Religion and the Universities

The present article is adapted from a Baker Lecture delivered by Professor Thomas last year in Louisville under the auspices of the Princeton alumni association in that city. The author is chairman of the Department of Religion at Princeton and Professor of Religion Thought on the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation. Since 1940 the Department of Religion has continued to grow rapidly under his direction and has become one of the most distinguished in the country. He has helped to establish departments of religion at many other universities.

Communism has been likened to a gadfly which has stung the West into fury and destroyed its complacency. Like Socrates, the gadfly of ancient Athens, it has forced the Western democracies to reexamine their basic convictions. Many of the beliefs and values upon which our civilization was founded were derived from our religious tradition. They have had a profound influence upon the universities in the past, and the universities have played an important part in transmitting them from generation to generation. But the separation of the Church from the State and the increase of secularism in the United States weakened the traditional alliance of religion and higher education in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Between the two world wars religion had little importance for most undergraduates and religious instruction virtually disappeared in many of the great universities of the country.

What was the cause of this? In most respects, the universities had reached a high point of development and fulfilled their function admirably. They imparted to students, at least those who were willing to learn, more information about more subjects than the universities of the past had done. The vast extension of knowledge, the specialization of scholarship, and the improvement in methods of communicating knowledge had made this possible. They were also more concerned about the student as a person and tried in every possible way to aid him to attain a mature and well-balanced personality. To a remarkable extent they won the confidence of the people and deserved it.

But there was one weakness of the universities in America which became more and more evident before the second World War. A university exists for a twofold purpose: the discovery and transmission of knowledge to its students, and the development in them of dependable character and worthy purposes that they may use their knowledge for the benefit of their fellows as well as themselves. As we have just pointed out, the best universities fulfilled the first of these purposes well, at least in most fields of knowledge. But, despite their interest in their students as persons, they were far less successful in fulfilling the second. Universities sent out many students at the end of four years without any world view which would enable them to interpret and unify their knowledge, without any ethical ideal which could give direction and nobility to their lives, and without faith in any spiritual meaning and purpose. As one of my former students put it recently, “When I was in college, too many students had no center or goal.” Lacking a religious “center” and a world view based upon it, they could find no deeper meaning in the great mass of facts they had learned. Lacking a moral “goal” or dominant purpose to guide their lives, they were like a new and streamlined ship which has lost its rudder.

The most fundamental cause of this was that university students had been brought up in a society which had not decided whether to remain Christian or to adopt completely a frankly secular way of life. The majority of Americans still retained a formal allegiance to the Christian faith and ethical ideal. But a living faith in the reality of the spiritual world and the moral law had faded out of the lives of millions. As a result, many students had learned before they came to the university to discount the importance of anything which transcends the world of the senses and to be skeptical about any ethical ideal above that of the majority. Of course, since they had been brought up in a society where most respectable people professed religious beliefs and ideals, they usually accepted these as part of the normal pattern of American life. But there is a radical difference between the formal beliefs accepted passively by a man from the group and the real beliefs by which he lives. Many students, like their elders, had a verbal belief in God and the Christian way of life, but their real faith was in man and his achievements. Thus, the frequent charge that the universities were “destroying the faith” of their students was, to say the least, exaggerated. Many students, like their parents, had little faith to destroy.

But we professors must also take a considerable share of responsibility for the lack of religious and ethical convictions on the part of students. Our influence during the four formative and impressionable years of college is often of decisive importance in shaping the beliefs and attitudes of our students. In large measure, we determine whether they will leave college spiritually and morally stronger than when they arrive. Why did we — why do we still — fail so often in this important part of our task?

The answer is not that we stressed the intellectual development of our students too much. After all, that is our first task. It is rather that we accepted uncritically the view that education consists primarily of information about facts in various fields and especially in one. This view overlooks the most important thing of all: the meaning of the facts when brought into relation with one another and with the whole of knowledge. As a result, it is hardly too much to say that, the more we have come to know about the parts, the less we seem to understand about the whole; the more knowledge we have gained, the less wisdom we seem to possess. Specialization has required us to be more and more expert in smaller and smaller fields of knowledge.

But there is a more fundamental reason for the tendency to identify knowledge with factual information. Because of the prestige of modern science, many have come to believe that the only dependable knowledge is the knowledge of natural and social phenomena attained by the scientific method. The philosophical term for this narrow view of knowledge is “Positivism.” It is widespread today, not only among “advanced” philosophers, but also among professors in other fields who have thought little about philosophical issues. This positivistic view has prevented professors from interpreting and evaluating the facts in their fields with the help of basic convictions about the nature of man and his good, derived from philosophy and religion. As a result, the enormous increase in specialized knowledge has not been accompanied by a growth in philosophical wisdom about life as a whole. Positivism also fosters the view that religious beliefs are subjective and illusory and that moral judgments are completely relative since they cannot be verified by the scientific method.

Finally, professors have been deeply influenced by a certain conception of liberal education. They have assumed that their only responsibility is to present the facts in their fields as clearly and impartially as possible and that objectivity requires neutrality on ultimate issues. According to this conception, if the professor allows his own convictions to affect his interpretation of the meaning of the facts, he will be imposing them upon his students and interfering with their freedom to think for themselves. He should keep his own convictions about controversial religious and ethical issues entirely out of his teaching.

Now, the most striking thing about the religious situation in the universities since the Second World War is that the unfavorable attitude towards religion caused by this narrow conception of knowledge and liberal education has been breaking down. Positivism is still a powerful influence in academic circles, but the limitations of the scientific method outside the realm of natural phenomena are better understood. It is now recognized that men cannot live on facts alone, that they are bound to have some world view or scheme of interpretation to give meaning to the facts, and that natural science does not necessitate, as many thought at the turn of the century, a materialistic world view. As to the attitude of neutrality on ultimate issues, professors now realize that students need and want their help in thinking about the perennial problems of human existence. If denied this help from their professors, students are simply forced to turn to others who are usually less well qualified. Moreover, it is impossible for a professor, if he is creative in his thinking, to confine himself to the bare facts in his field without relating them to the facts in other fields and interpreting their broader implications. Of course, he can accumulate a large number of facts and present them to his students in a mechanical fashion, but the facts he presents will be meaningless and he will have failed as a teacher. Above all, the necessity of convictions on philosophical, ethical, and religious issues has been made very apparent by the emptiness of life without them and by the ideological conflict between the Western democracies and Communist states since the Second World War, a conflict in which the former have been at a disadvantage because of the weakness of their convictions.

For these and other reasons, the intellectual climate in the universities is now making it harder to be critical of all beliefs and ideals and committed to none. This does not mean that there is a widespread “revival” of religion in the universities; it does mean that there is a greater concern about religion than there has been at any time since the writer started teaching more than a generation ago. This concern is evident at every level, although its shows itself in different ways among professors, administrators, and students. Among professors it has manifested itself chiefly in the reform of the curriculum and system of requirements during the last decade. In the course of the Second World War a process of healthy self-criticism was initiated in faculty circles which led to important changes in institutions all over the country. The free elective system which permitted the student to select any courses he liked with no requirement that they form a coherent pattern, has been modified or abandoned. The study of the basic ideas and ideals upon which Western civilization has been based is now required in one form or other in a large proportion of our universities. This makes it possible for students to organize their knowledge around a common core of principles, although they are free either to accept or to reject any of them after critical examination. It must be admitted that the importance of religious beliefs in our intellectual heritage has not yet been fully recognized in many institutions. But once a university acknowledges that religion has contributed general ideas which are worthy of serious study by all students, it is on the way to a rediscovery of religion as a vital and indispensable part of general education.

Another sign of the concern about religion on the part of both professors and administrators is the recent establishment of new departments of religion. Since 1940 Princeton has built up a department of religion which now offers a variety of courses to several hundred undergraduates each semester. New departments of religion have also been established since the Second World War in many other universities, e.g., Columbia, Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina. In these new departments, a broader and sounder conception of the way religion should be taught in a university has come into existence. Formerly, the universities had very small departments of religion which could offer only a few courses in the subject. In contrast, some of the new departments are now large enough to offer a considerable number of courses in which a variety of approaches is used. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries religious instruction was usually given from the point of view of a particular church and professors of religion were often retired ministers with no previous experience in university teaching. At the present time, courses are being taught from a non-sectarian, ecumenical point of view, and the professors have been trained in the best graduate schools for a life career of teaching. It is recognized that the purpose of university instruction in religion is not to inculcate the theological doctrines of a particular denomination but to deepen the religious horizon of the students. For this purpose, it is essential that each student should gain an understanding of other theological positions as well as that of his own denomination.

Formerly, religion was taught as a thing apart. It is now realized that, since religion has affected and been affected by the whole range of human thought and experience, the professor of religion should be able to relate religious beliefs and aspirations to other phases of human culture and activity. Consequently, he must not only possess a broad knowledge of religion but also be prepared to consider its impact upon history, philosophy, literature, and social institutions. For this purpose cooperation with his colleagues in other departments, especially in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, is essential. This is why the Department of Religion at Princeton has been associated with the Special Program in the Humanities from the beginning and has recently been participating in the Special Program in American Civilization. It also encourages its departmental students who have a strong interest in history, philosophy, or literature to combine their study of religion with a study of that field and to write their senior theses on topics which will allow them to bring together the two fields. A similar purpose is served by allowing students who are doing their departmental work in some other field to take courses in religion and to choose topics for their senior theses which express a special interest in religion. Each year a number of students of history, English, philosophy, and other fields take advantage of the opportunity to do this.

Since religion has affected men’s thinking and activity in all fields, the discussion of its influence and implications should not be limited to the Department of Religion. While the Department of Religion can initiate the student into the complex study of religious history, literature, and problems, he needs the help of other departments in studying the relation of religion to other phases of human experience. If the deep influence of Christianity on European and American civilization is to be appreciated, the Department of History should consider the contribution of the Church to the development of social institutions. The Departments of English and Modern Literature should deal with the ideas of Christian writers like Dante, Milton, Pascal, and Dostoevski. The Department of Philosophy should concern itself not only with the Christian philosophers of the middle ages but also with the religious ideas of modern philosophers. The Department of Politics should analyze the contribution of medieval thinkers to constitutional government and of modern Protestantism to democracy. It is obvious that members of the Department of Religion are not as competent to deal with facts and issues like these as are their colleagues in other departments. Thus, the facts about religion and the problems it raises should be dealt with on suitable occasions in any department in which they naturally arise and are relevant.

This implies that a Department of Religion which is surrounded on all sides by departments hostile to it or too indifferent to cooperate with it cannot fulfill its function in an effective manner. If religion is isolated and occupies a peripheral position in education its effect will be neutralized. For this reason, one of the most promising religious developments of the last generation is the rise of several organizations, such as The National Council on Religion in Higher Education and the Danforth Foundation, which offer fellowships to assist men and women to prepare themselves for university teaching in any subject from a religious point of view.

What of the students themselves? At the present time there are three quite different attitudes of university students towards religion. Some of them already have a strong religious faith and commitment when they come to the university. Many of the most outstanding men on the campus belong to this group and more good students are planning to go into the Christian ministry than there were in the generation before the war. At the opposite extreme, there is a considerable minority of students who are either indifferent or hostile towards religion. Of this group, only a small number are definitely hostile; most of them are simply indifferent. Between these two groups there is a third which consists of students who have as yet made no definite decision for or against the claims of religion but whose minds are open. Often one discovers in them a longing, expressed or unexpressed, for a faith they know they do not yet have but hope they may some day find.

If the universities are to meet the religious needs of these three groups of students, a genuine concern of administrators and professors for the spiritual and moral as well as the intellectual development of their students is essential. They must provide opportunities, not only for the careful study of religion and its total impact upon human life, but also for worship and service. Students are fortunate if they can worship in a beautiful university chapel under the leadership of a minister who understands the art of worship and if they can listen to preachers who know the religious difficulties and problems they have to face. They are also fortunate if they can participate in voluntary religious activity and service under competent and devoted leaders. All of these opportunities are available to students at Princeton who wish to make use of them.

America began her history as a Christian nation. She has departed from the faith and life of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. But the painful and protracted crisis of our time is forcing her to inquire once more whether she can fulfill her high destiny without a renewal of Christian faith and a strengthening of Christian brotherhood. We have been catapulted suddenly into a position of world leadership and power. Can we hope to be worthy of this responsibility, or endure the frustrations and disappointments it will involve, without drawing upon deeper sources of knowledge and power than our own reason and will? What can our universities do to help their students discover these deeper sources? As we have seen, they have begun to force this question more seriously since the Second World War. The spiritual and moral health of our nation as a whole, as well as the happiness of our children, will be deeply affected by the answer they finally give to it.

This was originally published in the January 28, 1955 issue of PAW.