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Saturday, July 22, 2006
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"Fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist form is incompatible with higher education... In fundamentalism, you have all the truths. In education, you’re searching for truths." A Baptist theologian, quoted in today's New York Times, makes the essential distinction between education and indoctrination. Growing numbers of Baptist colleges, reports the Times, are severing official and monetary ties with the church, as the church, more and more fundamentalist, attempts to control course content. It's like that rebellion at Patrick Henry College -- despite caricatures of religious colleges from the left (colleges on the right have their matching caricatures of the left), there's in fact plenty of evidence that many self-respecting religious colleges and universities -- the type that'd like a Phi Beta Kappa chapter and that sort of thing -- tend to evolve toward becoming more secular institutions out of simple respect for the truth. Or, as a student at a now-independent Baptist college says in the article: “It’s good to go to a college that’s religious, but it doesn’t really matter to me.... What matters to me is getting my education." |