Marginalizing the Perspective of Faith

With Bill Maher's latest infant tantrum on religion ready to hit theatres on the heels of the published Hitchens and Dawkins rants of the last few years, it is worth taking some time to interact with this perspective, albeit by engaging the views of folks more intelligent than Maher and company.

The view that religionists and religion hold far too much sway in the public square is recent, but not new. The acrimony and disdain expressed by the likes of Maher and Hitchens is only an amped-up version of a more embedded point of view that has negatively impacted evangelicals in particular for decades. One manifestation of this viewpoint concerns the reception of a faith-based perspective in academic research and teaching.

In a recent article on SBL's website, Michael Fox of the University of Wisconsin argues that faith-based perspectives are illegitimate when it comes to academic scholarship - even biblical and theological scholarship. He suggests that "faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship, whether the object of study is the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or Homer. Faith-based study is a different realm of intellectual activity that can dip into Bible scholarship for its own purposes, but cannot contribute to it." Fox believes that a faith-based perspective, by definition, cannot contribute anything positive to academic research and cannot be considered 'scholarship' in any way. For Fox, "the best thing for Bible appreciation is [a] secular, academic, religiously-neutral hermeneutic." In order for biblical scholarship to be 'scholarship', one must be secular and bring no religious persuasion to bear on his/her work. This position mirrors the viewpoint of Jacque Berlinerblau, who teaches at Georgetown and has his own prominent blog at washingtonpost.com. It is not difficult to see that such an orientation de facto marginalizes faith-based perspectives and seeks to drive them out of the academy's work. This is a sanitized and cultured version of Maher and Hitchens.

But importantly, Fox does not follow the mouth-foamers in discrediting faith perspectives as altogether illegitimate. Fox is clear that "faith-based study of the Bible certainly has its place—in synagogues, churches, and religious schools, where the Bible (and whatever other religious material one gives allegiance to) serves as a normative basis of moral inspiration or spiritual guidance." Fox declares that faith-based study is profitable within very tightly confined (and controlled) spheres. But Fox reiterates that while "this kind of study is certainly important...it is not scholarship." Put simply, Fox is telling religionists to keep their religion in church and don't bring it into the academy, because it is illegitimate to do so.

This article is most revealing and should serve as a painful reminder that liberal intolerance is as entrenched as ever in certain quarters. Fox's article is breathtaking in its naivete on a whole host of levels that it is frankly a bit depressing that someone like this sits on a comfy perch at a respected state university.

First, it is amusing that folks like Fox who proclaim to be interested in moving the academic ball forward by censoring faith-based perspectives out of academic existence are themselves irretrievably stuck in an 18th century Kantian dialectical thought framework. Fox's view that faith has a place only in a very restricted realm that needs to be walled off from everything else is classic Kantian noumenal/phenomenal dialectic. For Kant, faith and reason were not only opposed to each other, they had to be in order for each to be real. Fox's view of the relationship between faith and scholarship thoroughly reflects this mode of thought. But while Kant felt it necessary to protect faith from reason because he thought reason would destroy faith if allowed, Fox apparently believes that 'scholarship' needs to be protected from faith in order for true scholarship to survive. Such a dialectical view on the relationship between faith and reason is horribly outdated and represents a step or three backwards rather than anything forward-looking.

Second, Fox's advocacy of a secular religiously-neutral hermeneutic is incredibly naive, not to mention arrogant. If Fox really believes there is such a thing as a religiously-neutral hermeneutic, he should also start believing in the Easter Bunny, since both are equally mythical. Nobody approaches the biblical text as a neutral blank slate. Again, to argue for such a thing is to step backward in time even further than Kant to embrace Locke. If Fox believes that 'scholarship' today can only be recovered by resurrecting Enlightenment dictates, he should just say so. The problem, of course, is that such a position might be 'secular', but it is hardly 'religiously neutral'. Fox is first in line to fail his own litmus test, and in doing so, demonstrates that the idea of a religiously-neutral hermeneutic is nothing more than a hollow fiction. The fact that such a fiction is the only valid approach to 'scholarship' doesn't inspire confidence that such 'scholarship' will ever stumble onto anything true or real. It's the equivalent of basing the study of rabbits on Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Lastly, why exactly does Fox believe that a religiously-neutral hermeneutic is so absolutely correct that all other perspectives need to be muzzled and kicked out of the academy? On what basis does Fox reach such a position, and what evidence or argumentation does he marshal to persuade others of the correctness of this view? Answer - none. Fox wimps out on the question by employing an ad hominem in dismissing respect for multiple perspectives in scholarship as 'sophistry', but failing to tell us why. Basically, what Fox is trying to do in this article is completely discount faith-based perspectives in the academy without telling us why they should be discounted, and advocating a singular absolutist and fictional perspective without telling us why such a perspective should gain a monopoly over academic pursuits. This is the definition not only of arrogance and hubris, but also fear. In being unwilling to offer a serious argument for marginalizing all other perspectives but his, one wonders if being unwilling is rooted in being incapable.

Fox is pulling a classic Nietzchean power-play at the expense of people of faith. The fact that he and Berlinerblau hold prominent posts at prominent universities is sufficient to demonstrate that evangelicals continue to overcome a stacked deck in pursuing academic truth. The fact that such an article was published online by the preeminent biblical academic society in the Western world is downright bewildering. There's no way that SBL would publish a similarly dim article by an evangelical, and rightly so. This should make us all question why Fox was given a green light, and what that says about SBL.