Religion and Religious Expression in the Academy and Public Life

This month’s issue of the Forum features a recent panel discussion co-sponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion on the theme, “Religion and Religious Expression in the Academy and Public Life.” The panel included featured guest and New York Times op-ed columnist, Ross Douthat; Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School; Laurie Zoloth, Dean and Margaret E. Burton Professor at the Divinity School; William Schweiker, the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics at The Divinity School; William Cavanaugh, Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University; and was moderated by Williemien Otten, Professor of Theology and of the History of Christianity at the Divinity School, and Director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion.

The panel debated the role that religion and religious thought should play within the life of the university as well as in American public life more broadly. As reported in The Chicago Maroon, “New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat argued for the reintroduction of religious awareness in university education, whereas Geoffrey Stone, a professor of constitutional law in the Law School, made a case for secularism as the basis of freedom of thought. Three professors in the Divinity School—Laurie Zoloth, Willemien Otten, and William Schweiker—each spoke on the importance for a university to remain neutral in terms of religious matters and to encourage a diverse community. William Cavanaugh, a professor of Catholicism at DePaul University, added to the emphasis on the exchange of ideas.”

In the coming weeks, we will publish several responses to the panel discussion by scholars associated with the Divinity School. The first response, “A Good Disagreement is Hard to Find,” comes from Michael Le Chevallier, a Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Ethics at the Divinity School. Cynthia Lindner, Director of Ministry Studies and Clinical Faculty for Preaching and Pastoral Care in the Divinity School, offers the second response, “’That Which Dominates our Imagination’: Speaking Religion in Fractured Public Spaces.” We invite you to watch the video of the panel discussion (below), to read the responses (below), and to join the conversation by submitting your comments and questions.

We are grateful to the Lumen Christi Institute, who co-sponsored the event, for allowing us to publish the video recording of the panel. The Marty Center also wishes to thank the other sponsors of the event—The Institute of Politics and The International House Global Voices Program—for the partnership. 

The panel discussion was held on January 17, 2018, at the International House at the University of Chicago.

3:10  Ross Douthat remarks

22:56  Geoffrey Stone remarks

32:18  Laurie Zoloth remarks

39:30  Ross Douthat response, panel discussion

56:22  William Schweiker remarks

1:07:34  William Cavanaugh remarks

1:18:55  Ross Douthat response, panel discussion

“A person will worship something, have no doubt about that.  We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will come out. That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and our character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.”    – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Three decades ago I left Swift Hall after five challenging and energizing years in these classrooms, years spent watching and listening as the scholars of our day argued for the essential place of reason in the practice of religion, and then negotiated a hearing for that “reasonable religion” in the life and work of our twentieth-century research university.  My transcript from those days—the late 1970’s and early 1980’s—was a testament to those negotiations, and our resulting preoccupation with correlation and interdisciplinary study. Most course titles boasted the optimistic and adventurous “and”: Religion and Literature, Religion and Psychological Studies, Ethics and Society. To achieve citizenship in this land of “and,” students were expected to speak more than one language. That is, we learned languages both ancient and modern—the languages of sacred texts and the languages of research—but we also learned the languages of the social sciences, history, and literature, as well as the vocabulary of religious studies. When students, scholars and practitioners become bi- or tri-lingual, the world inside their minds and the world before their eyes opens wide.  Engaging the entire university expands our universe.

This spaciousness—cultivated and held in the space between conviction and humility, between familiarity and difference—has funded my life in ministry, counseling, teaching and writing for over 40 years.  In the small cities and large towns of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where I served congregations, taught theology, and served as a hospice chaplain, the fact that religion could and must converse with other fields and other professions was seldom questioned.   Sometimes the engagement was deliberate, by provocation or consultation, but generally the interaction was second nature, simply assumed.  We live, love, and work in complicated times.  Most of my congregants—teachers and bankers, construction workers and grass seed farmers, engineers and physicians—were familiar with the ebb and flow of certainty and uncertainty, coherence and confusion, hope and despair. Navigating between fact and possibility, negotiating among multiple meanings and commitments, they had discovered that their search for truth did not have to be a zero-sum game.  Intuitively and practically they knew that both their faith and their science were the richer for being de-centered and unsettled, and then refreshed and reformulated, in the essential and ongoing commerce between them.

As Emerson observes, “that which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and our character.”  For most people, that imagination and those thoughts are not delineated solely by the doctrines prescribed by religious denominations, on the one hand, or the rigor of academic disciplines, on the other.   We all live and move in that necessary spaciousness of “and”—anything less is not an option—because meaning-making is constant, never static.  There is more, always more, to be learned about that essential human proclivity, its warrants, methods and outcomes: as our University’s motto urges, “crescat scientia, vita excolatur.”  And so I listened expectantly to Ross Douthat’s reflections on “Religion and Religious Expression in the Academy and in Public Life,” and to his accomplished respondents, hoping for some reconnaissance that might indicate a way forward.  Where were the new frontiers in the conversation about the role of religion in public life?   How are the field of religious studies and the work of spiritual life leaders on campuses like ours helping to shape new knowledge and 21^st-century leaders?  I was not entirely disappointed: Geoff Stone recounted the “tricky” moments when students in his class raised significant questions about the role of belief in constitutional deliberations, Laurie Zoloth described religious reasoning that clarifies “right action,” William Schweiker advocated for serious moral reflection about what really “enhances life,” and William Cavanaugh  pointed to the long experience of Roman Catholic higher education as an example of religion’s long commitment to the production of knowledge and the formation of public servants,  and to the increasing plurality of what counts as religion in those places.

But, as is so often the case when we attempt public conversation in our current moment, the opportunity for more productive exchange was constrained by the flatness of Douthat’s opening narrative. Public interlocutors—journalists, politicians professors, preachers—play a powerful role in our fast-paced, media-driven culture, as they craft the narratives that tell “us” how “it” is, who “we” are, and what we “need,” or “ought” to do. When that narrative is overly ambitious, thin, or self-serving, serious public conversation falters, devolving into a familiar give-and-take along the lines of well-worn binaries. Douthat’s analysis of what inhibits religious expression in the university and public life—technocracy, universities that serve the ends of the elite, the influence of the godless left on one hand and the self-involved anti-intellectuals with their “soft” spirituality on the other—sounds too familiar. His critique is as old as punditry, and while such an enduring assessment must be taken seriously, it is by no means an exhaustive description of “the way things are,” in our own university and civic community, or elsewhere. Douthat advocated for religious expression in the academy and public life without defining what he means by the term, what such engagement would look like or where it would take place, or what outcomes he imagines for the project. His audience was left to speculate on all of this, informed by the speaker’s own identification with a particular strain of Roman Catholicism and his derisive dismissal of some other forms of expression that he deemed inadequate: campus activism around sexual harassment and the book “Eat, Pray, Love” being two such examples. The imprecision of such sound bites might be useful for columnists courting readership but it is less useful in a conversation that wants and needs to generate more light than heat.

For the most part, Douthat’s respondents offered carefully considered narratives of their own about the relationship of religion and the academy, mining their own disciplines for pungent historical references, careful definitions and scholarly practices in order to counter or at least complicate the story Douthat offered.  The ensuing conversation touched on freedom of speech, authority and integrity, human experience and human reason, and the power of religious ways of knowing both to build capacity and to exploit vulnerability.  Sometimes the rhetoric soared, challenging hearers to take their full humanity much more seriously, and more of the time; predictably the discussion foundered when it focused briefly on a particular practical example, the case of gay marriage. The former was not unfamiliar ground, of course—I felt like I was hearing a quick rendition of the academy’s greatest themes—and I was grateful for the reminder. But the slight treatment of a contemporary “case in point” suggests that there is still more to know about how religious knowledge might engage public issues in more thoughtful and productive ways. At the end of the event, it seemed that this conversation was only a prelude to any substantive study of the topic of religious expression in public life and contemporary meaning-making. I could almost hear my own cloud of witnesses—the farmers and physicians and their friends—asking, as they so often did in our conversations, “so now what? Where do we go from here?”

If we are to chart the way forward in higher education and in civil discourse, we will need to tell a more robust narrative of “how things are”—that is, how our communities and our culture thinks about, constructs and practices meaning-making, in ways that conform to our present definitions of religion, and in ways that trouble some of those definitions.  In order to do this, as this panel discussion reveals, the composition, expertise and experience of that “we” is critical. A more adequate account requires more voices telling their truth—many “religions” were missing from both Douthat’s initial parry and the panel’s responses, as were the insights of persons of color, those whose experiences are often under-represented in conversations about religion, rights, and human dignity.  A more useful assessment of the role of religion in the academy, and the role of religious studies beyond those walls, might include the wisdom of a wider sampling of the university’s stakeholders. A university is much more than the sum of its classrooms, after all—it is a sprawling ecology of students, faculty, researchers, staff, administrators, employees, family members, and perhaps even prospective audiences and employers. These audiences and employers include, of course, the many professions whose work it is to make meaning in our culture—religious leaders, teachers, politicians and journalists, to name only a few. Scholars of religion must engage with them as a necessary part of their scholarly practice, not only to be informed by the real world implications of their teaching and research, but also to increase their reach and their impact.  It is easy for those in the academy to criticize a journalist’s “flat narrative,” as I have done here, without exerting ourselves to make richer narratives more easily accessible. In this fractious and divisive moment in our country’s life together, those who would think seriously about that which informs us and moves us must bring their best tools to the task: a serious and nuanced reading of religion’s role in public life that reads the current landscape, listening closely to the testimonies of many, mining our scholarly and religious traditions for their best wisdom, and creating new opportunities for diverse communities to take up the conversation. ♦

Ross Douthat joined the New York Times as an op-ed columnist, the youngest in the paper’s history, in April 2009. His column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. He has established himself as a nationally recognized commentator on politics, religion, moral values, and higher education. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (2012), Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (2005), and co-author, with Reihan Salam, of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008). With Bad Religion, Douthat cemented himself as a leading cultural critic. The book’s thesis is that while religiosity and self-professed spirituality are not on decline in America, “orthodox” Christian belief and practice are. Americans today are a “nation of heretics,” professing and practicing faiths inflected by modern elements that distort Christianity into warped expressions. Bad Religion is about “the slow motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place,” Douthat writes.

Laurie Zoloth is the Margaret E. Burton Professor and Dean of the Divinity School. A leader in the field of religious studies with particular scholarly interest in bioethics and Jewish studies, Zoloth’s research explores religion and ethics, drawing from sources ranging from Biblical and Talmudic texts to postmodern Jewish philosophy, including the writings of Emmanuel Levinas. Her scholarship spans the ethics of genetic engineering, stem cell research, synthetic biology, social justice in health care, and how science and medicine are taught. As a founding board member of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, she also researches the practices of interreligious dialogue, exploring how religion plays a role in public discussion and policy. Zoloth is author of Health Care and the Ethics of Encounter: A Jewish Discussion of Social Justice and co-editor of five books, including Notes from a Narrow Ridge: Religion and Bioethics and Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought.

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Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Mr. Stone joined the faculty in 1973, after serving as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. He later served as Dean of the Law School (1987-1994) and Provost of the University of Chicago (1994-2002). Stone is the author of many books on constitutional law, including Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century (2017). He is an editor of The Supreme Court Review and chief editor of a twenty-volume series, Inalienable Rights, which is being published by the Oxford University Press. Appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, he is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the America Law Institute, the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Council for Democracy and Technology. He has served as Chair of the Board of the American Constitution Society and Chair of the Board of the Chicago Children’s Choir. Stone has also written amicus briefs for constitutional scholars in a number of Supreme Court cases.

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William Schweiker is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics. His scholarship and teaching engage theological and ethical questions attentive to global dynamics, comparative religious ethics, the history of ethics, and hermeneutical philosophy. A frequent lecturer and visiting professor at universities around the world, he has been deeply involved in collaborative international scholarly projects. His many books include, Dust that Breathes: Christian Faith and the New Humanisms (2010).  He has published numerous articles and award-winning essays, as well as edited and contributed to six volumes, including Humanity Before God: Contemporary Faces of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Ethics  and was chief editor and contributor to A Companion to Religious Ethics, a comprehensive and innovative work in the field of comparative religious ethics. Professor Schweiker was the 2015–2016 President of the Society of Christian Ethics and the Director of The Enhancing Life Project (2014-2017), supported with a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation. His present research is on ethics and the integrity of life.

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William Cavanaugh is a professor of Catholic studies and director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, a research center housed in the Department of Catholic Studies and focusing on the Catholic Church in the global South—Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His major areas of research have to do with the Church’s encounter with social, political, and economic realities. He has authored six books and edited three more and is currently working on a book on secularization and idolatry, exploring the ways in which a supposedly disenchanted Western society remains enchanted by nationalism, consumerism, and cults of celebrity.

Willemien Otten is Professor of Theology and of the History of Christianity at the Divinity School, and Director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. She holds an M.A. and PhD from the University of Amsterdam. Otten studies the history of Christianity and Christian thought with a focus on the Western medieval and the early Christian intellectual tradition, including the continuity of Platonic themes. She is co-editor of Eriugena and Creation (2014), On Religion and Memory (2013), and the Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (430–2000) (2013). Her most recent project is entitled “Natura Educans: The Psychology of Pantheism from Eriugena to Emerson.”

Michael Le Chevallier is a Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity school. He received his M.Div. from the Divinity School in 2011 and was a Junior Fellow at the Marty Center in 2016/17. His research focuses on social ethics, foundational ethics, Catholic Social Thought, and environmental ethics. He is currently completing a dissertation entitled “The Stain of Association and the Burden of Membership: Guilt, Responsibility, and Institutional Ethics in Paul Ricoeur and the Catholic Social Teaching Tradition.” Michael coedited the forthcoming volume Jean Bethke Elshtain: Politics, Ethics, and Society.

Cynthia Gano Lindner is Director of Ministry Studies and Clinical Faculty for Preaching and Pastoral Care in the Divinity School. She has worked as a parish pastor, hospice chaplain, and pastoral psychotherapist for over thirty years. Teaching and research interests include questions of contemporary ministerial identity and formation, multi-religious theological education, the practice and ethics of preaching and pastoral care in multicultural society, the role of religious communities in addressing communal violence and trauma, and the interface of corporate worship and public witness, and its impact on identity formation and congregational life. Lindner explores pastoral multiple-mindedness in her book Varieties of Gifts:  Multiplicity and the Well-Lived Pastoral Life, published in 2016 by Rowman and Littlefield, and is currently developing two new research projects: one on the narrative experience of congregational life, and another on collaboration as pastoral practice.