The Groves of Academe: When Disrespect is Respectful

Dar­ryl Hart, aca­d­e­m­ic dean at West­min­ster The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, weighs in with a con­trar­i­an per­spec­tive on Chris­t­ian aca­d­e­mics in an essay titled The Groves of Acad­eme: When Dis­re­spect is Respect­ful.

Well, con­trar­i­an for an evan­gel­i­cal.

He argues that mod­ern uni­ver­si­ties have no place for Chris­t­ian schol­ar­ship, and appro­pri­ate­ly so: If believ­ing schol­ars could rec­og­nize hos­til­i­ty to faith as the acad­e­my’s high­est form of flat­tery, in oth­er words, if they could acknowl­edge the ways in which Christ and cul­ture are legit­i­mate­ly at odds, they might under­stand why some habits die hard. They might even dis­cov­er the plau­si­bil­i­ty of cer­tain anti-reli­gious prej­u­dices.

Inci­den­tal­ly, this essay is a response to Force of Habit and Spe­cial Plead­ing (both are also quite inter­est­ing, and take dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives).