{"id":58,"date":"2002-08-19T23:53:30","date_gmt":"2002-08-20T07:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2002\/08\/19\/habit-driven-academics-still-nervous-about-religion\/"},"modified":"2002-08-19T23:53:30","modified_gmt":"2002-08-20T07:53:30","slug":"habit-driven-academics-still-nervous-about-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/08\/19\/habit-driven-academics-still-nervous-about-religion","title":{"rendered":"Habit-Driven Academics Still Nervous About Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Professor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unc.edu\/~cssmith\/\">Christian Smith<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unc.edu\/\">UNC Chapel Hill<\/a> wrote an interesting article for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/books\/\">Books &amp; Culture<\/a> called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/bc\/2002\/005\/6.20.html\">Force of Habit<\/a> attempting to explain <i>a tenacious anti-religious sensibility among many faculty<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Several anecdotes effectively highlight his thesis: <i>anti-religion is still alive and well among the university professoriate. Particularly anti-Christianity, which disdains a faith neither exotic nor \u201csubaltern\u201d enough to merit the admiration of intellectuals.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>After spouting some very confusing sociological terminology, he uses a concept called <b>habitus<\/b> to account for this consistent trivialization of faith. They way Smith uses it, habitus seems to mean an idea carried forward by momentum rather than&nbsp;merit.<\/p>\n<p><i>In particular, the notion of habitus helps to explain some curious features of academic anti-religion. One is that none of the anti-religious faculty I know as individuals are nasty people out to make religious believers feel bad. They\u2019re smart, interesting, morally serious, and well-intentioned. I prize my relationships with them. They\u2019re not aiming to be anti-religious, anti-Christian. They don\u2019t have to try. It just comes naturally to them, almost automatically, as if from a fundamental predisposition.&nbsp;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d have to say that\u2019s been my experience: the irreligious among the cultured elite seem genuinely shocked when they discover someone that they previously considered thoughtful and well-educted is possessed of a deep and abiding faith. They\u2019re <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/search?q=flummoxed\">flummoxed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, this habitus is infectious. The most <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/search?q=pernicious\">pernicious<\/a> struggle I see students engaged in springs from a perception that smart people just don\u2019t believe in&nbsp;God.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s hard to battle: it\u2019s not as though there\u2019s an actual argument being made here. It\u2019s just an attitude picked up by osmosis. That\u2019s one of the reasons I try to bring information on intelligent believers to their attention such as <a href=\"http:\/\/xastanford.org\/archives\/000014.html\">a list of living famous Christian scientists<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/xastanford.org\/archives\/000006.html\">information on Christian faculty at Stanford<\/a> such as <a href=\"http:\/\/xastanford.org\/archives\/000005.html\">Don Knuth<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another scholar reflecting on the academy and it\u2019s lack of respect for religion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stanfordministry-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}