Statements of Faith: Are They Appropriate?

[From today's online Chronicle of Higher Education:]

A glance at the January-February issue of Academe: Statements of faith Many private colleges today make professorships contingent upon making a statement of religious faith, but are such oaths appropriate?

Supporters of the practice defend it in part by calling colleges that embrace faith statements a healthy reflection of America's pluralism, explains Kenneth Wagner, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Radford University, a public institution in Virginia. Mr. Wagner calls them "restrictions on academic freedom," though, and says that theologically conservative associations "inhibit the building of social capital and the strengthening of civil society."

In a separate article, Peter J. Hill, a professor of economics at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal-arts institution in Illinois, writes that a faith statement is an acknowledgment of a worldview, and that secular colleges embrace worldviews just as faith-based universities do. Secular colleges, though, take as a premise that "there are no moral absolutes or organizing principles for life."

"Both positions are value-laden," says Mr. Hill, "and I think both should be options for organizing academic life."

Mr. Hill adds that faith statements do not necessarily affect scholarship, and that those who make them do so voluntarily. Mr. Wagner balks at the latter of those claims, though, saying that "you need have only a basic knowledge of the academic job market to know that many new Ph.D.'s take positions with institutions whose values they might not wholly endorse." He notes that violating such statements through pedagogy, research, or activism can be grounds for punitive action, even termination.

"What of the faculty member who comes to an institution fully subscribing to the statement of faith but who then finds a different view of the truth?" he asks. "Must this person either suppress these new ideas or resign?"

Mr. Wagner's article, "Faith Statements Do Restrict Academic Freedom," is available here.

Mr. Hill's article, "My Religious College, My Secular Profession," is available here.

--Jason M. Breslow
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