harvard and Yale by sacrificing their religious convictions
for a more secularist mission, Robert George asks the compelling question: “Is it worth
it?” With that penetrating query, George directs all Christian scholars to examine their
motivation for the integrative choices they make.

With echos of Niebuhr’s “accomodationist” model (“Christ of Culture”) ringing in

the rhetorical background, George’s question points out the danger of “creeping

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secularism.” What is the religious scholar willing to sacrifice in order to be accepted by
the academic elite? How far is too far, and what will serve as the standard for that ethical
judgment?

The historic trajectory of the American college and university is helpful in
establishing potential pitfalls in the accommodating ethical stance. Historian James
Burtchaell (1998) has summarized the compromising choice made by religious academics
in this position down through the centuries:

. . . but if [the religious academics] lose their nerve and are intimidated by

their academic colleagues, as is true of most of the characters in these

stories, they, too will end up judging the church by the academy and the

gospel by the culture. In time, they will probably lose the capacity to tell

them apart. (p. 851)

George’s and Burtschaell’s concerns are reflected in the following counter-
question asked of Catholic universities by Riesman and Jencks (1968):

The important question . . . is not whether a few Catholic universities

prove capable of competing with Harvard and Berkeley on the latter’s

terms, but whether Catholicism can provide an ideology or personnel for

developing alternatives to the Harvard-Berkeley model of excellence. (p.

408)

On the other end of potential compromise from “creeping secularism” rests
“incipient gnosticism.” Rather than accepting wholesale the secular academy’s world
view at the expense of their faith convictions, these Christian faculty are so fearful of
worldly influence they have retreated into the potential academic monastery of the
Christian university with no desire to engage the larger academic community and are
content to live “on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence” (Noll, 1994, p. 30).

What Niebuhr calls the “exclusivists” (“Christ against Culture”) Noll labels the

“gnostics” because, like the ancient Greek mystics, such Christian professors conducts

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their scholarship as if only the religious have the secret codes that lead to true knowledge
while they ignore any contribution of the secular academy.

Rather than compromising too much of their religious convictions, these Christian
faculty need to inquire whether or not they can still make a difference intellectually
within the academy at-large. Mark Noll (1994) quotes a challenge given by Lebanese
immigrant and Eastern Orthodox scholar Charles Malik to a group of Christian
undergraduates:

“Who among [today’s Christian scholars] . . . is quoted as a normative

source of the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or

psychology or sociology or politics? Does your mode of thinking have the

slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode of thinking in the great

universities of Europe or America which stamp your civilization with their

own spirit and ideals?” (pp. 25-26)

Where are the intellectual heirs of Newton, Bacon, and Edwards? As Noll
remarks, “The life of the mind deserves the kind of cultivation that [Christians] regularly
bestow upon their other businesses” (p. 55). Or, as Malik warns, “If you win the whole
world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the
world” (p. 26).

This tension to compromise from two directions simultaneously must be similar to
the tension felt by Jesus’ disciples when he instructed them to be “in” the world but not
“of” the world (John 17-18). How are Christian faculty to be engaged sufficiently in the
scholarly culture and methods that will allow them to make significant contributions to
the scholarly community without buying into all of the academy’s naturalistic

presuppositions? Maybe the most difficult tension of living between two worlds is the

constant temptation to ease the pressure, either through accommodation or escape.

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Conversely, maybe the most telling danger signal for the religious scholar is not when the

tension increases but when it begins to fade.

Looking for the Christian Scholar

Is that all there is? This searching question framed Professor Tracy McKenzie’s
response to what should have been one of the momentous days in his young career as a
historian at the University of Washington. Having only recently received official notice
from the board of trustees granting him tenure in the university, Professor McKenzie
opened up that aftemoon’s mail to find the second academic trophy dreamed of by all
aspiring scholars--an advance copy of his first book and his first entry into the Library of
Congress. Yet he felt strangely empty and now looks back on that day as “one of the
most underwhelming experiences” of his life.

He took both awards into his hands and contemplated life and vocation. In his left
hand, Dr. McKenzie held the official-looking letter from the board of trustees with the
university seal emblazoned at the top. Resting in the other hand, hot off the presses, was
a book entitled One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era
Tennessee, which presented a statistical study of the agriculture of the South during
Reconstruction, as well as representing nine years of one man’s scholarly work. Taken
together, this formal-sounding letter and fresh-smelling hardback announced to the
academy-at-large a 34-year-old professor’s arrival as a fully sanctioned member of the
academic profession. All the hours in the library, all the long nights apart from his

family, all the tuition dollars--they had finally borne their fruit. Yet, the predominant

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thought entering his mind was one searching refrain: Is this all there is to the scholarly
life?

Tracy McKenzie not only possesses a passionate love for American history, he
also has an intense devotion to his Christian faith. And although he cherishes his time in
the study and the classroom along with the opportunity to share with others his love of
history, Professor McKenzie also carries a tremendous loyalty to his religious
commitments. These commitments were the source of his searching doubts. What does it
mean to be a Christian and a scholar? Is there more to it than promotions and
publications?

McKenzie calls that time of his life a “period of personal crisis” as he considered
what he wanted to do with the rest of his career. “I had spent nine years writing
something my parents couldn’t understand - no one in my church could understand.”
Although the book had won two awards and earned his colleagues’ praise, he was not
satisfied personally. He wanted to find a better way to bridge his faith and work: to
integrate his love for God and love for scholarship. In the words of Professor McKenzie,
he wanted to teach and write “in a way that would engage what T. S. Elliot called
‘permanent things.”’

What does it mean to be a Christian scholar--in the fullest sense of both words?
How can one be true to his or her religious passions and acadenric loyalties without
feeling like an imposter in either place? From the journeys of our three storytellers we
have learned that the pursuit of scholarship and the dedication to a religious value system

is not an either/or proposition. As one of Mary Poplin’s students so eloquently reflected

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on Mary’s example, “It is possible to be an outstanding Christian and an outstanding
scholar.”

For a Christian graduate student considering the academic profession, what
counsel might our three protagonists offer? From careers spent in the seemingly dual
realities of church and academy, what instruction might our three travelers give a young
professor like Tracy McKenzie facing the next stage of his career?

First, they teach Christian scholars to prize scholarly excellence. When Robert
George defines academic success as “faithfulness,” he confesses his daily intention to use
his God-given abilities to make the best argument he can make in whatever academic task
he is engaged in, in order to pursue the truth.

Second, religious professors learn the significance of an unremitting
determination to follow the argument wherever it may lead. Michael Behe’s simple but
career-altering decision to engage Darwin’s theory on origins no matter what disciplinary
heat he took illustrates the constant tension a scholar faces between his emotional desire
to be accepted and his intellectual drive to push theoretical boundaries. Behe’s decision
also illustrates the serendipitous trajectory of a career of one who is not afraid to step
outside the disciplinary status quo.

Finally, these three faculty narratives remind Christian faculty that they must be
sensitive enough to live out their vocational callings with authenticity. Mary Poplin’s
struggle to connect her new-found faith with her longstanding career proves the
unbreakable bond that exists between the quality of one’s work in the external world and
the freedom to use that work to express her internal call. The life of the Christian scholar

is as much about motivation as it is about execution. Through the authentic enactment of

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their call, Christian scholars learn to live out their work and faith with integrity. The
words of Bernard of Clairvoux capture the seamless connection between scholarship and
motive:

There are many who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge: that is

curiosity. There are others who desire to know in order that they

themselves be known: that is vanity. Others seek knowledge in order to

sell it: that is dishonorable. But there are some who seek knowledge in

order to edify others: that is love. (as cited in Schwehn, 1993, p. 60)
If you are good enough, if you are deternrined enough, if you love enough--these three

qualities are what help Christian scholars succeed in a secular academy in which they

learn to believe their doubts without doubting their beliefs.

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APPENDIX A

GLOSSARY

Call - both an internal and external pull toward a particular line of work that often
develops over time.

Christian Scholar -

Christian - “a tradition of group worship that presupposes the existence of a
sentience beyond the human and capable of acting outside of the observed
principles and limits of natural science, and further, a tradition that makes
demands of some kind on its adherents” (Carter, 1993, p. 17). This project has
focused on a conservative segment of Christianity that places “a strong emphasis
on the authority of the Bible as a reliable historical record of God’s saving work
centering in Christ” (Marsden, 1994, p. 9).

Scholar - one who has done advanced study in a special academic field and now
plies his or her trade within higher education.

Convergent/Divergent - descriptors of academic disciplines differentiating those fields of
study with uniform standards and procedures for how faculty go about their work
(convergent) and those disciplines that tolerate more acaderrric deviance
(divergent).

Culture - “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of
which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and
attitudes toward life” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89).

Discipline - a department of learning or knowledge. More specifically, “the attitudes,
activities, and cognitive styles of groups of acadenrics . . . closely bound up with
the characteristics and structures of the knowledge domains with which such
groups are professionally concerned” (Becher, 1989, p. 20).

Epistemology - dealing with the nature of knowledge. What can I know, and how can I
know it?

Hard/Soft - descriptors of academic disciplines differentiating those fields of study with

clearly defined intellectual boundaries and well-developed theoretical structures
(hard) and those disciplines with a lack of consensus about such matters (soft).

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Integration - the degree to which a Christian scholar’s faith influences his or her
academic work or “what it means to think like a Christian about the nature and
workings of the physical world” (Noll, 1994, p. 7).

Life History - a research method that seeks to give an account of a life by relying on the
individual’s own life story.

Narrative Cognition - a way of conring to know the world that emphasizes difference,
complexity, and context.

Naturalism - a philosophical world view that holds the universe to be self-contained,
made up of only matter and energy. Scientific laws are sufficient to describe all
phenomena.

Ontology — dealing with the nature of being.

Paradigmatic Cognition - a way of conring to know the world that accentuates sameness,
order, and decontextualization.

Portraiture - a type of qualitative research used to portray the experiences and life of an
individual or group of individuals, with an emphasis on the use of stories and
storytelling to reveal the shape of life’s journey.

Postmodernism (also Post-Enlightenment Epistemology)- a philosophical perspective
with nonfoundationalist epistemological assumptions and corresponding
methodological preferences.

Pure/Applied - descriptors of academic disciplines differentiating those fields of study
that are resistant to outside influence (pure) and those disciplines that are more
receptive to contributions from scholars outside the present academic hierarchy

(applied).

Spirituality - often used in higher education as a broad concept of a type of mystical
humanism not necessarily attached to any particular religion (Greenstreet, 1999).

Urban/Rural - descriptors of academic disciplines differentiating those fields of study that
cover a narrow area of intellectual territory with a high ratio of available people
(urban) and those disciplines with thinly scattered problems over a broader, more
diverse area of study (rural).

Vocation - describes “work that results in service to others and personal satisfaction in the
rendering of that service” (Hansen, 1995, p. 3).

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APPENDIX B

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

These are stories I have used to think with.
-Mary Catherine Bateson (1989, pp. 33-34)

Stories and Qualitative Research

In the New York Review of Books, Clifford Geertz (1997) summarizes the message
of psychologist Jerome Bruner’s latest book, The Culture of Education (1996), by
underscoring Bruner’s linking of narrative and learning:

“Tales are tools,” says Jerome Bruner. Bruner’s thesis is that we live “in a

sea of stories” and that “learning how to swim in such a sea, how to

construct stories, understand stories . . . see through stories and use stories

to find out how things work, or what they come to, is what the school and

the whole ‘culture of education’ should be about.” (pp. 23-24)

Bruner’s thesis, together with the introductory quotation above taken from Mary
Catherine Bateson, illustrates the vital connection among biography, learning, and
inquiry. To research a life requires that we seek out the stories of a life. A qualitative

approach to the research of faculty lives in general and of Christian faculty working in a

secular university in particular stands equipped for such a task.

Backgpound

Denzin and Lincoln (2000) write that qualitative research “privileges” no single
methodology, but rather the qualitative researcher “works between and within competing

and overlapping perspectives and paradigms” (pp. 2-3). And although no one of these

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__ ., AA.L_ A ,

qualitative methods fits perfectly the goals of this present study, many of the foundational
assumptions in qualitative research prove consistent with its aims.

Some of these basic premises include: (a) a focus on first-person accounts to
describe experience; (b) concern with the generation of theory rather than the replication
or generalization of theory; (c) a recognition of research’s dialogical nature, including the
researcher’s shaping hand as well as the centrality of the relationship between researcher
and subject; (d) the search for individual meaning through storytelling rather than
measurement and explanation; (e) stress on the holistic value of context in research as it
situates actors and action within a meaningful whole; and (f) the representation of life’s
complexity and fluidity through the inclusion of deviant voices, outliers, and the
marginalized while resisting reductionism and abstraction. While working “between and
within” these overlapping research perspectives, this study’s focus draws us closer to
those research projects that have implemented particular kinds of qualitative research,
including narratives, life history, and portraiture.

Portraiture and human archeology. In her book The Good High School, Sarah
Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983) describes an earlier experience in her life when she sat for a
portrait. Lawrence-Lightfoot enjoyed the “glowing sensation” of being fully attended to
without distraction, of being the center of another’s perpetual gaze. Yet, she also
describes how uncomfortable she felt with the finished product. The painting did not
match what she saw in the nrirror.

I had the eerie sensation that she [the painter] anticipated my future and

echoed my past. . . . Time moved backward and forward through this still

and silent woman [on the canvas] . . . The portrait reflects a compelling
paradox, of a moment in time and timelessness. (pp. 4-5)

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This episode in Lawrence-Lightfoot’s life serves to illustrate the potential power
of qualitative research to portray the experiences and life of an individual or group of
individuals. Echoing her own experience, Lawrence-Lightfoot illustrates how a portrait
will often “tell you about parts of yourself about which you are unaware, or to which you
haven’t attended” (p. 5).

Using metaphors like human archeology, tapestry, and puzzle building, Lawrence-
Li ghtfoot (1997) describes her own brand of qualitative research as “an eclectic,
interdisciplinary approach, shaped by the lenses of history, anthropology, psychology, and
sociology.” It is a blend of the “curiosity and detective work of a biographer, the literary
aesthetic of a novelist, and the systematic scrutiny of a researcher” (p. 15). She calls her
research “portraiture.”

Influenced by the work of Geertz, Polanyi, and Eisner, as well as the philosophical
stance of phenomenology, Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983) emphasizes the use of stories and
storytelling to reveal the shape of life’s journey. This search for stories respects the
individual story as much as the group while admitting the shaping hand of the artist
(researcher). This is what phenomenologists refer to as the “inter-subjectivity” of
qualitative research and the need “to experience and reflect upon one’s own feelings in
order to successfully identify with another’s perspective”(p. 370).

Life histog. Life history became popular as a research method in the 1930s and
1940s with University of Chicago-trained sociologists. Defined in the Oxford English
Dictionary as “a written record of the life of an individual,” the life history method has
gained increasingly widespread support among researchers who desired to record “an

anthology of experience in people’s own wor ” (Kotre, 1984, p. 25). Life history

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provides a tool to help scholars penetrate subjects’ assumptions and their “taken for
granted world” (Faraday & Plummer, 1979, p. 776).

A subset of the biographical method, life history has taken on multiple forms and
various names, including “life story” (Kotre, 1984) and “life writing” (L.M. Smith, 1994).
Whereas the biographer seeks to check the validity of a research subject’s story through
outside sources, the life writer relies almost exclusively on the subjects themselves in
order to produce a record of their own experience through their own words. Norman
Denzin (1989b) describes this task as presenting “the experiences and definitions held by
one person, one group, or one organization as this person, group, or organization
interprets those experiences” (p. 183).

Stories and plot furnish the conceptual scheme of life writing. “Stories are
particularly suited as the linguistic form in which human experience as lived can be
expressed” (Polkinghome, 1995, p. 7). A researcher does not study these life stories
event by event, but rather within a larger structure called a plot. As the plot develops
within a particular life story, it enables the researcher to delimit the temporal range in the
historical context of the life. Because a researcher can never communicate the story of an
entire life, plot also provides criteria for selecting which events to include. Plot also aids
in ordering events into a movement that culminates in a conclusion. Finally, plot gives a
mental construct of what is taking place by making explicit the meaning events have
within the story as a whole.

The conviction that human conduct needs to be studied and understood from the
perspective of the subject is a major assumption in the life history method. Many

researchers (Campbell, 1988; Denzin, 1989a; Faraday & Plummer, 1979) trace this core

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belief back to the influence of symbolic interactionism. Herbert Blumer (1969), drawing
heavily on the work of Mead, Dewey, and James, posits three basic ideas in symbolic
interactionism: (a) humans act on the basis of the meaning that things have for them, (b)
these meanings come from the social interaction between the self and others, and (c)
meanings are continually modified through interpersonal processes. People develop
through relationships with others, or, to put it a more graphic way, “We are cannibals,
internalizing the expectations and dreams of others” (Campbell, 1988, p. 197). Life
history provides the method for studying these interpersonal relationships within the

historical context of life.

Facult Lives and ualitative Research

Alice Rossi(l988) has noted the relative ease of using paper trails to chart the
intellectual interests of a scholar. Yet, “it is far more difficult to take a retrospective look
at the inner development of one’s own motivations and thoughts, and to specify what
influenced a shift of substantive interest or theoretical perspective” (p. 43). This is more
than a study of how Christian faculty get along in a sometimes difficult work context.
We want to penetrate the inner life of the person and explore how the university’s
seemingly a-religious context at best and anti-religious bent at worse has affected
religious faculty’s own approaches to their work and even to their own belief structure.
With their focus on context, nuance, and the dialogical nature of research, qualitative
approaches provide the mental ammunition necessary to emulate profile writer John
Lahr’s stated goal--“to get beyond ballyhoo to something more probing and ironic” (p.

xii).

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Context. Within the positivist tradition, context can be seen as a source of
distortion even resulting in the attempt to isolate unwanted variables in the laboratory
environment. Yet, this can result in what Mishler (1979) calls “context stripping,” where
the researcher risks misinterpretation by “inflicting the researcher’s lens and standards on
the subject’s reality.” Faraday and Plummer (1979) suggest that “most social science is
involved in a process of amputation” in its attempt to isolate massive amounts of material
without regard to a person’s life context (p. 177). Stories and the historical context
revealed within those life stories help us “to understand the fullness of human existence”
(Polkinghome, 1995). In addition, one has to ask whether ornot the laboratory itself can
ever be “context free.”

Rather than attempting to rid themselves of context, qualitative researchers
working within a phenomenological framework find context “crucial to their
documentation of human experience and organizational culture” (Lawrence-Lightfoot &

fl ‘6

Davis, 1997, p. 41). Using metaphors like “framework,” “reference point, map,” and
“ecological sphere,” writers stress the holistic value of context in research as it situates
the actors and the action within a meaningful whole.

Context presents itself on more than one level. A researcher might place the
subject within a historical context, an organizational context, a physical context, and a
personal context. Within the portraiture tradition, this personal context includes not only
the actor but also the researcher. As one begins to study a person or act, the researcher
becomes part of the setting and even can disturb the natural rhythm of the environment

itself. Acting as an interloper and stranger within the personal context of the subject, the

researcher must “sketch herself into the context” as the “place and stance of the

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researcher are made visible and audible” to the reader in order to demonstration the
researcher’s own assumptions and expectations he or she has brought to the scene
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 50). This dynamic framework called context is
constantly evolving and changing: “shaping and being shaped by the actors”(p. 59) and
the researchers as well. Without context we only have proof-text.

Nuance. Because “small facts will speak to large issues” (Geertz, 1973, p. 23), a

 

primary characteristic of portraiture and life history is attention to detail and subtle
description. Having reacted against the supposed “closed systems of thought”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 5) within the positivist spirit, qualitative
researchers have sought to represent the “fluidity and complexity of the living world” (p.
7) while at the same time resisting reductionism and abstraction. Educational researchers
in this camp protest studying people as “though they were fruit flies”(Featherstone, 1989,
p.376)

Qualitative methods such as life history and portraiture can provide a depth of
insight necessary to see “the figure under the carpet” (Edel, 1979) who might escape
detection in research methods focused on merely external causation. Freud’s use of
stories in psychoanalysis exemplifies the ability of stories to help people reflect on the
most profound questions of life. To discover one’s own ability to handle perceived
marginalization or prejudice would seem to call for more than a survey response. The
perceptive life writer needs the skills of a Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud in order
to find the figure under the carpet, construct it carefully, and then communicate it

effectively.

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While valuing the single case, the qualitative researcher does not resist totally the
urge to generalize from the one to the many. Rather, “a persistent irony . . . is that as one
moves closer to the unique characteristics of a person or a place, one discovers the
universal” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 14). Resonant, universal themes can
be found embedded within the study of the single life. So the search for nuance does not
preclude the attainment of universals, but rather the use of individual stories depends on
the particular to produce the general. “What discoveries I have made in the process of
writing stories, all begin with the particular, never the general” (Geertz, 1997, p. 23).

One way to penetrate the subtleties of one’s subjects is to listen for the outliers
and the “deviant voice” in the sample rather than isolating the outliers as qualitative
studies are wont to do. “The deviant voice is also useful in encouraging the skeptical,
counterintuitive stance that the researcher must maintain throughout the course of
research” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 193). In this way, the researcher can
challenge a too-facile conclusion or present a new lens with which to view the problem at
hand and ultimately produce new understandings and insights. Sometimes methods that
highlight generalization and prediction can impose order and rationality on experiences
that may not be so orderly or rational.

This focus on nuance and possible “outliers” helps the researcher ascertain both
paradigmatic and narrative cognition. Bruner (1985) posits these two types of
complementary knowledge, with the former concentrating on sameness, order, and
decontextualization while the latter highlights difference, complexity, and nuance.

“Efforts to reduce one mode to the other or to ignore one at the expense of the other

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invariable fails to capture the rich ways in which people ‘know’ and describe events
around them” (Bruner, 1985, p. 97).

A dialogjcal production.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist,

not the sitter. The sitter is merely an accident, the occasion. It is

not who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter, who, on

the colored canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit

this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of

my soul. (Wilde, 1906)

Any recording of the subject’s experiences in educational research and any type of
biography exists as a “dialogical production” (Polkinghome, 1995, p. 19) whose stories
are presented as a joint construction between the subject and the researcher. “Researchers
engaged in narrative analysis need to be attuned to their contributions to the constructive
aspects of their research and to acknowledge these in their “write-ups” (p. 19). At the
heart of this kind of research rests a conversation between two meaning-makers.

With an intellectual debt to Martin Buber, Carol Gilligan (1982) describes one of
the paradoxical truths of human experience--that “we know ourselves as separate only
insofar as we live in connection with others and we experience relationship only insofar
as we differentiate other from self” (p. 63). Qualitative research acknowledges the central
role of relationship building between researcher and subject, including the complex and
dynamic process of “navigating the boundaries” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p.
158) between the self and the other. When ought there to be distance and when intimacy?

When should there be acceptance and when skepticism, when receptivity and when

challenge; when silence and when talk?

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It is through relationship that connections are made, data are revealed, and
knowledge is gained. These relationships are not static, but rather dynamic, changing day
to day and even hour by hour. Because of their dynamic complexity, these relationships
can be shaped by both temporal and temperamental concerns. How much time is spent
between researcher and subject and how often they meet make a difference, as does the
chemistry between the two with their often differing personalities and temperaments.

The omnipresence of the researcher’s self and voice resounds throughout the
finished product. Even so-called “objective” researchers cannot avoid the voice of self
within the context, language, content, and even orchestration of the study itself. Self and
voice need to be acknowledged, evaluated, and even calibrated. Voice actually becomes
“a research instrument echoing the self” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 85). This
is why Wilde can claim that a portrait ultimately reveals more of the artist than the
subject.

Contrary to some researchers’ ideals, voice can never be “neutralized out.” Voice
becomes apparent through the particular research question selected, the study’s design,
and the collection strategies themselves. Voice needs to be premeditated, restrained, and
carefully controlled so that it does not overwhelm the voice of the other, in this case the
subject being studied. If the finished product is not to become simply a self-portrait, the
researcher needs to be careful to use his or her voice to amplify the subject’s story and
not to silence it.

Being sensitive to voice and self becomes closely connected to the researcher’s
stance as an outsider/insider. As a “discerning observer,” the researcher can be

sufficiently distanced from the subject to see the whole of the situation and perceive

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patterns of information that might not be readily available to one so closely connected to
the situation. This stance as a “boundary sitter” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p.
87) gives the researcher the closeness necessary to articulate the details of the situation or
the life but also the distance needed to see the situation with a new set of eyes, to be alert
to what Malinowski (1938, p. 306) calls the “imponderables,” things that are so close to
the “natives” that they would never consider reporting them.

Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994), describing the subjects in her research as
“storytellers,” captures narrative research’s co-conspiratory journey:

These storytellers do not travel alone. I am with them; we are on this

journey together. Their life stories emerge out of our constantly evolving

relationship. The subtext here is the narrative of a relationship that is the

vehicle through which the life story is remembered and expressed. Rather

than being interviewed these six people are collaborators or co-creators of

their life stories. The message and meaning of the stories comes from the

interaction, our duet, the convergence of our experience. I am both
audience and nrirror, witness and provocateur, inquirer and scribe. (p. 620)

Epistemological Concerns

In the introduction to Hard Times, his biography of people who lived during the
Great Depression, Studs Terkel (1970) writes, “This is a memory book rather than one of
hard fact and precise statistic” (p. 17). Terkel’s statement raises an important concern in
the use of first-person stories in research: How do we gauge the epistemological
relevance of a research method dependent on bridging the space “between the
autobiographical self and the biographical other” (Campbell, 1988, p. 69)? Can we say
our subject’s story has brought us any closer to the “truth,” or must we echo one keynote
speaker at an English association who lumped together autobiography and the novel as

“two different ways of telling agreeable lies” (Smith, 1994, p. 288)?

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One the one hand, researchers in the qualitative tradition admit with Geertz (1983)
that research is “the researcher’s constructions of other people’s constructions of what
they are up to” (p. 9). Yet, on the other hand, they still call for a “carefully, systematic,
and detailed description developed through watching, listening to, and interacting with
the actors over a sustained period of time” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 12).
They hold up various types of epistemological warrants like “authenticity” (Lawrence-
Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 12), “plausibility” (Bruner, 1990), and “verisimilitude”
(Bruner, 1986; Polkinghome, 1988) as tests for the appearance of truth or reality in a
subject’s story.

Polkinghome (1988) contrasts narrative research with the more quantitative
approaches by highlighting narrative’s use of the “ideal of a scholarly consensus as the
test of verisirnilitude rather than the test of logical or mathematical validity” (p. 176).
Other qualitative researchers like Connelly and Clandinin (1990) suggest we go “beyond
reliability, validity, and generalizability in narrative research” (p. 7). Van Manen ( 1990)
describes epistemic relevancy for narrative research as “animating evocative descriptions
of human actions” (p. 19), whereas Barone (1992) stresses “accessibility, compellingness,
and moral persuasiveness” (p. 21).

Philosopher of education D. C. Phillips (1994) raises important questions about
these proposed answers of epistemological warrant. Even a false story such as the report
of a flat earth may “appear” to be true (p. 18). Clifford Geertz (1983) echoes those
concerns about relying on criteria like verisinrilitude and plausibility with his description
of an adequate, plausible, engaging, and coherent swindler’s story. What happens when

rival accounts appear that are equally evocative and plausible?

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Users of life stories make many decisions that are constituted by ambiguity. How
does one account for the rationalization of people and the tendency of subjects to interpret
past experience based on present beliefs? Researchers depend on the recollection process
and transparency of the subject. A subject may not be fully aware of what occurred in a
particular period in the life, or he or she might hide certain issues, thoughts, or actions.
“In a sense he [the subject] is sort of a stripper; the suspense of his story lies in guessing
how far he will undress” (L.M. Smith, 1994, p. 288). Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994) admits
this possibility when she describes her use of stories to reconstruct life’s experiences:

. . . We both (researcher and subject) know that the stories they tell will

not be a factual representation of history or experience. Our search is not

for a rendering of objective truth or replicable evidence, but for the

reconstruction and reinterpretation of experience, which can include

perspective taking, projection, distortion, and fantasy. (p. 612)

People act on the basis of what is true to them even if it is not actually true. In the
classic sociological text, The Child in America, William Thomas and Dorothy Swaine
(1928) wrote, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (p.
572). My study was intended to uncover and to understand the conscious beliefs of a
person, and so those beliefs are important to me even if they might be seen as
unjustifiable or epistemologically irrelevant from another’s perspective. Even
educational researchers from a more quantitative tradition acknowledge that a
researcher’s purpose has tremendous bearing on the issue of epistemic relevance

(Phillips, 1994). The questions of epistemic relevancy change when one seeks a person’s

idea of reality rather than some transcendent picture of reality itself.

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Biographical stories of a life are a co-construction between the subject and the
researcher. Like biographers, researchers using life history and portraiture also attempt to
verify their accounts within the primary record. While the biographer goes back to
neutral sources and paper trails, life historians go back to the subject himself or herself.
Has the story been “justified in terms of the overall truthfulness of a person’s life” (Kotre,
1984, p. 32)?

Do the findings make sense to the researcher, the people being studied, and even
the readers? Is there what some call a “click of recognition” (Kidder, 1982), a “yes, of
course” response when people read the findings? Is there a resonance with the subjects
themselves, the audience, and even the researcher? “When all these resonances--the
researcher’s, the subject’s, the audience’s-echo through the piece, we speak of the
portrait as achieving authenticity. When these forces-- empirical and aestheticucome
together, the work seems both deeply grounded in space and time and timeless”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1997 p. 260).

Kotre (1984) proposes three keys to verifying a life story. First, has the subject
indicated in the follow-up interviews that he or she has been seen and understood?
Having read a preliminary write-up of his or her story, does he or she show an
appreciation of coherence (the “click of recognition”)? In other qualitative literature, this
might be called a “member check.” Second, are the reactions of the subject consistent
with the story motif presented? Do the subject’s reactions parallel what appears in the
story? Also, have the events in the subject’s life since the initial interviews followed the

trajectories forecasted within the story? Third, are the interviews unlocking fresher and

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deeper material? Do these revelations “deepen and enrich the plot with color, effect, and
texture” (p. 34)?

I would add a fourth key to Kotre’s list: praxis. If praxis can be described as
beliefs in action, then how a person lives out his or her life can shed much light on his or
her inner beliefs. Does the person’s life match his or her life story? All of these keys

seem to bring some epistemic warrant to the research endeavor.

Ethical Concerns

One of the difficult tasks in doing this kind of research is setting up boundaries
that protect both the vulnerability of the subject and the validity of the research. Working
with a person’s life and the stories of a person’s life often becomes an exercise fraught
with emotional content. At times these “emotional minefields” can distract and distort
one from the central themes of inquiry. The researcher needs to keep focused on the
research question and not be diverted. Qualitative research is not therapy and the focus of
the work needs to be the chronicling of one’s journey and life story rather than locating
the traumas of the subject’s life in order to offer remedies.

Setting boundaries also requires the researcher to determine the difference
between legitimate inquiry and “voyeurism.” Studs Terkel (1976) suggests one “never
ask anything that is not your business,”whereas Lawrence-Lightfoot (1994) describes
certain silences and moments when the conversation stOps as “places I dare not tread, the
points beyond which-—by silent mutual agreement--I must not go”(p. 610).

Setting boundaries can be a difficult task in research because they need to be

“distant and close, accepting and skeptical, receptive and challenging, and filled with

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silences as telling as talk” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 161). The relationship
between subject and research through which these boundaries are formed needs to be
authentic in order to inform. It must also be sensitive in order to protect the subject.

At some point this issue becomes one of motivation. Will the product of this
research relationship represent an authentic record of a person’s life, which might then
inform other like lives? Will the boundaries protect the subject from a voyeuristic
invasion of a person’s personal life, that leaves him or her feeling vulnerable and taken
advantage of? Does the research produce something that not only seems genuine to

outsiders but “feel(s) legitimate to the participants themselves” (Goetz, 1984, p. 98)?

Using Stories to Describe Christian Faculty in a the Secular Univgrsity

Little theory has been generated regarding the faculty career of Christian
academics who work in the secular academy. Therefore, I need a research method that
will function more inductively than deductively. I need a tool to generate ideas rather
than to test them. Qualitative research in general and methods that use life stories such as
portraiture and life history in particular should prove helpful in this quest, for these
methods are at their best “when [they are] being used in an exploratory fashion for
generating many concepts, hunches, and ideas” (Faraday & Plummer, 1979, p. 785).

The close connection of qualitative research with symbolic interactionism requires
its user to seek out diversity, ambiguity, and negotiation within the construction of the
individual life rather than to assume some linear trajectory. By their very structure and
purpose, research methods that focus on stories encourage subjects to acknowledge and to

explain the importance of historical factors and structural constraints in their lives.

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Rather than try to isolate events from their historical context in order to guess at issues of
causality, we are able to place these events within “the twists and turns of a lifetime of
work and living” (Rossi, 1988, p. 4) in order to gain a rich description of a life. Weiland
(1994) calls for research that provides more of a cinematic view of life rather than simply
a snapshot. Using life history and portraiture starts the cameras rolling.

Having laid down an exploratory base, we can then begin the process of
interpretation. One life writer has defined interpretation as a “method of making
connections within and between stories and using them to build and refine theory” (Kotre,
1984, p. 35). In life history and portraiture, interpretation is not necessarily looking for
universal laws. Rather, interpretation provides the means for summarizing reoccurring
motifs and varieties of experience in the proposed context. Once these motifs are
identified in subjects’ lives, we can then inspect each transcript for illustrations of this
phenomenon. At this point we may be able to draw some conclusions about the field in
general and then set the stage for further investigation.

Clifford Geertz (1973) captures the tension between exploration and interpretation
as he describes the anthropologist’s “need to grasp and the need to analyze” (p. 24).
Geertz continues to depict this tension as “both necessarily great and essentially
irremovable.” At times, the researcher can find it difficult to work with this tension.
Here is where Geertz’s adaptation of Gilbert Ryle’s “thick description” can be of help.
Exploration’s purpose is not to approach the research deductively in order to codify
abstract data and then “subsume them under a governing law” (p. 26). Conversely, we

use exploration to understand the nuances of each individual case and then use

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interpretation “to place these things in some sort of comprehensible, meaningful frame”
(p. 30).

The move from exploration to interpretation harrnonizes nicely with Bruner’s
(1996) suggestion that researchers use both narrative and paradigmatic modes of
cognition. Our exploration of Christian faculty in the secular university using stories
provides a narrative frame for emphasizing difference, nuance, and context. Yet, when
we take those life stories and begin to examine them for degrees of sameness and order,
we move into the paradigmatic mode. Narrative alone might lead us to a string of
unrelated stories, whereas paradigmatic thought by itself could cause us to lose sight of

the differences between individuals.

Method and Protocol

As described above, this is a qualitative study using interviewers to explore a
phenomenon as it is played out in the lives of those being studied. My search for life
stories and faculty narratives that will reveal career pathways necessitated in-depth
interviews in order to contextualize a person’s beliefs and actions within a historical,
familial, and educational framework.

To begin the first phase of my study, I sought out a variety of faculty in mid-career
who had achieved tenure and who considered themselves conservative Christians9 in
theological background. I chose mid-career acadenrics because middle age is typically a
developmental point where people tend to look backward and forward with some degree

of reflection. People in mid-career have often “successfully” constructed their work and

 

9See Glossary A for further definition of terms.

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lives which provides a “propitious moment for reflection and reinterpretation of a life
story” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1994, p. 11). In addition, people who have achieved tenure
have had to negotiate inherent tensions as perceived “outsiders” with some degree of
success.

I chose faculty from fairly conservative, Christian backgrounds because it matches
my own personal experience and research interests as a conservative Christian. I also
believe that this theological stance, which often has a foundationalist epistemology
further heightens the tension felt in today’s postmodern, secular academy. Although the
study may not necessarily fit less conservative theological categories or the life
experience of those from a less conservative religious tradition, I hope that all faculty
regardless of religious persuasion can learn about the connection of religious belief and
faculty work.

I also sought a sample diverse in gender, ethnicity, and institutional and
disciplinary background. By means of various contacts throughout the country, I was able
to interview 27 faculty from 15 different institutions and 14 separate disciplinary fields. I
included a few faculty from distinctively Christian institutions to gain some means of
comparison with those who work in the secular arena. With four women and five
minorities represented, I sat down with each of them for face-to-face interviews of
between 60 and 90 minutes. The protocol for these interviews is described below.

Presenting Issues. I asked four basic sets of questions. First, I asked the
participants to reveal the pressing issues they feel and see when considering how their

religious beliefs intersect with their faculty experience. I wanted them to describe their

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experience as part of an academic institution and as a participant in a particular academic
discipline.

Reconciliation. Second, I examined their basic assumptions about work and
faith. As people of faith, what has been the nature of their interaction with a postmodern
university that can be hostile to their own epistemological and theological
presuppositions? What have been the key issues and central points of tension for them,
and how have they attempted to reconcile them? Which ideas and beliefs have been
jettisoned and which have been adopted as their own?

Pathways. Third, I wanted to know the key influences in their faculty and
intellectual lives. What have been the key formative events in the shaping of their own
approaches to their work and their faith? What or who has influenced them to think
about the world as they do? In this block of questions I begin to focus on the “pathways”
questions as I encourage them to plot out the “chapters” of their work life. Who or what
has influenced them within their family, their educational life, their religious training, and
their academic discipline?

Praxis. Finally, I wanted to determine the effect that being an “outsider” has had
on their academic careers and theological beliefs. How has their reconciliation described
above affected their mode of academic inquiry? How has it affected the way they
approach pedagogy and curricular decisions? How has it affected the way they function in
a collegial setting like a college or university? In addition, how has this reconciliation
affected their beliefs about God, and how have their beliefs about God affected the

reconciliation process?

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Analyzing Informants’ Accounts

Drawing on my previous experience with the topic, general knowledge of the
field, and literature review, I set up the intellectual framework described above. This
framework provided the initial scaffold for gaining a perspective on the field and also for
data collection. This starting point, along with the data collection, served to generate
theory rather than prove prior theoretical propositions.

In what could best be described as an iterative and generative process, themes
emerged from the data, which in turn gave the data collected in the interviews shape and
form. Throughout the period of data collection there was what Lawrence-Lightfoot
(1997) calls the “impressionistic record,” where an “ongoing dialectic between data
gathering and reflection, between description and analysis,” exists (p. 188). I looked for
regularities and patterns while beginning to form categories to make meaning of the data.
I used what Miles and Huberrnan (1996) call “coding” to group these similar themes
together. Then, using the “constant comparative method” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) I
reviewed the transcripts of the interview data in order to gauge how it fit into the overall
frame. By breaking down the data into themes and subthemes, I was able to scaffold
further the narrative and make sense of underlying patterns.

After my first round of interviews in which I covered all four sets of questions, I
then analyzed, compared, and contrasted the data collected. I checked for emerging
themes or isolated, unusual experiences. What themes pervade several stories, and which
events are quite dissimilar? Further analysis and refinement took place to develop
“theory” by reducing them into higher concepts. These “theories” would then be used to

develop an overall frame for understanding the questions at hand and also for suggesting

279

possible ideas for further study. In the spirit of an exploratory story, I commenced my
second round of interviews either to confirm or disconfirm these initial themes and
findings.

Rather than keep a broad focus, however, I chose to highlight three particular
faculty lives as representative of the others. I chose these three for a number of reasons.
First, these three offered a variety of experiences with regard to gender, discipline,
institutional type, and institutional location. Second, these three people were extremely
reflective and articulate about their faculty experience and provided a rich source of
understanding. Third, all of them were people of achievement in their respective
institution or discipline. Despite (or because of) their religious commitments, they were
recognized as outstanding faculty in their own right. Finally, they were more than willing
to give me further time and access to their life experience.

In two of the cases I made a return trip to their campus for further, multiple
interviews. I also attended either a class or a public lecture in order to observe them at
work first hand. In one case, I was able to interview faculty colleagues as well as a few
students. Finally, I tried to familiarize myself with their research by reading some

primary material.

Advantages and Limitations

A major limitation inherent in the study is its small sample of subjects.
Generalization is sacrificed for thick description, and although this aids us in
understanding the particular individuals selected, it becomes difficult to generalize the

findings to the academy at large. Also, with my sample focused on one type of religious

280

believer, I cannot say much about the journey of faculty in other types of religious
traditions.

My chosen research method carries with it two distinct advantages. First, its focus
on individual cases highlights the individual voice rather than muffling the one in the
desire to infer to the whole. Nuance and difference are not sacrificed for generalization.
Second, this qualitative approach, along with its influence on life stories, allows a more
inductive study including perspectives outside of the researcher’s expectations and his

own theoretical preunderstandings.

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