Religion in Colleges

I’m a member of the American Academy of Religion, the preeminent association of teachers of religion in colleges and graduate schools. There’s almost no prestige in this status; I paid my money and signed up. Nevertheless, as a member, I’m in contact with what goes on in the field.

Something came in the mail today that is so typical of AAR-type mindsets, I thought it might be good to record it for posterity. It’s a catalog of new books, and one of the blurbs seemed worthy of comment:

[John Doe] argues that church Christianity is handicapped by two great errors–an interpretation of Jesus the co-equally divine Son of God incarnate and the belief that there is a controlling supernatural world beyond this world. We need to go back and start again from the historical Jesus and his message and create a modern version of his kingdom religion–a religion that is immediate, beliefless, and entirely focussed upon the here and now.

The “two great errors” that this author dislikes are, of course, historic Christianity. It’s what the apostles believed, what the Church Fathers believed, and what Christians, Catholic and Protestant, have always believed. If you’re an average American, you believe it, too.

If you do believe it, I ask you this: do you want to feed your kids to teachers like this at the local Hellhole University, and pay money for the privilege to boot? Let me assure you, I live and work in this field and this guy is nothing strange. Send a kid to a college that isn’t expressly evangelical in its beliefs and you can expect such things to be pumped into his head vigorously.