The Campus Conspiracy against the Religious Order

In the four hundred years since the Lutheran Reformation, but especially in the two hundred years since the Enlightenment, Protestant theology and militant secularism have jointly formed a phalanx to drive religion from its paramount position in culture and politics back into the corners of private life. The secularists’ motive was to force religion off the public stage: Religion was a matter of personal caprice and therefore beyond rational inquiry, which should govern public life. And precisely because it could not be a matter of public responsibility or shared discourse, religion for the secularist faded from consciousness and became trivial. For Protestant theologians religion was hardly trivial; the theologians’ goal was to keep religion vivid in the heart of the individual. Yet Protestantism proved complicit. If, as in the Lutheran tradition, true religion takes place in the heart, in the act of faith by which alone we are saved, then religion does not form a component of culture but a constituent of conscience.

In the context of American public life, the accomplishments of this Protestant/secularist phalanx include the exclusion of the study of religion from the public schools. This exclusion teaches young people the lesson that religion does not exist in the world, but only in private corners of the world. But what about universities? When religion is studied in universities today, the same forces conspire to dictate what we study when we study religion, therefore how the coming generations will perceive and evaluate its claims. What difference does this make to someone not on the campus?

JN

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Jacob Neusner

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In the four hundred years since the Lutheran Reformation, but especially in the two hundred years since the Enlightenment, Protestant theology and militant secularism have jointly formed a phalanx to drive religion from its paramount position in culture and politics back into the corners of private life. The secularists’ motive was to force religion off the public stage: Religion was a matter of personal caprice and therefore beyond rational inquiry, which should govern public life. And precisely because it could not be a matter of public responsibility or shared discourse, religion for the secularist faded from consciousness and became trivial. For Protestant theologians religion was hardly trivial; the theologians’ goal was to keep religion vivid in the heart of the individual. Yet Protestantism proved complicit. If, as in the Lutheran tradition, true religion takes place in the heart, in the act of faith by which alone we are saved, then religion does not form a component of culture but a constituent of conscience.

In the context of American public life, the accomplishments of this Protestant/secularist phalanx include the exclusion of the study of religion from the public schools. This exclusion teaches young people the lesson that religion does not exist in the world, but only in private corners of the world. But what about universities? When religion is studied in universities today, the same forces conspire to dictate what we study when we study religion, therefore how the coming generations will perceive and evaluate its claims. What difference does this make to someone not on the campus?