Faculty Clubs and Church Pews

[mooseandsquirrel]

The past few months have seen a lot of talk about red and blue America, mostly by people on one side of the partisan divide who find the other side a mystery.

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You wouldn't know it from talking to the people who populate universities or fill church pews.

A lot of my church friends think universities represent the forces of darkness. Law schools -- my corner of the academic world -- are particularly suspect. A fellow singer in a church choir once asked me what I did for a living. When I told her, she said, "A Christian lawyer? Isn't that sort of like being a Christian prostitute? I mean, you can't really do that, right?" She wasn't kidding. And if I had said no, you don't understand; I'm a law professor, not a lawyer, I'm pretty sure that would not have helped matters. ("Oh, so you train people to be prostitutes…")

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And each side of this divide has something to teach the other. Evangelicals would benefit greatly from the love of argument that pervades universities. The "scandal of the evangelical mind" -- the title of a wonderful book by evangelical author and professor Mark Noll -- isn't that evangelicals aren't smart or don't love ideas. They are, and they do. No, the real scandal is the lack of tough, hard questioning to test those ideas. Christians believe in a God-Man who called himself (among other things) "the Truth." Truth-seeking, testing beliefs with tough-minded questions and arguments, is a deeply Christian enterprise. Evangelical churches should be swimming in it. Too few are.

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That could change. I can't prove it, but I think there is a large, latent pro-redistribution evangelical vote, ready to get behind the first politician to tap into it. (Barack Obama, are you listening?) If liberal Democratic academics believe the things they say they believe -- and I think they do -- there is an alliance here just waiting to happen.

Humility, love of serious ideas, commitment to helping the poor -- these are things my faculty friends and my church friends ought to be able to get together on. If they ever do, look out: American politics, and maybe American life, will be turned upside down. And all those politicians who can only speak in one color will be out of a job.

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http://www.techcentralstation.com/112904A.html

m&s
http://moose-and-squirrel.com

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[realFedUp]

2. I suppose the YMCA is a cult too....

Just a POV.

[winston61]

3. Evangelicals need to be un-educated

In order for the right wing evangelicals to succeed they need un-informed, un-educated masses willing to believe what they are told and to be suspicious of learning. After learning to read and write what is the role of education? To teach critical thinking. Not just to question what we are told, but to teach us how to function in our daily lives. This is anathema to the right. They must have non-thinking robots to spew the party line and ask no questions. Seig Heil!!

And about lawyers. Every body hates lawyers until they need one. Then they want to the sharpest, best connected shark in the tank. It never fails.