An earlier article reviewed the shift in the commitment of universities and colleges from disinterested inquiry to ideological commitment to liberationist ideologies, as discussed by Bob Osburn at the annual L’Abri conference in Rochester Minnesota in mid-February. Mike Sugimoto, Professor of Asian Studies at Pepperdine University, then discussed the challenges of approaching education from a Christian viewpoint in a world of identity politics on February 18. Sugimoto first observed of Pepperdine that while “it’s now considered a top-tier university,” it has a background “like a lot of Christian schools that started out as Bible colleges.” Pepperdine is still a “self-avowed” Christian university (affiliated with the Churches of Christ). But, he said, it is a “Christian university today – which is – everything’s changing.” This includes “unique challenges.”
The Collapse of the Modern
Sugimoto proposed to discuss “the collapse of the modern” (other people might call this postmodernism), the resulting identity movements, and a possible Christian response. He observed that Christian education properly should cover all knowledge, and involves an emphasis on the unity of truth, goodness, and beauty, and on man in the image of God who grasps the truth.
Modernism involves several key concepts. A crucial concept is the nation-state. Under “a lot of” modern theories, “the nation-state replaced the church.” Much of the church’s authority over people’s lives was taken by the state. Next there is the research university. This was imported to the United States from Germany in the nineteenth century. Key to research and teaching in the university is the division of academic inquiry into disciplines, where “different kinds of research is happening at the same time.” All this was effected under an “Enlightenment paradigm,” which involves to building knowledge on the basis of autonomous reason, or “reason alone.”
A more basic component of modernity is the notion of the “modern individual – who is separated as an individual – as a private individual from the public realm.” The modern university includes the “assumption that there’s an individual who is then weighing everything, figuring out what’s right, what’s wrong if it’s a moral question … and then making these choices and ideally in a democracy then voting … The idea of citizenship is very closely linked to the university and also with the nation-state.”
This modern way of organizing life “is either collapsed or collapsing, like right now.” This collapse has happened in education – Sugimoto’s focus – but also as “a philosophic view.” It is a shift tied to “the understanding of what a human being is.” Since there is no longer assumed to be a free individual weighing ideas according to reason alone, the claim to impartial knowledge is much diminished. “We don’t really talk about truth so much, in the research university [but] some people are still hanging on to it, actually.” But the main thing that is happening is “the collapse of this model, which has dominated now for quite a while – for hundreds of years.”
Group Identity, Victimhood, and Postmodernism
The “primary social institution” in the new postmodern world is “media, or journalism.” It is even influencing academic writing, which is increasingly in the style of journalism. (Blogging would seem to be a manifestation of journalistic dominance). Another rising institution is university administration, which is increasing dramatically in size and importance relative to faculty.
The ethos in the collapse of the modern university is “identity politics.” This is despite the fact that “politics has collapsed,” because the rational, autonomous individual that supported modern politics is no longer there. Even the idea of a “social justice warrior” is now somewhat passe, because it comes from “a former model, where there was still a society.” The social gospel and its goal of a perfect society went along with modernity and SJWs. Society would be the true redeemer of individuals and humanity. But now group identity is assumed superior to the individual, and “people don’t have that sense of belonging to some kind of universal kind of body.”
Replacing the autonomous individual and reason is “the idea of victimhood.” Sugimoto referred particularly to the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and his book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” written with First Amendment scholar Greg Lukianoff. As noted in the previous article in this series, group identity and victimhood gives value (and a controlling doctrine) to the development of knowledge.
The principle “historian of higher education in America has been Laurence Veysey,” Sugimoto said. Veysey’s doctoral dissertation, published in 1965, “The Emergence of the American University,” remains “the reigning treatise on what happened to the university.” According to Veysey, “neither the Christian religion, nor positive science, nor humane culture proved capable of making sense out of the range of knowledge and opinion of the university – it was fast becoming an institution beholden to no metaphysic.” Veysey began to recognize “early on … that there was a crisis … of no ethos at all.”
As noted, modernity involves the separation of academic inquiry into disciplines. This then separates what Christian education had held to be in union. That is, modern academic inquiry involves “the becoming autonomous of truth, beauty, and goodness from one another and the developing into self-sufficient forms of practice – modern science and technology, private morality, modern legal forms, and modern art.”
In contrast to this, social commentator N.S. Lyons was cited to say that the current (postmodern) situation is characterized by a “kind of a metaphysic, there is a religion here, it’s just not what we normally think of as a religion. The new faith (that’s what he’s calling it) rejects nearly every principle of liberal modernity – the existence of an objective reality that can be discovered by reason, the scientific method, one enduring human nature, impartial equality before the law, secular pluralism, and the value of freedom of speech … the separation of the private and public spheres.” This writer would add that the elimination of the public/private distinction is one of the most threatening aspects of postmodernity to religious freedom. With social media and no agreed on public meanings, all is “private, it’s just spewed out there – there’s no public realm.”
A similar explanation of postmodernity was cited as being given by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of American studies at Harvard University. Explaining the fact that we now have a move “from universal fraternity to individual pronouns,” Gates said that “perhaps it was inevitable that the citizen center of classical Enlightenment political theory would be replaced by the infant at the center of modern depth psychology – the inner child may hurt and grieve as we have been advised, is it also to vote?’” The question, Sugimoto said, with this kind of emotion driven individual, “can you have a democracy this way?”
The Denial of Universal Human Nature
“The equality of sameness,” which was part of modernity, assumed that people are all basically the same, an assumption that will not stand if group identity is a person’s primary moving force. The U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights assumes this kind of equality, and so the freedoms that it guarantees are now threatened by group identity doctrines. In addition to blacks, who have been highlighted by Black Lives Matter, there are now “a virtually uncountable set of subgroups that no longer identify with the universal aims of the founding of the country.”
Thus, quoting Gates as early as 1993, Sugimoto said that “civil liberties are regarded by many as the chief obstacle to civil rights – the byword among many black activists and black intellectuals is no longer the political imperative to protect free speech, it is the moral imperative to suppress hate speech.” Gates was responding to developments at the time at Harvard by some of “what we now call Critical Race Theory.” Also, CRT founders were “distancing themselves from the legacy of Martin Luther King.” King’s “famous idea of colorblindness … is now being somewhat rejected … I never thought that would happen in my lifetime … he’s being demoted now, in certain circles.”
Jonathan Haidt, cited above, has said that social media is a cause of the collapse of the universal. But there is also a problem with the lack of intellectual diversity in higher education. Haidt has developed an “American Professoriate Ratio.” This is the ratio of Left to Right among faculty on college campuses in America. In 1996, surveys found faculty to be 2-1 in favor of the Left, by 2011 it was about 5-1. This survey included all schools, even specifically professional schools such as dental schools. Sugimoto said that today the ratio is “much, much greater.” He said that “Brown University wins the prize,” where the ratio is 60-1. Haidt’s “point is college students are not hearing a diversity of views, so they’re becoming narrower … they don’t have many options left.” Sugimoto said that even at “a Christian school like Pepperdine” there is “a reluctance … to speak about what’s going on, if you have a different opinion, you keep silent, because you’re not sure if it’s safe to speak out.” He believes that this is in part due to the fact that many people “haven’t studied enough to know how to speak.
As an example of how sensitive and intolerant the cultural left has become, Sugimoto cited the “Halloween debacle at Yale,” in 2015, in which Yale prohibited Halloween costumes that appropriated other cultures. Objectors to the costume ban said “free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.” He said that “the mob went after” them for that. This phenomenon he called “the anti-universal woke left.” Similarly, David Goldberg, the ACLU attorney who defended a Nazi parade in a largely Jewish area if Skokie, Ill., has recently said that “I got the sense it was more important [to] ACLU staff to identify with progressive causes, than to stand on principle. Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind. Since 2016, the ACLU budget has nearly tripled more than $300 million as its lawyers doubled.” But “the same number of lawyers … specialized in free speech as a decade ago… [there are] a few brave individuals who are willing to speak out against this.”
But there is also now an “anti-universal woke right.” He called this “Christian particularism.” Even on the right, there is a disowning of the nation’s founding ideals. He cited a quote endorsing “Christian nationalism” that complained that “Western man [is] retreating to universality, to the universal values of the Declaration of Independence … Western man is trapped in a cycle of universality, unable to wake up into and embrace his own particularity.”
Sugimoto said that “pretty much every institution” in America has been taken over by group identity doctrines (corporations, media, schools, museums, etc.). There is now much “systems and origins talk.” There are frank proposals that race is fundamental and that society be “demarcated along racist lines.”
A Christian Response
Pepperdine is overhauling its education program, and Sugimoto is on the committee to prepare a document to do that. Someone objected to the word “truth” being used in the document.” He said this was staggering for a Christian university. Jesus said that he was “the way, the truth, and the life.”
Sugimoto noted that people attacking liberal modernity are talking in terms of the whole system being rotten to the core, in “DNA talk” attacking liberalism at its root. He called this “bad Calvinism – everything you do is so terrible” – everything in the system is irredeemable. The correct understanding (based on Christian doctrine) is that “everything is tainted” by sin, even the noblest human works “might have something about it that is selfish or corrupt … but that doesn’t mean that the whole thing has to be tossed out.”
He then offered “a Biblical case for identity.” He believes that Christians have “an alternative model … through adoption, spiritual adoption, tied to the Abrahamic covenant.” He calls it “the radical nature of the Abrahamic covenant.” It includes the following points:
- Laughing about one’s legacy – Sarah laughed to herself at God’s promise that she would bear a son. But the Lord said, “is anything too hard for the Lord?” Physical birth happened through “miracle means.”
- Repudiating biological or racial determinism. Redemption is “not generative, not biological.” It is “signified through circumcision.” (In the Christian era, each must come to Christ in a conversion experience).
- Ethnic inclusivity – “Slaves in Biblical Israel were physically identical to their masters” – even slaves who were not Hebrews were to be Hebraized (through circumcision), and fully invited into the community.
- “Sacrificing kinship – biology is not destiny.” Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. Allegiance to Christ is superior to kinship allegiance. “If there’s going to be a legacy, it’s not necessarily going to be based on kinship relations”).
- Adopting the world – Adoption is a “universal principle” (anyone can be adopted). “All of us will be abandoned by our own parents one day in death … we will abandon our own children, as well.”
- Father Abraham branches out – Gentiles (in our age, we would speak of the unsaved) can be grafted into Christ. This system of adoption by God through individuals Christ is “the new normal” according to the Bible.
Sugimoto said that “the equality of sameness,” and “the equality of difference” are both in “the Biblical definition of identity.” He cited Paul’s letter to the Galatians (3:26-29) to say that a human being from any background can find their basic identity in Christ:
“Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.“
While there are differences between people, for those in Christ, we are “all one in Christ.” He noted that “notions of equality usually have a hierarchy” behind them “that they draw their meaning from.” He said that there is “the hierarchy of Abraham” behind Biblical equality. Behind modern equality there is “the hierarchy of the state.”
Sugimoto believes that this spiritual adoption “may be our way out of our dilemma” of identity politics “instead of being kind of siloed into these different groups.” People with different cultural backgrounds can be adopted.
Other Alternatives to Postmodernism
He cited Glenn Lowry, Social Sciences and Economics Professor at Brown University, to say that the contemporary categories, of “white” and “black” are projections of our own era back into antiquity, and that while American blacks may have originated in Africa, their cultural heritage is in the West, not in Africa. Sugimoto then noted that people the world over play Bach, if they are learning to play an instrument. Christianity “certainly does not have any racial marker,” he said.
As for other alternatives to identity politics, he mentioned The University of Austin – a new, secular, nonideological university – which “got hundreds of millions of dollars within days” to start up the university. It includes Christians, Jews, atheists, and “all kinds of people.” It is “a non-censored approach to education.” Sugimoto considers it a kind of “liberal version of Hillsdale.”
Catholic Polytech is another new university starting in Los Angeles. It is a STEM college that “tries to wed faith and science.”
A questioner asked if the rejection of Martin Luther King was “because of his religious views.” Sugimoto said he hadn’t seen this in any of the criticism of King, unless one says that his doctrine of the universality of human nature is derived from Christianity, and it is the universal which is now being rejected. He also said that those pushing back against the marginalization of Martin Luther King are not appealing to Christianity to defend his belief in universality. The question then is “can we do this without religion?”
In response to another question, Sugimoto noted that racial tensions seem to increase after the use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. At least some corporations are overhauling these programs as a result. Nevertheless, he said we cannot simply ignore differences. However, Pepperdine simply used the DEI program used at Wellesley College, without considering that as a Christian institution, a different program might be needed. He thought that there is a need to “separate the good DEI from the bad DEI.” But he said that that there was some value in DEI programs, properly structured.
Another questioner asked if the extreme individualism of the contemporary world is the reason for the attack on “cultural appropriation” and to some extent the re-segregation of society (despite the emphasis on “diversity”). Sugimoto said that “when you begin to slice and dice, there’s no end.” The answer to this, the questioner and Sugimoto agreed, is to present a community into which people can be adopted, and which overlaps differences. Orthodox Christian faith presents the possibility of such a community.
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