Religious Bigotry in a University Classroom?

A PhD student who holds an MA, MDiv, and a ThM and teaches World Religions at a non-religious university somewhere in the States recently made the following comments about Latter-day Saints on an internet message board:

As part of the Final Exam in World Religions I have all the students answer two short essay questions at the very end. 1. What did you enjoy most about the class? 2. What lesson did you learn that made, or will make, the greatest impact on your life?

One of my student wrote in answer to the second question:

Going to visit the Mormons taught me that there are many counterfeits out there to beware of and they all sound very good to try and draw you in or change your own philosophy. Trust in your faith and don’t be trusting of that in the world that has been derived from man alone.

Please note that all my students are required to visit two religions outside their comfort zone, and it is purely up to them where they go. They write a five-page paper on the experiences, and then get up in class and briefly discuss their findings. It is one aspect of the class that the students repeatedly tell me how much they appreciate and enjoy.

The student’s comments above are priceless. Why? Because she made the visit to the local Mormon meeting house on her own, long before we ever discussed Mormonism as a religion in class. In her words the Mormon church is (1) a counterfeit, and (2) a worldly religion derived from man alone. I couldn’t agree more.

The neat thing about teaching World Religions is not the pay, the long hours of preparation and study, but the lives that are changed for the better when I read comments like those above. They “get it” in a postmodern world of relativism, narcissism, and nihilism, all of which Mormonism espouses at different levels of thought. And because they “get it,” they won’t end up in a cult like Mormonism. Thank God for that!!

The emphasis is in the original. My original thought was that this instructor must have made his biases known in the classroom, since the student was obviously confident her answer would not be considered inappropriate. It was later made clear that such was the case, and that the instructor feels that since he makes his religious affiliation and convictions known at the beginning of the class every year, there’s nothing inappropriate about it. The instructor states he even staged a mock trial to investigate whether or not Mormonism was Christian. He pitted the only Latter-day Saint in the classroom against the others. You can imagine how this went over, given the manner in which Mormonism would have been presented in class as opposed to the manner in which “Christianity” would be described:

Btw, the jury came back with a unanimous decision that Mormonism was not an accurate representation of Christianity, and that after I placed the only Mormon in the class on the side attempting to prove that it was. Unfortunately, after the trial was over, the Mormon quit coming to class (not that she had a stellar attendance record anyway), and she’ll end up failing, sorry to say.

This story has boggled my mind for a couple weeks now. I’ve attended religion classes at two different secular universities and I’ve never seen anything even remotely comparable to this. For those who teach World Religion, have you come across this kind of behavior before, and if so, is it generally tolerated? Would you allow an instructor to explicitly and vehemently denigrate any religion in a World Religion class?

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating. I hope it’s been an uplifiting holiday season. For those celebrating for religious reasons, I hope the holiday season has brought you closer to the Lord and to your families.

Silent Night doing Silent Night/Stille Nacht

I think this is a nice piece:

The artwork is mostly by LDS artists Jim Brickman, Walter Rane, and Liz Lemon Swindle.

St. Francis of Assisi and the Crusades

A new op-ed piece on CNN.com discusses the role of religion in war and peace. Specifically, the author highlights the peaceful mission of St. Francis of Assisi to Sultan al-Kamil as an example to be heeded by modern Christendom in an era when war is promoted, it seems, most fervently by religious groups. President Obama is brought up as an example of a modern leader who seems to have the same spirit as, but could still learn from, St. Francis.

In my opinion, the author makes an important point about the role of religion in promoting peace. This has long been ignored by commentators. Many have long thought of religion as a catalyst for war more than peace. Monotheism, especially, seems to be blamed by humanists for wars all across the world (see, for instance, Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain). This is specious argumentation on a number of levels, not the least of which is the fact that it is naive post hoc ergo proctor hoc reasoning. Nationalism and the need to maintain or increase political power are the reasons for the vast majority of the wars ostensibly fought in the name of religion, and the non-monotheistic empires of the pre-Christian era were far more violent and war-hungry.

People like St. Francis of Assisi and the other religious leaders mentioned in the CNN article also have an advantage that people like Obama will never have in the promotion of peace and eschewing of war: they’re not leaders of large nations. While St. Francis was able to go subjugate himself to the authority of the Egyptian sultan, the Roman emperor at the time could have done no such thing while honoring his office or serving his nation. Nor could Obama offer to exclusively serve the personal interests of the president of Iran while trying to ideologically convert his retinue. To recognize this fact is not to disbelieve Jesus when he said to love the enemy. While peace is a priority for Christianity, circumstances sometimes preclude it (see Matt 10:34). Certain stations in government can give more frequent rise to those circumstances in a person’s life.

The author concludes: “For those who want to be guided by what Jesus would do, Francis of Assisi is a good place to start.” This is good advice for those without responsibilities like those of Barack Obama, but for someone in charge of the peace and security of an ideologically diverse nation of over 300 million people, it’s not always going to be expedient. Islam, Christianity, and Judaism do not promote war. Zealous factions within each ideology sometimes do, but they neither represent their traditions nor find their motivation exclusively (or even primarily) within the tenets of their traditions. The absence of religion will no more solve the problem of war any more than communism solved the problem of poverty. We need more St. Francises to promulgate the principles of peace, but we also need to recognize the need for world leaders to balance of the promotion of peace with the defense and security of their citizens, their cultures, and their ideologies.

Should the Courts Decide Who Is and Is Not Jewish?

The Guardian reports here that a Jewish state school in Great Britain has lost an appeal against a racial discrimination suit. The school turned down the application of a child because they did not consider the child Jewish. Apparently the school gets twice as many applicants as it can accept each year and their chief rabbi whittles the list down by rejecting anyone he does not recognize as Jewish (meaning anyone whose mother he does not recognize as Jewish). A student was apparently turned down because the rabbi did not recognize the non-Orthodox authority who effected the conversion of the child’s mother.

But the school appealed and took the case to the supreme court. Critics say today’s ruling has meant secular jurists are deciding who is Jewish and who is not.

The ruling will lead to children who apply to one of the UK’s 50 Jewish schools having to sit religious practice tests to ensure the schools are not discriminating against children on ethnic grounds.

It is also likely to lead to a revision of faith schools’ admissions policies. Lawyers said it was the most controversial ruling since the supreme court was created in October.

I think this is a very serious move being taken by the UK’s supreme court, but it’s a state school and I think the people ponying up have the right to define what kind of traditions are allowed. The Jewishness of the boys mother, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with race or ethnicity. It appears to have only to do with the orthodoxy of her denomination.

The British Humanist Association said the verdict should trigger an investigation into all state faith schools’ admissions policies. Andrew Copson, the BHA’s director of education and public affairs, said: “There’s absolutely no reason why what is essentially a public service should be denied to any children, whatever their beliefs or the beliefs of their parents.”

What are your thoughts?

EDIT: I assumed, based on my own misunderstanding of how faith schools in the UK worked, that this was a private school, but it’s not. Thanks to Doug for the correction.

Sumerians Look on in Confusion as Christian God Creates World

From The Onion:

Members of the earth’s earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.

According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.

“I do not understand,” reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. “A booming voice is saying, ‘Let there be light,’ but there is already light. It is saying, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass,’ but I am already standing on grass.”

It goes on. Quite a knee-slapper.

A Brief Tangent: Climategate’s “Hockey Stick”

Is this the “trick” Phil Jones talked about using to hide a “decline” in data that he didn’t want getting out? So says the UK’s Daily Mail.

It appears from the article that the “trick” was to cut off the green line when it went behind the other lines so the dramatic decline found in tree ring analyses would be eliminated. Other information that the above article claims was hidden includes the fact that today’s temperatures aren’t unusually high. They were apparently the same around 1000 CE, when no cars or factories were pumping CO2 into the air. The Daily Mail claims this comes from several scientists who helped draft the ICPP’s statements regarding the modern era as the warmest in the last 1300 years. If this is true, it’s an interesting development.

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Archbishop Criticizes Labour Party for Marginalizing Religion

The Archbishop of Canterbury here in the UK has criticized the Labour party for treating religious folk as “oddities”:

The trouble with a lot of Government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem, it’s an eccentricity, it’s practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities. The effect is to de-normalise faith, to intensify the perception that faith is not part of our bloodstream. And, you know, in great swathes of the country that’s how it is.

I’ve not been in the UK long enough to know much about this, but does anyone see this in the States? I see it on TV and in films, but I don’t see it much in the government.

Help Finding an Article

I’m trying to track down a Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft article. My means of access through Oxford and BYU are both, ironically, missing only the year I need. The article is I. Zatelli, “Astrology and the Worship of the Stars in the Bible,” ZAW 103 (1991): 86–99. If anyone could help me out here I would be very grateful.

Waiting on the Messiah

The above photo shows Vlademir Carpin, a Russian Christian pilgrim who has decided to live in a cave on the Mount of Olives until Christ returns. I don’t know if this is some kind of ascetic thing or if he just wants to be close to the action, but his smokes, Sprite, and chinese food are pushing me toward the latter. I hope he’s not right in the middle of the mountain where it’s going to split.