The following comment and link to the full essay (it is not too long) is from this week's Chronicle of Higher Education. For personal and professional reasons, I would like to hear analyses of the article from many people on the list.
The habit of scorning religion in academe
Hostility and condescension toward religion abound in academe, writes Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, citing his experiences in and out of formal academic settings. The seeming ubiquity of this rancor for all things spiritual finds its roots in recent history, writes Mr. Smith: "Such anti-religion in American higher education was launched in full force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by confident apostles of secularization who sought to popularize the doctrines of positivism, epistemological foundationalism, and scientific objectivity."
Yet these doctrines have already been discredited, writes Mr. Smith, and have been "thoroughly dissected for decades now by all manner of philosophers, historians, theologians, and social theorists." Mr. Smith seeks explanation for the current anti-religion sentiment, instead, in "habitus" -- a concept set forth by Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist, to describe a group's predisposition to think in ways that reinforce particular social conditions. These deeply internalized ways of thinking tend to reproduce themselves within a culture, Mr. Smith says. Even "after the original rationales and ideologies forming a culture have passed," he explains, "the culture continues in turn to form those humans whose lives it subsequently encompasses."
Mr. Smith says the concept of habitus explains that "in their anti-religion, these faculty are expressing a deeply interiorized mental scheme that is more prereflective than conscious, more conventional than intentional -- yet one that has an immense power to reproduce a pervasive institutional culture." Mr. Smith admits that although "habitus by nature is resistant to change, ... time will tell whether the notably increased interest and openness to religion at the level of university courses, programs, institutes, research, and publications will have any impact on higher education's deeper anti-religious culture."
This article is available online at http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2002/005/13.20.html.
Thanks.
Alan
Alan Altany, Professor & Director
Coulter Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723 (U.S.)
Email: altany@email.wcu.edu
FAX: 828.227.7340
Web Site: http://facctr.wcu.edu <http://facctr.wcu.edu/>
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