From the issue dated May 24, 2002
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Do Professors Lose Academic Freedom by Signing Statements of Faith?Critics say the oaths at some religious colleges are intellectually confiningBy BETH McMURTRIE The spring of 2000 was a happy time in the professional life of Alex Bolyanatz,
He received a glowing review from the chairman of his department. The Faculty Personnel Committee unanimously recommended that his contract be renewed, and he was popular with students and well liked by colleagues. So he was stunned when a letter that December from the provost, Stanton L. Jones, said that he was recommending against the professor's reappointment. "During your term at Wheaton College," Mr. Jones wrote, "you have failed to develop the necessary basic competence in the integration of Faith and Learning, particularly in the classroom setting." Wheaton is an evangelical Christian liberal-arts institution where all employees, from janitors to professors, are required to sign a statement of faith. Mr. Bolyanatz believes his career derailed over a fundamental difference of opinion about how he should introduce religion into his teaching of anthropology. Despite objections from colleagues and protests from students, the president and Board of Trustees voted against his reappointment, and he left Wheaton the following year. The ordeals of Mr. Bolyanatz and many other professors at the more than 100 evangelical Protestant institutions in the United States that require such faith statements -- orally or in writing -- have spurred charges that they violate academic freedom. Do they, in fact, defy the academic ideal of open intellectual inquiry? Are the statements -- some of them generic -- subject to such broad interpretation that they can be used to punish whatever teaching or lifestyle choices administrators may dislike? This month, Patrick Henry College, in Virginia, and the American Academy for Liberal Education brought the issue to the forefront when the national accreditor denied the college's bid for accreditation. The academy says Patrick Henry's faith statement unduly restricts "liberty of thought and freedom of speech," while the college claims it is being discriminated against because it teaches creationism. Religious colleges that require faith statements of faculty members have plenty of critics. "It's a very closed intellectual and social environment where there's not much room for variety of experience or expression or gentle exploration around the edges," says Paul R. Spickard, a professor of history and Asian-American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Mr. Spickard taught for several years at Bethel College, a Baptist institution in Minnesota, and Brigham Young University's Hawaii campus, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Anyone who didn't fit the mold ended up leaving sooner or later," he says. The American Association of University Professors is ambivalent. It upholds the right of religious colleges to place restrictions on academic freedom in keeping with their theological views. But, says Jordan E. Kurland, the AAUP's associate general secretary, the organization would prefer if such limitations didn't exist. The group has censured a number of Christian colleges and seminaries, particularly when they have fired professors for religious reasons not clearly spelled out in contracts, faculty handbooks, or other official documents. "We said early on that if an institution is going to place limits on academic freedom, they should state what those limits are," Mr. Kurland says. "That's been the AAUP's main scrape with these institutions over the past few decades. [These professors] didn't know what they were not supposed to say until they said it." To defenders of Christian colleges, such criticism smacks of prejudice. They argue that all colleges, even secular ones, impose some limits on academic freedom. "We have a lot of students who are interested in how [academic subjects] relate to their personal faith, and I ask my colleagues at state universities, 'Can you talk about that?' And they say, 'Oh, no, we can't,'" notes J. Paul Sorrels, vice president for academic affairs at East Texas Baptist University. "So my question is, who has the real academic freedom?" They also object to the idea that their faculty members are somehow oppressed. "One of the great myths and fallacies in the academy today, particularly among critics of a faith-related institution, is that somehow these people are being coerced into a certain perspective," says Anthony J. Diekema, a former president of Calvin College, in Michigan, and the author of Academic Freedom and Christian Scholarship (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000). "Most professors seek out a faith-based institution because it is in line with their worldview." One reason faith statements inspire such strong feelings on both sides is that there's little recourse for faculty members who run afoul of them. Courts hesitate to intervene in matters of religious doctrine. If a college claims that a professor fails to meet its religious standards, and the professor disagrees, a court typically defers to the college. Clinging to Religious Identity Mr. Bolyanatz and his supporters think he was tripped up by unwritten rules. A firm believer in evolution, he gave little credence to creationism during his lectures on human origins. But, he says, he never felt that he was violating Wheaton's religious ethos. "I would say, 'Faith does not discount the evolutionary model. The evolutionary model does not discount faith.'" At Wheaton, however, the faith statement holds that "God directly created Adam and Eve." After sitting in on several of the professor's lectures, Mr. Jones, the provost, wrote him a scathing memorandum stating that while he was not required to advocate creationism, Mr. Bolyanatz was expected to treat it with respect. Mr. Jones declines to comment on the specifics of the Bolyanatz case, but says his complaint about creationism was just part of a larger concern that the former professor had undermined the "thoughtful engagement of theology" in his classroom. He rejects the campus talk that Mr. Bolyanatz's firing shows that teaching is being judged there by an ever-stricter orthodoxy. "There was never a moment in my discussion with him that I doubted his sincerity in subscribing to our statement of faith," he says. Yet tensions remain. "For some people, the question comes up: What is in the faith statement that is a trick question?" says Helen M. DeVries, an associate professor of psychology and head of the Faculty Personnel Committee at Wheaton at that time. "That he was dismissed against faculty recommendations has really left a lingering disquiet." It is difficult to define the exact limits that faith statements place on professors, because the institutions that use them run the gamut from relatively liberal Mennonite campuses to conservative Baptist ones. Some base their faith statements on a specific denomination's doctrine. At Calvin, for example, all professors must agree with dozens of tenets that form the basis of the Christian Reformed Church. Others use more generic statements, such as the Apostles' Creed, an ecumenical document that many Christians can agree with. More conservative colleges typically have more restrictive statements of faith. Liberty University, a Southern Baptist institution founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in Virginia, holds that the Bible is inerrant, that the universe was created in six days, and that Jesus will return to the earth for a thousand-year reign. At Biola University, which was founded as a Bible institute in California, not only must job applicants agree to the doctrinal statement, but also the church they attend must be investigated, to ensure that its views are in keeping with the university's. For a science professor to teach macroevolution -- the evolution of one species into another -- is "unacceptable," says Gary A. Miller, Biola's provost and senior vice president. Creation in Six Days Like Liberty, Patrick Henry College requires faculty members to believe that the world was created in six days and to teach creationism as a stronger scientific argument than evolution. Jeffrey Wallin, president of the American Academy for Liberal Education, says his group has accredited a number of colleges with faith statements, but none as restrictive as Patrick Henry's. "We do not have any schools that simply cut off any inquiry or teach nonscientific matters as science," he says, adding that the association also objected to other parts of the statement, including one that claims constitutionally based democracies are elements of God's order and communist governments are not. Patrick Henry has said it will apply to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which accredits Liberty, instead. James T. Rogers, executive director of the association's Commission on Colleges, declines to comment directly on the Patrick Henry case but says the commission's main concern is that colleges be upfront with whatever religious restrictions they impose on faculty members. "We don't get into the issue of trying to tell an institution that they need to adopt a particular view, whether it's evolution or creationism," he says. Many Christian colleges also require faculty members to abide by a lifestyle statement that prohibits gambling, lying, profanity, drinking, smoking, and sex outside of marriage. Regular church attendance is expected, and sometimes required. Administrators say faith statements are crucial to maintaining their colleges' religious identity. They cite universities like Harvard and Yale, founded on religious principles but now thoroughly secular, as evidence that without requiring a faith commitment from their professors, most Christian colleges ultimately lose their religious ethos. They also note that Roman Catholic colleges, which historically have avoided faith statements, have been wrestling for more than a decade with the question of what it means to be a Catholic college. The tensions between faith statements and academic freedom often seem to boil down to a conflict between the right of a college to promote certain ideas and the right of its faculty members to express their views. "For one of our faculty members to get up and state, 'I do not believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God,' OK, they have the right to say that," argues Mr. Miller, of Biola. "But do they have the right to teach that?" Yet even the staunchest defenders of faith statements acknowledge that they have been used as weapons to punish professors who offend administrators, parents, or church members. "There has been a significant 'chilling effect' operative among Christian scholars," Mr. Diekema, the former Calvin College president, writes in his book. "There are simply too many 'horror stories' in the pipeline of Christian-scholar scuttlebutt to deny the reality of this chilling effect." Among the cases he cites is that of Scott Cairns, now an associate professor of English at the University of Missouri at Columbia. In 1997, Seattle Pacific University offered Mr. Cairns a tenure-track position in its English department. But the offer was rescinded by the university's president, Philip W. Eaton, after he read one of Mr. Cairns's poems and deemed it "downright pornographic." Mr. Cairns has said that the poem, "Interval With Erato," was about poetry, not sex, although it uses sexual language to describe the growing intimacy between a poet and his muse. To protest the president's action, the chairman of Seattle Pacific's English department, Mark Walhout, resigned his post (he stayed on as a professor). "The administration voided his contract for reasons not even touched on in the faith statement," he says of Mr. Cairns. "Basically, they were basing their decision on criteria not spelled out anywhere." Mr. Eaton agrees that his decision derived from a "gut reaction," but he is unapologetic. "There are some places where appropriateness, decency, matter," he says. "It's just not what we wanted to see around here." Spelling out every situation that would violate a college's faith statement, he adds, smacks of a kind of "legalism" that is antithetical to the idea of a Christian college. Mr. Eaton's approach is not uncommon. Most faith statements are broadly written and do not place specific limits on what professors can and cannot teach. Thus their interpretation can depend on the perspective of a single administrator. Earl Ross Genzel claims that's what happened when he was forced to leave Messiah College, where he had taught for 11 years and was an associate professor of theater. One day in class in 1993, during a debate about homosexuality, a student asked Mr. Genzel what his position was. He said he disagreed with people who used the Bible to condemn gay Christians living in a monogamous, loving relationship. The dean of the Pennsylvania college, Dorothy J. Gish, subsequently declined to renew his contract. Messiah has "renewable tenure," in which professors come up for review every five years. In a meeting, Mr. Genzel argued that he had not advocated homosexual behavior, which is prohibited by the college's ethos statement. But Ms. Gish felt he had stepped over the line, according to notes taken by Mr. Genzel and endorsed by the dean. Mr. Genzel eventually landed a job as an assistant professor of theater at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, but he says the experience was devastating. The Messiah chapter of the AAUP wasn't pleased, either. It wrote a letter to the college's president, Rodney Sawatsky, arguing that Mr. Genzel's treatment raised "serious questions regarding issues of academic freedom and due process here at Messiah College." Mr. Sawatsky, who became president in the midst of Mr. Genzel's contract dispute, says the former professor's views on homosexuality did not prompt his departure. He declines to elaborate, citing a confidentiality agreement. But he says he would "definitely not fire" a person for saying that homosexuality is not sinful. "On something that is such a hot-button issue, we want to be careful. But I would not want to dismiss a person out of hand for that kind of statement." Better Grievance Procedures Since Mr. Sawatsky arrived and a new dean was brought in, Messiah professors say, the campus has become much more open. Stephen G. Cobb, a sociology professor and president of the campus AAUP chapter when Mr. Genzel was dismissed, says that the college has since agreed to give anyone alleged to have violated the faith statement a hearing before a faculty committee. "I think it has contributed to an improvement of morale among the faculty," Mr. Cobb says. "We do have a process now that seems to be more systematic and protective of the interests of the faculty." No cases have come up since Mr. Genzel's departure. Other religious colleges are moving in the same direction. Ron Mahurin, vice president for professional development and research at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, says administrators have often discussed developing more-detailed academic-freedom statements and grievance procedures. One reason is that Christian colleges are attracting an increasingly diverse group of scholars, and some of them may not clearly grasp a college's denominational views. More distinct policies, he says, will help them understand the expectations and protect them from unfair treatment. Mr. Mahurin also notes that a number of Christian colleges began as small Bible institutes. As they grow in size and sophistication, he says, they recognize that they need academic-freedom policies to match. Often, the biggest threats to academic freedom at Christian colleges come not from administrators but from church members, or students and their families. Some of those constituents expect a college to hew to an orthodox line and are upset when a professor raises questions about sensitive topics like the ordination of women or the morality of abortion. In such instances, even the most ardent defense by administrators may not fully protect faculty members. Gregory A. Boyd, a theology professor at Bethel College in Minnesota, discovered that after he published two books describing his belief in open theism -- the idea that God does not know the future. Upon reading his work, members of the Baptist General Conference, which owns Bethel, began a campaign to remove Mr. Boyd. They even attempted to revise the conference's faith statement, to which all professors must adhere, so that it included the belief that God has foreknowledge of all events. Fortunately for Mr. Boyd, college administrators stood behind him, as did an investigative committee set up by the college to look into his writings. After several years, the Baptist General Conference upheld the committee's finding. "What I came to see is that a lot depends on who is in charge," says Mr. Boyd. "In institutions where you have to sign statements of faith, you need a lot of trust in the administration." Howard J. Van Till, a now-retired physics professor at Calvin College, had an even more grueling experience when he published The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us About Creation (Eerdmans, 1986). The administration had no problem with his writings, but angry members of the denomination objected to his support of evolutionary theory and his suggestion that biblical texts had been strongly influenced by the cultures in which they were written. Under pressure, the college's Board of Trustees formed an investigative committee. The situation soon turned Kafkaesque. For three and a half years, Mr. Van Till met with the group monthly to explain his theological views. "As the years of questioning and interrogating continued, the arena of concern just got larger and larger," he recalls, "until it became a test of the entirety of my theological position." Finally, after four years of investigation -- the last six months without Mr. Van Till's cooperation -- the committee cleared him. Following that experience, Calvin developed some of the most explicit procedures on academic freedom among Christian colleges today. Although protections were already in place for faculty members, the Van Till episode made administrators and trustees realize that they needed to take a strong role in defending faculty members. When a biology professor, Hessel Bouma III, later came under attack from church members for his views on abortion, the board's investigative committee met with him just once before exonerating him. Despite the difficulties they have faced, a number of professors accused of undermining their colleges' religious ethos say they still believe that, despite the occasional abuses, faith-based institutions can be intellectually vibrant and open places to work. For his part, Mr. Bouma argues that Calvin's faith statement protects his academic freedom, because it allows him to explore controversial theological issues. "Sometimes in scholarship it means you have to work a little harder to carefully nuance something in order to get somebody to think about it," he says. "But I think it's one of those exciting challenges of working at a faith-based college." Mr. Bolyanatz, the former Wheaton professor, now teaches at Benedictine University, in Illinois. He also thinks faith statements give coherence to a religious institution and says he would absolutely consider an offer from a college like Wheaton. "I really liked the kids at Wheaton, I really liked my colleagues," he says. "I see my problems there as boiling down to a handful of people." But others remain mistrustful. Mr. Van Till doubts he would consider Calvin if he were starting his career today. "The documents can be very docile and nonthreatening until someone chooses to take issue, and suddenly every word and phrase become relevant," he says. "Suddenly, the tiger has sharp teeth." http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A12
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education