An interesting discussion going on over at Reclaiming the mind with regard to the myth of theological liberalism and how many liberals are very closed-minded and even in some ways oppressive to students in conservative schools regardless of the content of a given student’s own beliefs. In other words, how a student at a conservative school is stereotyped by liberals. Click here.
November 30, 2009
Dan Wallace on The Myth of Theological Liberalism
About Robert C. Kashow
November 30th, 2009 at 5:41 am
I expressed my disapproval on Joel’s blog and I’m cheekily cut and pasting it here. His outrageous and unsupported accusations remind me of Ben Witherington. I know for a fact that there are independent British and New Zealand universities where phd candidates are chosen for academic merit regardless of religious or non religious affiliation and previous institutional experience.
Just who does Dan classify as liberal anyway? Does he include all american universities who don’t identify themselves with a denominational epithet (I doubt he includes any theological colleges – which I don’t regard as educational institutions anyway as they don’t allow any academic freedom at all). Does he include all British and European universities in which the academic staff have various beliefs and non beliefs?
Dan Wallace’s accusations are utterly outrageous and his claims to know what people are thinking are ludicrous. He should either withdraw his post or provide proper evidence to support his claims.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:47 am
Steph,
Have you read his post and the coments?
Which accusations in particular are outrageous? I’ve seen this bias occur first hand. Profs are all ears until they hear DTS.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:22 am
Steph,
I have reason to doubt that you even read Dan’s post. Did you not see how well he spoke of British PhD programs? Not even in the post, but in the comments he mentioned it again. I think his criticism is directed primarily towards PhD programs in the USA.
I hope that clears things up.
November 30th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
have you indeed. I have reason to believe you’re american. Perhaps if Dan qualified his accusations instead of writing with such ethnocentric assumptions, they would be less misleading.
December 1st, 2009 at 2:02 am
Or,
perhaps if you read carefully you wouldn’t misrepresent people and make false accusations.
Is it really something to get in such a fuss about? Good grief. The irony in your post is that you claim Dan is ethnocentric and then essentially bash me for being an American! Why are you so angry for? I was just trying to clear up what I thought was a mis-representation. There is no need to respond with such vitriol.
December 1st, 2009 at 2:31 am
I’m not angry but I thought your “I have reason to believe’ was funny – no offence. So I copied it. If you didn’t read accusations against ‘liberal universities’ and ‘liberal scholars’ as referring to universities and scholars worldwide, before his little note about British universities, it must have meant you were reading it with ethnocentric American eyes. Not an attack on your nationality, merely an observation. If Dan was interested in representing people fairly, he should have qualified his accusations.
December 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I did reply to you Luke but it seems to have disappeared. While I read the extract on Joel’s blog, which contained the unqualified accusations before I went over to read the whole post, the point is that Dan did not qualify his accusations. When I read the whole post the reference to UK universities later in the post had less impact. To talk about ‘liberal universities’ and ‘liberal students’ leads one to believe that he is talking about worldwide scholarship. That is regrettable and it would be helpful if he defined his attacks more clearly. I still would be careful about putting words into peoples’ mouths like he has. That isn’t very professional.
I didn’t bash you for being American. Good grief to you too – why so sensitive. It is an observation that with ethnocentric eyes you understand ‘liberal’ scholarship to refer to american ‘liberal’ scholarship. I’m far from angry. I am astonished to be sure, but hardly angry. I thought your ‘I have reason to believe’ was funny so I copied it! It is a consequence of american social sub grouping that there is a tendency to think in ethnocentric terms. About the only thing the Context Group gets right except then they apply it to everyone and this is not the case.
I don’t doubt that there is prejudice against DTS in america, but would DTS take on students who aren’t committed to their statement of faith? That is, ‘liberal’ students? ‘Liberal’ and ‘conservative’ divisions are a bit of a misnoma here.
December 1st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
sorry Steph, for some reason it withheld your comment. I think you entered different info in the name/email/website and that’s why. oh well. cheerio!
December 1st, 2009 at 6:31 pm
no I didn’t – my computer has my information already there. However I’ve been in the other room on Maurice’s computer today, which also has my info logged in … and that didn’t seem to get held up. I dunno…
December 1st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Maurice aye? I don’t know who Maurice is.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Maurice Casey. A very fine and honest scholar and a wonderful and special friend. I wouldn’t even be in the UK if it wasn’t for him!
December 1st, 2009 at 10:42 pm
never heard of him.
j/k
December 1st, 2009 at 11:11 pm
well, he is British after all…;-) He’s written two books on son of man, christology, John, aramaic sources of Mark and “Q” and now he’s almost completed “Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Perspective of his Life and Teachings”. He is Emeritus Professor at Nottingham University. I suppose you haven’t heard of Nottingham?
Have you heard of “Q”? I wish I hadn’t!!!!
By the way I think it was Delilah. She’s curled up half on my keyboard now – just like she was last night!
December 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I think you know I was kidding, but just to be sure, of course I know who M. Casey is, or as I refer to him “the son of man” guy.
December 4th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Blinking blogs – I should have seen the smiley … I admit I was surprised because if nothing else I am sure I’ve bleated on about Maurice and Aramaic within your earshot before. Of course you’re not ethnocentric. By the way, he should soon be considered, ‘Jesus of Nazareth guy’.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I read the blog post, and at first I agreed with it. But now, my opinion has been tempered because of one fact: I am a member of the American Academy of Religion.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Of course – what an insulting question! I don’t read comments when they’re long. All relevant information should be contained in the post and any further developments should be added in updates.
First, and this is minor, his definition of ‘Christian’ is very ‘prejudiced’ – or narrow. MY guess is that 90% of SBL members would IDENTIFY themselves as Christian. Not that it matters or should matter at all if members are Christians or not. The SBL’s mission is to foster biblical scholarship not faith.
You’re right though – I did miss the little acknowledgement of UK schools. (Claiming to have staff from those universities I saw but this was not freeing those universities from his accusations. I did miss the acknowledgement before that those universities are ‘far more open’) I would just alter it – not “far more open to evangelical students” as this still is misleading and misunderstands what independent universities actually do consider in choosing prospective students. A student’s religious or non religious affiliation and previous institutional experience
is completely irrelevant!! Students are chosen on academic merit. As Kingsley Barrett requested of his students, ‘all that is required is argument and evidence.’
I still find his claims to know what a scholar is thinking outrageous: ‘an evangelical and therefore a poorly educated Neanderthal, a narrow-minded bigot, an uncouth doctrinaire neophyte—or worse.’ Maybe he was disregarded because of his affiliation with Dallas. Maybe not. How can Dan be so sure? I’m sure it does happen though in America where this is a consequence of such clearly defined american social sub groups. Perhaps you do all identify in terms of either ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ scholarship over there. Do you? It’s a bit of a misnoma here.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Steph,
Unfortuneatly I have to agree when he says non confessional scholars think of conservatives as “‘an evangelical and therefore a poorly educated Neanderthal, a narrow-minded bigot, an uncouth doctrinaire neophyte—or worse.”
Part of the divide here for you, I think, is geographic. It’s very sick whats’ going on here in the states, but like I’ve said I’ve seen this happen first hand and have heard many examples of such. Just ask around Steph if you know scholars in the US, such a statement is not difficult to substantiate.
We would all agree that Europe is much different.
November 30th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Yes – we discuss american scholarship often. Apart from the unfortunate division into distinct social sub groups it tends to be ethnocentric – hence Dan’s reference to ‘liberal universities’ and ‘liberal scholars’ rather than qualifying those labels with ‘american’ in his accusations. I do know several american scholars trained in american universities who work over here – and in New Zealand. It would however demonstrate extraordinary ignorance to assume that a Dallas graduate is therefore a “poorly educated Neanderthal, a narrow-minded bigot, an uncouth doctrinaire neophyte—or worse.” I have heard similar things said by those horrendous american fundamentalist atheists, another social sub group, who are generally not biblical scholars anyway, but never by a biblical scholar. Loftus and Zindler, yes, and they are not biblical scholars – but definitely not Avalos, a biblical scholar. He’s not that stupid.
I’d be very careful about assuming you know what people think. Is it that you think the same of secular and or ‘liberal’ scholars. While they may think evangelicals from Dallas are religiously biased, and maybe not trained in critical scholarship, they’d not be scholars if they thought they were stupid as well.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:00 pm
[...] against conservative/evangelical students in academia – see various reactions here, here, here, here. Now I respect Daniel Wallace as a great textual critic and his Greek Grammar Beyond the [...]
December 4th, 2009 at 2:20 am
[...] have weighed in. See James, Doug, James again, Rob, Mike, Nick. I like Doug’s post the most thus far: “It’s unclear to me, however, [...]