ANABAPTIST
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:

An Administrator Reflects

Joseph L. Lapp

One of the most “sacred” characteristics of university culture is the notion of academic freedom. The concept is frequently defined in elaborate, wordy terms. One common primary emphasis of academic freedom advocates is that there should be no undue influence from any source on the work of academic scholarship and research. This generally means the scholar is supposed to be able to work and think independently as she engages in the search for truth.

Recently I heard of an Old Order Mennonite farmer who was asked by a neighbor why he could not have balloon (air) tires on the rear wheels of his tractor but could have them on the front steering wheels. His reply would likely be atypical of his community, many of whose members are quite aware of the source of their values, but as the story goes, he answered that “I don’t know why, but the church said I can’t.”

As an administrator, I have observed within university culture a consistent tension between individual independence and community wellbeing. The twenty-first-century world places much higher value on individual independence than on communal aspects of life. How do we address this tension?

As Professor Ted Grims-rud observes in the previous article, persons accepting baptism or ordination in the Mennonite church agree to “giving and receiving of counsel” as part of what it means to belong to that faith community known as Mennonite. For the Old Order farmer, this meant accepting his community’s decision that only front instead of rear tires could have air.

Those of us who are more “modern” Anabaptist-Mennonites smile at such distinctions. But how do we, shaped by the individualistic twenty-first century, give and receive counsel? Even after lengthy processing and with our participation, can we accept the decisions of our faith community?

In his recent book, Academic Freedom and Christian Scholarship (Eerdmans, 2000), former Calvin College president Anthony J. Diekema builds the case for the appropriateness of academic freedom in the life of a Christian university. His argument is that there can be academic freedom in a Christian university where Christian faith, the Christian Scriptures, and Christian tradition are held in high esteem.

Diekema recognizes that there is no university without “presuppositions” creating a worldview, whether a political, economic, social, scientific, or religious ideology. The issue then becomes whether any one individual or university will admit that his or its own presuppositional biases create a framework for any claim of academic freedom.

For an administrator of a Christian university, academic freedom is then an essential characteristic of the university academic culture—in the context of the mission and worldview of that particular university. Most Christian university administrators would hope that in recruiting academic scholars they have adequately identified the university mission and worldview, so the incoming scholar understands how academic freedom is seen in that setting.

In most situations, differences will revolve around how an academic community balances the individual scholar’s independence and the university’s corporate interest. In addition to protecting the freedom of its scholars, a university wishes to experience its own corporate academic freedom from the interference of political, religious, or other special interest groups. I suggest that for a university, managing relations with constituencies is similar to the balancing that needs to occur between an individual and her university.

For a religiously affiliated university, this requires maintaining an appropriate balance beween priorities of the university and the religious body with which the university is affiliated. One key dynamic moderates this tension. That is for the originating or affiliated religious group and the university to adequately define their relationship and the mission of the university as an educational institution.

The underlying presupposition for a university’s affiliation with, for example, a denomination, is that affiliation provides mutual benefits. A denomination maintains a relationship with its universities to nurture its progeny, preserve its theology and tradition through teaching and scholarship, educate denominational leaders, and generally enlarge its sphere of influence in the world.

The denominational affiliation then also provides benefits to the university. These include a specific mission; an immediate cultural, religious, social, and tradition identity; and hopefully, a captive constituency for student recruitment, fundraising, and promotion of the university.

Grimsrud correctly argues that Anabaptist ecclesiology “asserts that we all are responsible to share in the church’s discernment.” Grimsrud also helpfully underscores the theologian’s commitment to work within accountability to the community of faith.

At other points Grimsrud emphasizes the important role of “theologians” in the university and in the life of the church. The question becomes what position theologians should hold in the process of giving and receiving counsel. Should they have such a special place in the discernment of the church as seems to have occurred in the Catholic tradition? Or should the emphasis be placed on the “all,” with theologians using their special gifts as one more voice within the larger faith community’s discernment of truth?

While on a study leave at a Catholic institution, I made a comment about not being a theologian. I was rebuked by the rector, Father Stransky, when he said that “all who believe in the divine have a theology and are theologians with a voice to be heard.” This comment emphasizes to me the importance of the “all” in discernment while not minimizing what trained theologians offer to the discernment by all.

With Grimsrud, I strongly affirm the valuable contributions formally trained theologians have had and should continue to have in the life of the faith community. My caution would be that we not define “theologian” too narrowly. There are times the community ought to be able to hold theologians accountable for their scholarship and research. Might it be possible that theologians can also learn from the discerning community?

Diekema continues his argument by quoting Arthur Holmes: “Intellectual honesty consists in admitting that neutrality is not possible. It consists in confessing and scrutinizing one’s point of view and the difference it makes. . . .” (Diekema, pp. 54-55).

Neither university professors nor universities themselves are intellectually neutral. University administrators want to provide a safe place for scholarship where the university and individual professors are honest about their intellectual biases. The university must appropriately disclose its biases rooted in a mission and philosophy and will expect professors in the process of recruitment to be in basic agreement with the university mission and philosophy. Once such conditions are met, the university should be able to grant academic freedom to scholars to pursue truth in the framework of the university mission and philosophy.

Grimsrud says that “The work of articulating a living faith, using language that is meaningful and authentic in the present while also faithful to the message of the Bible, is the responsibility of Anabaptist theologians.” This strikes me as a useful perspective but slightly overstated. I would prefer to end the statement with “. . . the responsibility of the whole community of faith.”

I believe that the faith community must study the work of Anabaptist theologians, subjecting their scholarship to its scrutiny. During such study, however, the community should not threaten or intimidate scholars but provide scholars with the right to ask difficult questions and explore unpopular subjects.

At all times the community of faith and individual scholars must recognize the challenging terrain they face when issues seeming antithetical to the mission of both the Christian university and the affiliated denomination arise in the educational process. Thorny issues can be successfully dealt with only when there is a high degree of mutual trust and respect between individual scholars, the university, and the denomination, so all individuals or entities can function within their respective context.

University administrators frequently rub against the grain of academic freedom in their eagerness to make timely and efficient decisions. A tool of the trade for scholars is “reflection.” University administrators need to be reminded to provide for reflective processing as they feel the pressure to get things done.

This educational style, in which each entity offers its major and interrelated contributions to discernment, is different from most other organizational systems. Yet it fits well with the Anabaptist desire to be a hermeneutical community.

Ideal? Absolutely! Possible? Only with a great degree of grace. It is my experience and belief that the tensions will always exist because as much as we want to achieve the ideal, we all live with our presuppositions and certain human limitations in adequately communicating our biased worldview.

The issues the Christian scholar wants to—and should—explore will continue to grow in number. The Christian university must allow the Christian scholar to explore difficult issues within the context of the agreed-upon university mission.

The affiliated denomination must respect and value the work of Christian scholars seeking truth in the context of the Christian university mission. A key move here is for the denomination to recognize the need for Christians to understand the implications of their faith in light of the difficult issues of the current age.

If Christian scholars, the Christian university, and their respective denominational communities do not work in partnership to discern truth, there will be more persons saying, “I don’t know why I can have balloon tires on the front of my tractor but not the rear. The church just said I can’t.”

But when all members of the community of faith together discern the will of God for our time and place using all the intellectual resources available, then everyone has appropriately participated in receiving and giving counsel. Then all can join in articulating the expression of faith for the community.

—Joseph L. Lapp, Harrisonburg, Virginia, is President, Eastern Mennonite University.

Grimsrud Replies
I appreciate President Joe Lapp's thoughtful and insightful reflections. I find his perspective quite attractive. I draw from his reflections several items for ongoing work.

(1) These are challenging times for those who would be faithful to the call of Jesus. All faith-centered colleges, including our Mennonite schools, face the difficult but crucial task of sustaining a viable and vital Christian identity in the face of various cultural trends that flow away such sustenance. Such work requires mutually respectful, trusting “giving and receiving of counsel” among our colleges and congregations. We must resist cultural pressures to push toward greater separation between colleges and congregations while we also maintain the integrity of our colleges as genuine institutions of higher education.

(2) As with all faith-centered colleges, the key to sustaining Mennonite colleges as Mennonite lies at least partly in colleges being clear about their “biases” (this is Lapp's term; I would prefer a term such as core convictions). This clarity is crucial for all elements of college identity, but certainly in the process of recruiting and retaining faculty.

(3) The encouragement of scholarship at faith-centered colleges is key in empowering the colleges to help sustain their identity in our modern and postmodern contexts. We face a major challenge in fostering mutually respectful relationships between scholars and the broader church. Scholars should be encouraged to understand their work as an expression of their spiritual gifts and as an offering of service to the church. The church should be encouraged to understand scholarly work as one important component in the churchís work to be faithful. Our goal should be integration of faith and learning, of faithful living and clarity of belief, of research and application.

In sum, our challenge in church and college is to make the term Mennonite college (or whatever term fits our given faith tradition) express a unique style of relating the particulars of our faith tradition with the demands of thinking and living in a big, ever-changing, and ever-challenging world.