Signing Faith Statements
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

[Editor's Note: This entry also appears HERE on the History News Network.]

A friend told me not long ago that he was required to sign a faith statement in order to obtain a faculty position in a Christian college. He wondered what the effect of this document would be on his lecturing and research.

There is a small literature on the topic. In 2000, an assistant professor of anthropology at Wheaton College, in Illinois, was denied tenure despite receiving a glowing review from his department chairman and a unanimous recommendation from his Faculty Personnel Committee. All employees at Wheaton are required to sign a statement of faith, and the anthropologist was charged with violating the agreement. This action riled many academics. And rightly so, for the concept of academic freedom, when it protects responsible and scholarly judgment, is a vital bulwark of the free society.

More than 100 evangelical Protestant colleges and universities in the United States require faculty members to sign faith statements, orally or in writing. The issue, of course, is whether or not these statements violate academic freedom. Can a faculty member who is obligated to an expression of religious faith still be free to do research and lecture in an atmosphere that is consistent with the honest and objective search for truth? In 2002, Patrick Henry College, in Virginia, was denied accreditation on the ground that the institution’s faith statement unduly restricted “liberty of thought and freedom of speech.” The College says it is a victim of discrimination for teaching creationism. The American Association of University Professors hedges on the issue, upholding the right of religious campuses to require faith statements but also wishing that they would disappear. Courts hesitate to intervene in this sort of issue, typically deferring to the wishes of the college or university.

In the first place, a private college or university of any denomination or religion surely has a right to espouse a point of view. Christian institutions have, of course, strong roots in American history, our first colleges being almost exclusively religious. To maintain a campus credo, faculty members must be recruited who believe or at the very least respect the faith in question. Historically, this bent has not precluded federal or state financial aid in one form or another.

Moreover, students surely have the right to learn in an atmosphere that is sympathetic to their deepest beliefs about the most important issues of human existence. Many students and their parents pay high tuition for this privilege. Hundreds of colleges and universities advertise a sound education within a particular framework of belief about the most important issues of human existence. For a survey of some of these thriving and often excellent institutions, see Naomi Schaefer Riley, God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America.

Secondly, no one forces a scholar to seek or accept employment on a campus of this kind. But when a successful applicant is offered a position and freely signs a document committing him to accept and uphold the campus faith, the faculty member is morally and legally committed to honoring his pledge. When it is determined, with all due legal safeguards in place, that a clear and specific pledge has been violated, campus administrators, for the protection of their institutional principles, are free to sever ties with the scholar. The violation of the contract has an inevitable consequence that is ordinarily contained within the pledge itself and is no secret to the offending professor.

But doesn’t a pledge to uphold a religious faith by definition inhibit free speech to the point that professors cannot teach effectively and students cannot receive a first-rate education? Not at all. Professors should be able to discuss any topic in their field of expertise without recrimination, as long as they attempt to be objective and base their conclusions on the best available information. (No professor should sign a pledge that lacks this basic protection.) As for students, anti-intellectualism is found everywhere, especially these days, and one would have great difficulty proving it to be more dominant at religious colleges and universities than in their secular counterparts. Much of this balance of scholarship and faith, of course, depends upon the good will, intelligence, and decency of all parties concerned. But there is nothing that automatically makes learning and faith incompatible enemies. Indeed, the history of higher education points repeatedly to the opposite conclusion.

Of more difficulty for me is the “hidden pledge” to oppose religion, especially Christianity, that is implicit throughout academia, public and private. Is faith accorded the same respect as atheism in, say, the course offerings of humanities departments all across the West? Are scholars with doctorates from Catholic universities accepted fully by the nation’s most prestigious schools? Do serious Christians suffer discrimination in academia? Aren’t the attempts to deprive Christian student groups of recognition and financial aid symbols of a broader crusade to impose secularism on all campuses? The answer to these questions should be obvious to thoughtful people even remotely connected to the contemporary campus. The most perfervid persecutors of thought and speech today are the politically correct, a fact well known and abundantly documented.

I also have a problem with Catholic colleges and universities that flaunt Church teaching, campuses that only pretend to be Catholic and proceed to fill student minds (in the name of diversity and free speech, of course) with a variety of forms of anti-Catholic dogma. This is a familiar pattern in the United States, and is a feature, sadly, of our most well-known Catholic institutions, which have thumbed their noses at the Vatican for many years. For further information, consult the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and the Cardinal Newman Society.

David Gelernter:

College students today are (spiritually speaking) the driest timber I have ever come across. Mostly they know little or nothing about religion; little or nothing about Americanism. Mostly no one ever speaks to them about truth and beauty, or nobility or honor or greatness. They are empty -- spiritually bone dry -- because no one has ever bothered to give them anything spiritual that is worth having. Platitudes about diversity and tolerance and multiculturalism are thin gruel for intellectually growing young people.

So let us not fret a lot about faith statements for professors on a few private campuses. These institutions have a right to present them to prospective employees. Professors sign them of their own free will. And students in religiously oriented institutions have the right to get what they pay for. This issue should not rank today within the top twenty problems facing academia. We have much more serious matters to think about and reform.

NAS2:17 PM

Seconding the Endorsement for Tenure
Christina F. Jeffrey, South Carolina Association of Scholars

Do we need any further proof that Thomas Reeves is right to bring to our attention the likely unintended consequences of ending tenure on college campuses? Ward Churchill would survive. D. Rayner (the pen name of a professor at a Southern University) whose article appears on the page below Reeves's, probably would not. Ward Churchill speaks his (warped) mind freely and without fear of retribution while D. Rayner has to assume a pen name. Some academics now stay in the conservative closet even after they earn tenure.

Reeves might persuade me differently, but, like most free-market conservatives, I believe that there may be better systems than the current one for protecting academic freedom. Obviously, that one is flawed (as many conservative academics are discovering) and we should at least consider alternatives.

As Reeves points out, those who have already made it through the tenure process will be the first to go, if tenure is removed ex post facto. On the other hand, looking to the future, conservatives may have a better chance of competing in a market that hires on a contract basis, if for no other reason than the fact that there will be more openings.

It also seems likely that if the stakes for jobs are lower, conservatives might be more likely to secure full-time jobs, just as they are now often able to find adjunct and temporary positions, but not tenure-track ones.

The state universities, at least, could benefit by letting in some more of our folks -- as it is, an increasing number of state systems of higher education are under terrific pressure from cynical and burned legislators who are having second thoughts about funding institutions that seem to thrive on anti-Americanism. If they had friends in the political science department, for example, they might see more use in keeping the enterprise afloat. This is not to say that Republican political scientists should be toadies. They should be allowed to exist, though. The resultant intellectual diversity might be beneficial to their departments (even if it gets in the way of converting the department into a consulting arm of the Democratic Party come election time).

As a member of the Nation Association of Scholars in Georgia, I fought post-tenure review (the end of tenure as we know it) for the reasons outlined above and for one additional reason, also touched on by Reeves. To obtain tenure, individuals do things they might not otherwise do, give up opportunities they might not have otherwise given up, and accept salaries that are lower than they might otherwise have earned. This is a real investment in their jobs. If they are forced to give up tenure, then they deserve compensation, just as they would deserve for any other appropriated property.

By the way, I was informed by legal counsel, after losing the tenure battle in Georgia, that my outspoken unwillingness to give up tenure voluntarily, while all the rest of the faculty in the Georgia were voting to give it up, meant that I was the only person in the system whose tenure still meant something. Everyone else had apparently ceded theirs back to the Board of Trustees.

So my advice is not to surrender hard-earned tenure without a fight, or at least a generous severance package!

NAS1:43 PM