There is a perception among some observers of higher education that faith-based institutions are restricting and constraining academic freedom in unfortunate ways. A recent panel discussion sponsored by Heterodox Academy examined this and other assumptions about religious colleges and universities, painting a more nuanced picture.
“To have some kind of faith-based or credal commitment” as a university, “raises some very interesting questions,” said Michael Regnier, executive director of the organization as the discussion began.
‘More intellectual freedom than anywhere else’
“There are no questions that are off the table at Samford,” said Art Carden, a professor of Economics at the Baptist University in Birmingham, Alabama, recalling a conversation when he was looking into coming to the school over a decade ago. A future colleague told Carden that he had been at several different institutions and “had more intellectual freedom at Samford than he’d had anywhere else, at least in terms of his ability to pursue the things that he wanted to pursue.”
“There’s an enormous amount of intellectual spiritual and cultural freedom here,” Carden said, while acknowledging their campus like many other religious universities in a secularizing American environment has to “struggle to maintain both its spiritual integrity and its intellectual integrity.” While acknowledging this can be a “very difficult tight rope for a lot of schools to walk,” he expressed confidence that many campuses have done a good job at honoring both faith and academic exploration — something which, in his view, “really contributes to the vibrancy of the intellectual and spiritual environment here.”
Dawn-Marie Wood, an associate professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, echoed Carden’s remarks. “We certainly do enjoy that kind of freedom … many degrees of that on campus as well,” she said. The purpose of higher education at BYU is about “expanding our students’ thinking and opening their minds to new ideas.”
“Open inquiry is alive and well,” Wood said, pushing back on the idea that this is threatened “just because faith-based institutions might see ourselves as having additional truth through revelatory means.”
“We are collecting that (truth) from all different areas,” she said. That’s the “expansive experience that we’re inviting students into … so I feel like I haven’t seen that be something that is stifled at all but rather just the opposite in terms of open inquiry.”
But are serious questions allowed?
Heterodox Academy is a membership organization of professors and university students committed to advancing values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement in academic research and higher education. The panel was part of a webinar series of discussions exploring how these crucial values play out in different kinds of institutional contexts — such as community colleges, women’s colleges.
“I imagine many (people) being skeptical here listening to this conversation so far,” said Regnier, “and thinking, well wait a minute,” in these universities “where potentially so many questions have official answers,” wouldn’t that mean the campuses also have “less questioning … less disagreement” and that it can be “stifling to be in a classroom?”
Regnier acknowledged the name of the institution — Heterodox Academy — is “something of a religious metaphor, with the idea of heterodoxy going against orthodoxy,” which in their usage refers to some “right answers that you can’t question.”
“I wonder what you would make of that critique?” Regnier asked the three panelists. “If a student starts to have a crisis of faith and begins to be unsure about the truth claims that are made by the church or they just disagree with the faculty about how something is interpreted, what happens? Is there an ejection seat or how does it work?”
Within this kind of a “climate of open inquiry,” Wood responded, “I feel like we’re also encouraging (students) to be seekers of truth,” which will often naturally mean they “bump up against ideas from a secular perspective that don’t resonate with a gospel principle or cherished belief.”
Yet rather than a crisis, she suggested “that’s an interesting opportunity for us, I think, as educators at faith-based institutions is to hold fast to the truths that we know, but then to build upon and expand our thinking.”
“I do this all the time in my classes,” Wood added, “when secular and sacred truths reinforce each other, we embrace both. And then there are other times when secular claims may conflict with revealed truth or doctrine and then we intentionally mark the difference.”
“That requires us to model what it looks like to cherish ambiguity on certain things that we don’t have the answers for.” This, she says, “represents an opportunity” to demonstrate the kind of “intellectual humility” that makes space for uncertainty, while also being “intellectually charitable.”
Summarizing what he was hearing, Regnier then said, “it sounds like a student who is in disagreement or trying out something that would put them in disagreement with the professor or with the institution or with the church has some leeway to explore that” and wouldn’t just “get graded down constantly or silenced.”
‘A double heritage’
Regnier further asked the panelists to say more about what it’s like to be “teaching in an environment where students are coming to campus (with) a faith-based framework to the entire institution which is shared with most students.” He wondered how this might change the overall pedagogy and teaching experience, compared with more secular environments.
Anthony Haynor, associate professor of sociology at Seton Hall University, discussed a core Catholic curriculum every student is required to take, where they “engage the Catholic intellectual tradition.”
“I think there’s a recognition that theology on the one hand and the sciences and the humanities on the other hand operate with sort of different methodologies,” Haynor added, and “I think those differences are respected.”
“At BYU, one thing that we speak of often is having a double heritage,” Wood added — “and that simply means that we embrace our religious mission even as we speak to the broader academy with credibility and strength.”
“We’ve got this invitation from our administration and we take it very seriously to develop the skills that help us to foster this double heritage. We’re striving to be bilingual, meaning that we strive to speak with authority about our disciplines and the language of scholarship but then also to speak with power about our Christian discipleship in the language of faith.”
“I really like the description of BYU as bilingual,” said professor Carden. “That’s a really useful way to to think about how a faith-based institution operates.” He then shared his own experience, noting that one of the things he most likes about teaching at Samford is “the fact I don’t have to compartmentalize anything — my scholarship, my teaching, my life at home, my life on Sunday mornings — everything fits together, everything comes together. It’s really fantastic.”
“I love that I don’t have to ‘turn on’ church on Sunday and turn that off when I go into the classroom, or ‘turn on’ classroom when I go into the classroom and turn off something else.”
“That’s one of the beautiful things about disciple scholarship,” Wood agreed. “You really are able to bring your whole self right to the classroom, to every faculty meeting, to every devotional ... it’s a beautiful thing.”
Institutional neutrality that fosters academic freedom
“What level of institutional neutrality can be hoped for at a faith-based university?” Regnier later asked, sharing one of the participants’ questions which asked panelists to reflect on the debate about “top down pronouncements about matters that are of publicly contested political and other kinds of controversial matters.” He suggested these pronouncements “can sort of have a chilling effect” as they signal an institutional orthodoxy on sensitive matters.
“This is something that I’ve been so appreciative of at BYU,” said Wood — explaining how leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have “emphasized and recently reemphasized that the church is politically neutral and they’ve urged against merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on tradition or without careful study of the candidates and positions on the issues.”
“My experience over the last decade teaching there has been that institutional neutrality” at this level, she said, “really has afforded many different opportunities on campus to foster this sort sort of open inquiry and productive disagreement that facilitates peacemaking.”
Haynor shared the positive impact of a “very carefully crafted statement” by Seton Hall leadership after the Oct. 7 attacks that worked to “bring the temperature down” on what was “obviously a very sensitive and emotional conflict.”
Camden shared an email from the president of Samford in the wake of some ugly exchanges online after the election, reminding students and faulty that “if we believe that people are created in the image of God this is not an acceptable way to behave.”
A more diverse array of university options?
On some level, having a particular worldview as a university is inescapable, concluded the host, Regnier: “It may be that humans living together in community doing academic work can’t sort of live in a free floating world without any sense of shared values or routines or traditions. They end up springing up one way or another and being able to live among one set is, you know, valuable for many people.”
When people talk about “viewpoint diversity” or “any kind of diversity,” Regnier said, “there’s always that question in the background of diversity at what level?”
“And there can be a tradeoff where you know having an exactly representative population of some larger population inside of your classroom or inside of your institution has many benefits, but it can also make each little institution itself kind of the same as every other one.”
At this institutional level, he suggested, “a BYU or a Seton Hall is adding diversity — a different kind of a choice for students and faculty when it comes to their experience.” He elaborated, “I wonder if being in a faith-based classroom or university sort of allows for some different kinds of academic interactions that wouldn’t be as possible in another setting?”