21AR26-30

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AR 26:30 - How to refute "politically conservative exegesis"

In this issue:

FREEDOM OF SPEECH - will the university even resemble "what made American higher education the envy of the world" ten years from now?

POLITICS - a "Biblical scholar" seeks to "undermine the authority of [conservative] biblical interpretations"

Apologia Report 26:30 (1,535)
July 27, 2021

FREEDOM OF SPEECH
"Speaking Power to Truth: Academic freedom's most determined adversaries are inside academia" by Keith E. Whittington (Claremont Review of Books, Wtr '20/21) -- reviews Ulrich Baer's work What Snowflakes Get Right: Free Speech, Truth, and Equality on Campus [1] and asks: Even if institutions of higher education in the United States "can survive their current budget crisis [a result of the COVID scare], what kind of institutions will American universities and colleges be in a decade's time?

"One crucial front in the war over the university pits defenders of the free-ranging pursuit of truth against those who would put political limits on such inquiries. ...

"In the 21st century, however, academic freedom's most determined adversaries are inside rather than outside academia. A growing army on college campuses would like to restrict the scope of intellectual debate by subjecting academic inquiry to political litmus tests."

Baer, a comparative literature professor at New York University, argues "explicitly and forcefully, for sharply curtailing the scope of speech and debate on American college campuses. ...

"Leaning in part on the work <www.bit.ly/3f1yWxU> of Yale legal scholar Robert Post, Baer emphasizes that the logic of free speech fits uneasily alongside the core mission of the university. ...

"University values might best be advanced by expelling charlatans from the campus rather than allowing them to pollute the information environment and debase the university's reputation for expertise and truth-seeking.

"Baer draws also on postmodern theory, which permeates the humanities, to make a useful point about the difficulties surrounding the free-speech debate. ... If speech is an instrument of power, then perhaps it should be taken away from those who would wield it for disreputable purposes.

"Baer aligns himself with the 'snowflakes,' to borrow the popular reference to left-wing campus activists that caught on in 2015 after the world saw videos of Yale students confronting <www.bit.ly/3rPtPWN> Professor Nicholas Christakis over a controversy about Halloween costumes. What the snowflakes get right, Baer thinks, is that some controversial views not only don't deserve to be debated but don't deserve to be expressed, on a college campus or in polite society. The specific views he has in mind are ones covered by proposed hate-speech regulations. ... Anyone who disputes this principle threatens the community and should be suppressed and excluded.

"As a result of taking this position, Baer finds himself juggling two quite different kinds of claims. On the one hand, he embraces Post's view that universities should be dedicated to advancing the truth and should reject falsehoods. ... On the other hand, Baer embraces an explicitly political vision that is at odds with [Robert] Post's ethos of expertise. Those who question the principle of equality advance an ideology that is dangerous, just as the advocacy of Nazism is dangerous."

Baer "thinks professors should not be allowed to discomfort the demos [members of democratic society], at least not on the commitments he particularly values. But once we make that concession, it is no longer obvious what universities are doing, or what purpose academic freedom serves. ...

"What Snowflakes Get Right [cancels] differences between the various kinds of speech that take place on a modern college campus. ...

"Unfortunately, Baer's allies, using his arguments, think that controversial views should also be driven off the internet. Worse, Baer's notion of what counts as a view that is too controversial to be aired on a college campus would likely encompass ideas held by the bulk of the American citizenry and a non-trivial fraction of the professoriate.

"Would he stop there?" Whittington observes that "many 'snowflakes' would certainly be all too eager to expunge professors if they fail to pass the constantly evolving political litmus test of the creedal university. Baer's proposal leads naturally to the demand in a recent letter <www.bit.ly/2GNk1JP> signed by hundreds of my Princeton University colleagues, calling for the formation of a committee to investigate and 'discipline…racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of the faculty.' ...

"There is an all-too-common suggestion that the American Civil Liberties Union protected the free speech rights of Nazis simply because civil libertarians do not mind Nazis. Like many campus censors, Baer imagines that altering the rules surrounding free speech will inhibit only those who disagree with him, never his allies.

"He ignores the costs associated with the kind of campus revolution he outlines, and he provides frustratingly few details about how his reimagined university would look and operate." The concerns of American university design have been honed to a fine degree over the past century. "If given free rein, Ulrich Baer's version of a university is unlikely to resemble the kind that has made American higher education the envy of the world." <www.bit.ly/3kazQeH>

For more critical commentary, see (for example) the review by Robert Shibley, executive director of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) at <www.bit.ly/372u46W>.

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POLITICS
"Deconstructing the Republican Jesus: Biblical scholar Tony Keddie shows how the conservative movement enlisted the Bible to help its cause" by Aaron Klink (Christian Century, May 27 '21) -- a glowing review of Republican Jesus: How the Right Has Rewritten the Gospels [2]. It begins: "Histories of the political, social, and economic origins of the Christian right in the United States are plentiful. However, outside of a handful of books focused on debates about creationism and the Creation Museum in Kentucky, few studies have examined the movement's use of scripture." This one "aims to show how 'Republican Christian influencers have created an anachronistic and internally contradictory story of Jesus tailored to address the concerns and anxieties of modern conservatives.'

"Keddie <www.bit.ly/2V8FC65> does not conceal his belief that the New Testament cannot responsibly be said to sanction most Republican political positions, and he seeks to undermine the authority of any such biblical interpretations. He begins where many academic studies of the Christian right do: showing that politically conservative economic positions were developed by individuals outside the church."

His argument "that such positions were developed to serve an economic agenda and only later were packaged within scriptural language to gain a wider base of support - is shared by many historians of American conservatism. ...

"Keddie notes that most of the influencers who create and disseminate this version of Jesus are 'wealthy, white, heterosexual men.'

"By way of example, Keddie examines Killing Jesus, the 2013 book coauthored by conservative media personality Bill O'Reilly and sports columnist Martin Dugard [3]. ... The National Geographic film adaptation of Killing Jesus <www.imdb.to/3zHSQWA> that aired in 2015 during Holy Week, Keddie argues, served up its own form of Republican Jesus: one who blamed big government for the oppression of people of color and poor people.

"Keddie focuses on three strategies that political conservatives use to bypass the Bible's historical context, which he argues must be considered when attempting to apply scripture to current realities.

"They garble the text by mistranslating or limiting the meaning of its words (whether in the ancient languages or English translation); they omit relevant parts of the text by extracting a verse from its literary context and sometimes cutting out sections of verses; and they patch this cut-up text together with other cut-up texts into the framework of a carefully designed quilt that's backed by ignorance, stuffed with hatred, and sewn with self-interest. ...

"Trained biblical scholars ... contesting Keddie's refutation of politically conservative exegesis will need to refute his careful, skilled, and persuasive use of critical methods, analysis of original languages, and exposition of historical context. In this engaging book, Keddie performs an important service by making biblical scholarship accessible to a broad audience while discussing contemporary political topics." <www.bit.ly/3kiDRO2>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - What Snowflakes Get Right: Free Speech, Truth, and Equality on Campus, by Ulrich Baer (Oxford Univ Prs, 2019, hardcopy, 216 pages) <www.bit.ly/2T7gtbp>

2 - Republican Jesus: How the Right Has Rewritten the Gospels, by Tony Keddie (Univ of Calif Prs, 2020, hardcover, 376 pages) <www.bit.ly/3xADylz>

3 - Killing Jesus: A History, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (St. Martin's, 2017, paperback, 304 pages) <www.bit.ly/36v6csm>

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