Mary Poplin,
Professor of education,
Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles
[January 14, 2014]–
Dallas Willard in his book Knowing Christ asks, “Is reality secular? Is adequate knowledge secular? And is that something that has been established as a fact by thorough and unbiased inquiry? Is this something that today’s secular universities thoroughly and freely discuss in a disciplined way? Certainly not! Nowhere does that happen. It is now simply assumed that every field of knowledge or practice is perfectly complete without any reference to God. It may be logically possible that this assumption is true, but is it true?”
This was the crux of my own intellectual crisis – the more I knew about and experienced Christ, the more I knew reality is not secular. But my field is entirely built on secular principles. So I began to try to understand the worldviews to which I formerly had given my life (material naturalism, secular humanism, pantheism) and the one for which I longed (Christianity).
I came to understand that each of these non-Christian worldviews shares some principles with Christianity, thus apologetics that pits one against the other will invariably lead to distortion. Christians and naturalists both believe there are material phenomena that can be studied.
Christians and secular humanists are both ostensibly committed to some form of Christ’s second commandment. The Christian simply knows the first commandment makes the second imminently more possible.
The pantheist and the Christian both believe in the existence of a spiritual world. But there are important differences – places where the Christian would not agree and principles inside Christendom that are not found elsewhere. Thus in the wreckage of secular worldviews there are both principles to keep and to discard.
I ask, “What does this say about the secular university?”
- First, otherwise highly educated people are left woefully ignorant of things most human beings in the world believe. Only about 4% of the world’s inhabitants hold no spiritual/religious worldview.
- Second, secularization has radically diminished the university’s whole-hearted search for truth. It is no longer the free and open marketplace of ideas because it selectively dismisses religious explanations in its search for meaning.
- Third, the exclusivity of Secularism, and its tendency to disdain orthodox Judeo-Christian principles in particular, contradicts the university’s own self-professed commitment to diversity and pluralism.
- Lastly, radical secularism has left the university with what law professor Steven Smith calls a “thin, desiccated public discourse.” He suggests we “decriminalize” the smuggling of beliefs.
Like Nehemiah our job is to rebuild the city, the univers-city, and like the Israelites we are scattered far apart on the wall. It can only be done with God’s grace, wisdom, and power and when the builders have a heart to work.
(c)2014 Mary Poplin