In her new book, Sarah Palin claims that most people who teach at universities “don’t share the religious faith of their fellow Americans.” A blogger for the Chronicle of Higher Education unearths evidence that he believes proves she’s wrong. According to a professional journal article reporting results of a 2006 survey, “Just over 50 percent of professors surveyed either believe in God without reservation or believe despite harboring some doubts.” You can read more about that article here and here.
I have three thoughts. First, I find it impossible to draw inferences from the survey regarding the relationship of the faith of professors and the religious faith of the American people. Who knows what anyone means when he or she answers a survey question about belief in God? Do the professors questioned in the survey have the same deity in mind as those who are surveyed, for example, here? By my lights, his counterassertion is as problematical as Palin’s assertion.
Second, as I just said, Palin’s assertion is problematical. She offers no evidence and, indeed, I don’t know what kind of evidence she could offer. Professors are easy targets and she takes a potshot. This does nothing to convince me that she’s presidential timber. (I can almost hear her saying that in times of trouble professors cling to their Sam Harris books and their laptops.)
Third, on the other hand, it probably is the case that the loudest voices coming from the academy are those that are, to put it mildly, heterodox. Most ordinarily pious professors probably have little or no occasion to discuss their faith in their classrooms, unless they teach at religiously affiliated institutions. What place, for example, does one’s faith have in the accounting classroom? (I use this example because according to the aforementioned survey, accounting professors are more likely to believe in God than anyone else in higher education.) I’m not saying that faith should simply be private or that one should not bear witness in public, only that one’s witness would most likely be offered as a human being, rather than as a professor of such-and-such. There is a difference between a lectern and a pulpit and between a seminar and a small group.
So perhaps Sarah Palin can be excused for thinking that the loudest voices are necessarily representative. Ordinarily that’s what the loudest voices want us to believe. But isn’t it more “presidential” to distinguish between the volume of a speaker’s voice and the ”volume” of the people for whom he or she claims to speak?
November 25th, 2010 | 2:36 pm
Buckley’s God and Man at Yale is well established in conservative canon. Is there evidence that academia has improved since then?
November 25th, 2010 | 6:57 pm
I would also point to George Marsden’s The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (published by Oxford University Press in 1996). Marsden is certainly a reliable source.
November 25th, 2010 | 7:38 pm
“Second, as I just said, Palin’s assertion is problematical. She offers no evidence and, indeed, I don’t know what kind of evidence she could offer. Professors are easy targets and she takes a potshot.”
Were you seriously expecting a footnote at this point in Palin’s text, Mr. Knippenberg? Since when has it been a tradition for potential (or actual) US presidential candidates to write books with an academic level of documentation?
Let’s look at the whole Palin excerpt from the Chron. Hghr. Educ. blogger:
“Most of those who write for the mainstream media and teach at universities and law schools don’t share the religious faith of their fellow Americans. They seem to regard people who believe in God and regularly attend their church or synagogue as alien beings, people who are ‘largely poor, uneducated and easy to command,’ as the Washington Post once famously put it.”
The elitist and irreligious attitude that Palin refers to here is consistent with my experience at two secular US universities in the 80s to early 90s.
At that time, the reaction to religious expression within the faculty lounge, classroom, and dormitory frequently ranged from polite contempt to snarling hostility.
Palin’s point also accords with the patronizing or even contemptuous attitude towards Christian belief I all too often see in histories of Christian Europe that have been published in the past 40 years.
Like Stephen, I wonder if the situation has changed radically since Buckley. Perhaps I just attended the wrong schools and have been reading the wrong books.
November 25th, 2010 | 8:11 pm
This is anecdotal evidence….but in the several universities in which I have taught and worked for my degrees, active churchgoing belief in God was not acceptable, except in the education and business colleges.
If you did believe, you should at least practice ‘methodological naturalism’ in your life and chosen field of study. My friends in other universities confirm this bias, to the point that until they get tenure they hide their faith. I believe that David Horowitz has more specific information about the anti religious bias on college campuses. Perhaps it is more of an anti traditional Christian bias………..
November 25th, 2010 | 10:59 pm
Purely anecdotal, I know, but I’ve been both a churchgoer and a college professor for many years, and my distinct impression is that Palin is right. It’s been striking to the point of uncanny. Even in small towns with big universities, and only one church for each denomination, when I attend church on Sunday, I have almost never seen any of teaching colleagues there as well. Over the course of decades. Many college professors may believe in some higher power, but apparently almost none believe in “organized religion.”
November 26th, 2010 | 12:35 am
In her new book, Sarah Palin claims that most people who teach at universities “don’t share the religious faith of their fellow Americans.”
Now there’s a doozy. Does Palin realize how many university professors are Jewish? Sure, they don’t share Palin’s religious faith but it’s not clear to me why that would be considered a bad thing. Some of the Jewish professors I worked with would take off on religious holidays — I can’t speak to whether it was more of a religious or cultural thing for them, though.
My graduate education was at Berkeley and got to interact with professors whose names you might recognize and I knew about three or four in my department who went to church regularly on Sunday. It wasn’t really a big deal and keep in mind that Berkeley has one of the highest concentrations of churches in the country.
November 26th, 2010 | 6:09 am
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November 26th, 2010 | 8:12 am
We all have anecdotes. Having been a student and a professor at a variety of institutions (almost all either public or secular) for more than 35 years, I have anecdotes on both sides of the issue.
Please note what I said. First, we don’t know whether faculty beliefs are congruent to those of the general population. Second, we do know whose voices are getting the most attention, at least from the mainstream sources–those of the so-called new atheists.
But consider this as well. When we talk about American higher education, we’re talking about a rather “diverse” group of institutions, elite and non-elite, secular and church-affiliated. More faculty teach at non-elite than at elite institutions (almost by definition, at least since we’re not in Lake Woebegone). There’s some evidence to suggest that there are differences in religious opinion between faculty at elite and non-elite institutions.
And do not forget the church-related institutions. Yes, some that were once church-related or religious have been secularized. (I know Marsden’s argument, as well as those of others.) And some are do not exactly adhere faithfully to the teachings of their sponsoring denominations (I’m not naming names, but we can all think of some). But many still do provide a home to a vibrant intellectual engagement with religious questions and to large numbers of faithful faculty. I may not agree with all of them theologically, but I’m not going to jump from that position to the assertion that they’re out of step with the religious faith of the American people.
Lastly, let me say once again that there are religious faculty everywhere who do not have occasion in their classrooms to offer testimony of their faith. They don’t teach about or write about religion.
Sarah Palin paints with a very broad brush. Even if she knows better, she clearly believes that it serves her political interests to do so.
I myself prefer greater nuance in my political leaders.
November 26th, 2010 | 9:01 am
You protest a bit too much, Professor! I think that your first qualification (i.e., “First, we don’t know whether faculty beliefs are congruent to those of the general population”) undermines your entire assertion. If we accept the Chronicle’s figures as potentially accurate, those numbers indicate that professors are about 50% less likely to be some sort of believer than the American populace (if my recollection of the latest Pew numbers are correct). That is a statistically significant difference and consistent with Ms. Palin’s assertion (and not really in need of nuance). She was not, after all, writing a paper on electoral behavior. I recall you praised the Bush II second inaugural address, and yet the policies contained/announced therein, however “nuanced,” led in part to the decline of his administration and the loss of the White House in 2008. I cannot wait to see which candidate you believe has sufficient nuance among the 2012 hopefuls!
November 26th, 2010 | 9:12 am
Thankfully, normal human living is lived outside the straining, academic punctiliousness of Mr. Knippenberg. Elsewise, we would need quantitative analysis, immensely footnoted, using academic criteria to simply say the sun rises in the East (another inaccuracy likely to be spoken by Mrs Palin). The only reasonable dispute with Sarah Palin’s comment would be from the side of the the “religious faith of their fellow Americans”. Despite reaonably high levels of stated belief in God, Americans do not seem as rigorus in their practice as Mrs. Palin, thus bringing them closer to academia’s disinterest or open hostility.
November 26th, 2010 | 10:12 am
Well put Mr. Knippenberg. I’ve been a student and a professor for as long as you, and I’m repeatedly surprised at how many of my colleagues are true believers. It may well be that in the “Ivies” the number of believers are quite small, but at the many institutions I’ve taught at there are far more of “us” than some of the knee-jerk anti-academics might believe…. Not to mention, Sarah Palin just announced her support for North Korea, so anything she says should be considered accordingly.
November 26th, 2010 | 10:33 am
Let’s apply the time honored principle of “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Mr. Knippenberg, and then think upon the result.
“Second, we do know whose voices are getting the most attention, at least from the mainstream sources–those of the so-called new atheists.”
And you know this how? What’s your source? As you wrote, “we all have anecdotes.”
“There’s some evidence to suggest that there are differences in religious opinion between faculty at elite and non-elite institutions.”
“Some evidence”? I see no evidence here.
“But many still do provide a home to a vibrant intellectual engagement with religious questions and to large numbers of faithful faculty.”
“Many”? Are you serious? And once again, how do you KNOW this?
I must say, Mr. Knippenberg, I’ve applied the goose/gander principle to your post and found it wanting. Perhaps in the future you could apply the “charity principle” to the statements of Mrs. Palin (and other potential candidates), lest you be suspected of grinding an axe. Poor goose!
November 26th, 2010 | 10:39 am
What Palin said has about as much content as a pep rally cheer–it’s not the sort of thing that’s even subject to fact checking. The point is to indicate that the supposed ‘culture war’ is a major component in her understanding of our current political situation and to reassure her public that she’s on the right side. Nuance would defeat the whole purpose of this kind of political tract.
November 26th, 2010 | 1:31 pm
Prof. Knippenberg,
I find it difficult to understand why so many intelligent people, even Christians and Catholics, seem to have such an irrational aversion against governor Palin.
You are a professor of politics and I am sure you agree that a lot of modern “science-based” politics is subject to the famous maxim popularized in the United States by Mark Twain — ”There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
So I find it rather disingenuous that you would attack a general statement of governor Palin on a difficult to prove statement, especially if you actually acknowledge that you yourself find it impossible to draw exact science based inferences.
Yes, Palin paints with a broad brush because it is next to impossible, even for specialists and researches in this area, to draw precisely with a narrower brush.
You seem to have taken offence to her for even trying to point out this crucial problematic area — that our universities and institutions of higher education are becoming atheistic. It is not a secret that most of our universities are secular in nature, and even strictly Catholic universities are a far cry from St. Cardinal Newman’s “The Idea of a University.” This fact needs to be understood and publicized, and it boggles one’s mind when once Catholic universities like La Sapienza would prevent a pope from addressing them.
Really, your anecdotal evidence is just as good as anybody else’s, including my own, and my 30 years at a major North American University clearly support governor Palin’s statement. And even if there are some or many professors who are Christians or Catholics, one often has a hard time knowing who these people actually are.
(In that respect let me suggest a simple test for a Catholic institution — How many professors will actually go and get the ashes on Ash Wednesday, and how many will proudly display the ashes on their forehead?)
But if you wish some hard evidence, there are such clear statistics, such as the famous 1998 NAS (National Academy of Sciences) survey, which concluded that — “disbelief is greater than ever; almost total”.
Biologists in the NAS were found to possess the lowest rate of belief of all the science disciplines, with only 5.5% believing in God.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6691/full/394313a0.html
And please don’t tell me that the situation has dramatically improved in the 12 years – if anything, again based on anecdotal evidence, I would say it is getting worse.
It has been my life-long experience, that in politics good-will and honesty is far more important than sophistication or even some highbrow intellectualism. People like governor Palin and congresswoman Michele Bachmann have knowledge and nuance enough for me.
November 27th, 2010 | 8:36 am
Bill B:
Sarah Palin said that “most faculty” don’t share the religious beliefs of the American people. That more Americans are believers of some sort than are college professors (comparing the Pew numbers with those in the survey of faculty) doesn’t lead to the conclusion that “most faculty” don’t share the beliefs of the American people.
John Hinshaw and Tristian:
I object when Barack Obama paints with too broad a brush about American business. Why can’t I object when Sarah Palin paints with too broad a brush about American higher education. I know that demonizing American business plays well with some constituencies and that demonizing professors plays well with others. Should we just give politicians a pass when they’re being demagogic, or should we only give a pass to those whose views are closest to our own?
Benighted Savage:
Providing hyperlinks in the comments section isn’t particularly elegant, but if you want evidence to back my assertions, I’m happy to provide some.
As for “some evidence” about differences between elite and non-elite institutions, here’s some:
http://www.discovery.org/a/10171
As for more attention to the new atheists than to the religious voices in the academy, I can google “Richard Dawkins” and “Sam Harris” and get lots more hits than I do googling, say, “George Marsden” and “C. Stephen Evans.” And a search of the website of the New York Review of Books yields many more hits for Dawkins and Harris than for Marsden and Evans. This is, of course, imperfect evidence, but it is suggestive.
As for the intellectual life of religious colleges, you might take a look at these two links:
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/print.php?id=18-06-049-b
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/10/wolfe.htm
All:
Sarah Palin evokes powerful responses everywhere, from those who love her and those who hate her. I am in neither camp, though I confess to liking her more when I first saw her on the national stage than I do now. If a presidential primary were held today in my home state, I doubt I’d vote for her. Thankfully, I still have lots of time to make up my mind about a field of candidates that will begin to take shape soon.
November 27th, 2010 | 10:00 pm
Dear Professor Knippenberg; IMO you pick too fine a nit. I repeat this non-original bit of advice: “Deciding which politician to vote for is not the same thing as calling a pastor.”
In my perception her claim has more validity than yours. If you want to reverse that then work to change the behavior and statements of your colleagues, instead of quibbling about what most voters think to be true. You may be technically correct – barely – but her statement in general was fair and reflects society’s consensus. Time for you to ‘man up’.
November 28th, 2010 | 1:26 pm
“Providing hyperlinks in the comments section isn’t particularly elegant, but if you want evidence to back my assertions”
Come now, Mr. Knippenberg. Inelegant links? Please, be serious.
Would it be captious of me to say that the linked material you provided, although interesting, didn’t exactly back up your claims?
Even though your first link to John G. West at the Discovery Institute argues that there exists a difference between rates of atheism and agnosticism between “the circle of top biologists” and “biologists at 4-year and 2-year colleges and universities” — an almost 30% difference — he ALSO argues that the latter group’s rates “are DRAMATICALLY HIGHER than what is found among the general population.” [my emphasis] So, John G. West provides evidence that strongly supports what we might call the Palin Thesis. Thanks!
The other two links led to articles about religious colleges that, although interesting, do not support the claims you’ve been making.
“Sarah Palin evokes powerful responses everywhere, from those who love her and those who hate her.”
I don’t think that Sarah Palin has been the key issue on this thread.
The issue has been your seemingly gratuitous and unjust swipe at her based upon what many posters (me included) have seen as a counter-intuitive claim that MOST American university professors DO “share the religious faith of their fellow Americans…”
Also, Mr. Knippenberg, I find it hard to believe that you are “in neither camp” in regards to Mrs. Palin. Although your initial observations about “presidential timber,” her painting with a broad brush and her lacking in nuance were lukewarm enough, your later claims that she’s demonizing US professors and is being “demagogic” are over the top. Not to mention your comparing her to President Obama. Please don’t become like Magritte’s pipe.
November 28th, 2010 | 7:34 pm
Benighted Savage:
I know what West says; I used the data to suggest a difference between elite and non-elite universities. Biologists are among the less religious of the academic professions.
Those articles and the book to which the former refers do suggest that there’s a lively intellectual life (including a serious consideration of religious issues) at church-related colleges and universities. I’ve seen it at any number of places. The point was that there is a religious professoriate, perhaps not well-represented at Harvard and Yale, but certainly alive and kicking elsewhere. And even with respect to Harvard, Yale, and others, consider this:
http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Halls-Power-Evangelicals-American/dp/0195326660
Finally, the post was about Sarah Palin’s sweeping statement about the professoriate. My colleagues are easy targets, and there’s enough substance to the caricature she draws to make it go down easily among those who like her. Her caricature also supports a caricature drawn by her critics; it makes it easier for them to say that she and her supporters are, at a minimum, anti-intellectual. I don’t think that she and her supporters ought to give their opponents that sort of ammunition, for it results in lots of “collateral damage” among those of us who are committed to combining religious faith and the life of the mind within the confines of the American academy.
I have enough trouble with caricatures drawn of me (well, not me in particular, since I’m hardly a household name) from the secular Left. Sarah Palin’s overbroad statements don’t help matters.
November 28th, 2010 | 11:39 pm
Mr. Knippenberg:
I don’t doubt that there’s “a lively intellectual life” at several religious colleges and universities in the US, or that religious professors exist in the Ivy League and elsewhere. It’s just that these points seem tangential to your criticism of Mrs. Palin (and your implied estimation of those who agree with her) as painting with too broad a brush, demonizing, demagouging, caricaturing, etc.
At this point, what I find fascinating is that after 17 posts no one has written a word in defense of the other group Palin claims as being non-religious elitists: “those who write for the mainstream media.” Will no one take umbrage?
December 1st, 2010 | 11:55 am
As a professor myself, I find Palin’s statement incontestable. The extended commentary to the contrary is laughable.
December 1st, 2010 | 5:44 pm
To the practicing Christian not wearing academic blinders, Sarah Palin’s assertion is self-evident. It speaks to how much of the Christian (read: foundational Western civilizational) worldview has been lost.
There are few universities anymore that both profess and act upon the principle that religion is integral to the academic body of knowledge one ought to impart. Can a religious-based university consider itself to have educated a person when it demurs from teaching the philosophy which the university professes as necessary to a life well lived? Solipsism, if not effective agnosticism, is the implicit doctrine of a university so organized.
Now, it’s easy to find professorial lobbies advocating for academic unionization, for changes to tenure and publication rules, for alterations to what is left of a “canon” in the humanities, for systematizing this or that “studies” into new departments, and so forth. It’s probably easy to find a professorial lobby against religion (and the religion they are against is always Christianity), but it’s hard to find one for religion as a normal component of academic life.
December 14th, 2010 | 2:02 pm
Knippenberg, I can’t believe what I’m reading; you’re being absolutely ridiculous.
This is such a truism; Palin is right on.
Furthermore, why do you and that moronic Chronicle blogger insist on using a bald assent to Theism/Deism as the test? Are you serious? Laughable, man.
How frequently do the professoriate identify as Christian? And when they do, what is the content of their Christianity? (Surely, much less fequently, and if they do it’s more heretical, liberal, anemic, etc.) How frequently do they attend church? Surely, again, it’s much less!
Obviously, academe (even in our seminaries and divinity schools, man!!) is going to answer quite differently to these questions than Tom, Dick or Harry. If you don’t think so, I encourage you do put down your hash pipe and do some soul searching.
This is so freaking obvious, and incontestable I can’t believe we’re debating this on FT. Good grief.
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