My previous post on the rise of ‘secular studies’ seems to have touched a nerve with Jacques Berlinerblau, who in a post for the Chronicle of Higher Education blog fulminates furiously.
First, it’s worth restating that many of the critiques I voiced (particularly those relating to the structure and style of the seminar) came straight from of the Washington Post story on his class. If Berlinerblau is so offended by what I wrote, then he must also have a significant beef with the Post reporter.
Most of Berlinerblau’s anger at the post seems to stem from one word: ‘indoctrination.’ Here, again, I urged significantly more caution than Berlinerblau acknowledges. And Berlinerblau seems not to notice that this word of warning was a caveat before my ultimate conclusion: That religious people should support secular studies.
Nevertheless, I wish Berlinerblau didn’t simply dismiss the notion that even someone as supposedly value-free as he might have some interests in the debate over faith that seep too far into his teaching. Because it seems, to some extent, that they do. From his use of the phrase “religious freak flag” to the course’s heavy emphasis on ‘separation of church and state’ to the fact that he took a vote to see how many students agreed with him at the end of the seminar (potentially intimidating in its own right, the results of which only further fuel concerns—all but one agreed with his thinking), one could imagine how a student in Berlinerblau’s class would easily intuit what the preferred answers are.
Though Berlinerblau sneers at the questions I raise about what the content of a discipline like ‘secular studies’ might be, are these not the very same questions he has likely asked himself many times over the course of his career? I mention them (as stated above) not to hector the field, but to recapitulate what are likely the most fundamental issues in it, and suggest that, at the very least, pat answers to them haven’t developed yet. As the Post reported, “even the professors disagree about the tenets and truths of the field.”
One thing I did learn at the university Berlinerblau and I have in common was that religious faith must be the life-giving core of both an authentic education and an authentic ‘humanism.’ It cannot be shunted off to a private realm, as Berlinerblau’s secularism seems to want to do.
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