University Biblical Studies Departments. Ok, ok, I’ll give you a second to snigger to yourselves and imagine lots of strange-looking, tweed clad men smoking pipes in the corner of a lecture room. You’re probably spot on in some cases, but surprisingly Biblical Studies, and Theology in general, has become pretty cool of late. I suppose we have Dan Brown and the conspiracy theorists to thank for that. Just try going into your local pub and starting a conversation with the locals about God, heaven, what happens to baddies when they die, how the universe began etc and before long you will have folk standing on the tables and ranting at each other. I’ve seen close ‘theology is booooring’ friends come to blows during these discussions and loved-up married couples at each others throats. Great sport, if you’re bored one evening...Besides, anyone who says that Biblical Studies is uncool has me to answer to. I have a PhD in the subject area and I’ll floor the first person who says that makes me a weirdo! And, horror of horrors, I’m not at all religious. I have an interest in the area, but that doesn’t mean that I subscribe to everything that I study, in the same way that studying World War II doesn’t make you a Nazi SS officer.
But something horrible is happening in the realm of Bibical Studies (or ‘BS’ as it’s known to the hip kids). I noticed the rot setting in when I was an undergraduate student. A number of BS staff left my university and they were not replaced. This signalled to me that the University was not willing to invest in the subject area and huge alarm bells started to ring, particularly as this was a subject area that I was hoping to find employment in. The panic settled for a while, but over the past few months a number of BS staff and even entire BS departments have come under threat. Recently my colleagues and I were (willingly) forced to rally round and attempt to save Sheffield University staff from losing their Biblical Studies department. The support on the Internet for Sheffield BS Department was overwhelming; a Facebook group was started, many BS bloggers blogged their disgust on the matter and a number of emails were sent to the Vice Chancellor. Thankfully, in this case, the department was saved.
Now certain members of BS staff at the University of Gloucestershire are under threat, including a good friend of mine, Lloyd Pietersen, who has just heard that his post has been made redundant. And again, the reason for the job cuts appears to be purely financial. Lloyd is even considering leaving University life behind and changing his career direction as a result, and I really can’t blame him for feeling so disenchanted with the system…
When anyone asks why I have a PhD in Theology but do not work in a related field, I explain that I’ve been reluctant to step into academia, particularly into the field of Biblical Studies, for exactly this reason. Biblical Studies appears to be a soft target for cost cutting and yes, while it’s not exactly carrying out cutting-edge research into cancer fighting treatments, it is a real, tangible subject area with a dynamic publication rate and a huge scholarly base. Besides, I worry that if we keep beating the beast long enough, it’s going to die. Biblical Studies, and maybe Theology in general at this rate, will cease to be taught and it will become one of those weird and arcane sounding subject areas that were taught in the Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Theology and Philosophy based subjects will be jettisoned in favour of science-based subjects and eventually our kids will grow up with only Sports Technology, Media, or Business Enterprise as degree options *yawn*. No matter how you feel about Biblical studies as a research area, you must admit that the rise of new, numbskull, ‘leave your brain at the door’ degrees (especially the ‘Heath and Beauty’–esque degrees) gives you an urge to scratch out your own eyes. We need to keep our children’s brains ticking over…at all costs!
So thanks, University of Sheffield and University of Gloucestershire, for setting such a fine example of support and enthusiasm for Biblical Studies and thereby discouraging me and other young scholars from going into the world of academia. It sends out a fantastic message to aspiring undergraduate students and really makes the established scholars in the field feel valued and secure. Great job guys…
PS If you want to join the fight to save Lloyd, please join the Facebook Group 'SAVE WIL, LLOYD AND OTHER FCH STAFF BEING CUT AND OUR MONEY!' and inundate both Paul Bowler (pbowler@glos.ac.uk) and Patricia Broadfoot (vc@glos.ac.uk) at the University of Gloucestershire and show your disgust!!
9 comments:
Thanks for the eloquent post, Helen. Appreciated.
Thanks, Helen, very very much appreciated
I have a lot of respect for other disciplines and colleagues who are excellent teachers and researchers in their discipline. As am I, in MEDIA. It is, indeed, very upsetting to see certain areas targetted. I don't think it helps though to turn this into a discipline war. I take exception to the post on those grounds. Particularly if colleagues need to be rallied to support those staff who are targetted. Such statements do little to compel me to be supportive if the crisis is represented as BS or Philosophy versus Micky Mouse Degrees, which according to your views, my discipline is the latter.
Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen, SL in Media, Communication and Culture, Director of Research Centre in Media, Memory and Community.
Apologies, Joanne, if my post caused offence to you. I must stress that this is a personal opinion and NOT the consensus opinion of my colleagues in BS.
It seems to me that this is a GOOD thing.
Theology is a "speculative" study. Meaning, a kindergartners view about gods and a PhD's views on Gods are equally demonstrable or valid. It is a completely speculative field. So the idea that one person is more "knowledgeable" than another about god knowledge is laughable. Now granted person may be more knowledgeable about the history or events in christianity or judaism, but that is the study of History. So while a History PhD may have value, I would say that a Theology degree does not.
Cheers! Ricco
http://webulite.com
Ricco,
Theology, for what its worth, is no more speculative than quantum physics. It begins with certain assumptions, which may or may not be questionable, but applies as rigorous a methodology thereafter as any discipline. And to suggest that any other discipline operates any differently is equally laughable. Furthermore, there is no compulsion for any theologian to identify the results of any theological analysis with any hypothetical 'real world' deity any more than Schroedinger had to own a real cat.
Also, your post shows a misunderstanding of the nature of theology. A comparatively small part of the discipline involves thinking about God in abstract. In a university it also involves the study of Christian/Jewish/Ancient Near Eastern history, church praxis, ethics, philosophy of religion, and many other things - notably, from my perspective as a biblical scholar, the study of ancient texts. Biblical studies is one of the most challenging of all arts disciplines, because it requires the core skills of many of the others.
So I want to suggest to you that it is possible to think as critically about theology and the Bible as it is about any other field. Just because plenty of people don't think critically about the issues doesn't mean others can't. And, whether you or I like it or not, there are plenty of people who want to work for the church and who need professional training for that task just as nurses, social workers and teachers do. Even at that more vocational level, there's a place for theology in the academy.
Andrew,
I have to disagree. Theology deals with the supernatural, and therefore is by definition speculative, and non-deomonstratable. Any parts of theology that are not speculative can be folded into other disciplines. Therefore, issues about how canon law was created, can be dealt with in the fields of Law or History.
It would be best to eliminate the discipline of theology, and fold the non-speculative parts into other disciplines.
Any nation that spends is educational dollars training people to discuss and teach to others, supernaturalistic ideas, is promoting supernaturalism, which since the Enlightenment, the thinking world has worked to eliminate.
Granted some theologians like David Friedrich Strauss may follow more non-speculative methodologies than others. But the point is, that anything involving the supernatural is simply speculative, and not demonstratable. Therefore any discipline that concludes that say "god is made of three parts" is untestable speculation, and a 5 year olds view on the subject is as correct as one that has a PhD. in theology.
To address your comment about Churches wanting their folks to have professional training; Churches are not part of the education system in my country. (The USA), so incorporating any supernaturalistic training in the nations educational system is a bad idea, and promotes not education, but superstition. If they want to have their folks trained in accounting they can attend a accredited school to train them in such. If they want to train their folks to create supernaturalistic world views, and methods of promoting these in society, this is not a aspect that a secular educational system should be involved in.
Therefore, I would fold; "Biblical Scholarship" into other humanities and history disciplines, and end theology as a discipline in our accredited universities.
Cheers! Ricco
http://webulite.com
Also, here is a related article in the Society of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos, that I think also bears on the issue; http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=520
Cheers! Ricco
http://webulite.com
Hi Ricco
I appreciate we're never going to agree on this, but just a few comments back in response. Some universities have taken a path similar to the one you suggest, and that's fine. But even if you except Biblical Studies from the list of subjects you want to get rid of, you are still left with a large list of completely non-speculative areas. You are taking your examples from the field of systematic theology almost exclusively, which is one small part of the broad discipline. I will admit systematics depends upon the assumption that there is a God of some sort. You may not think that is a reasonable assumption; but it is certainly a defensible one which can be supported by logical argumentation (but not proven, absolutely, or disproven). Beyond that foundational assumption, however, even systematic theology depends upon logical critical reflection and interaction with scholarship down the centuries. I understand where you're coming from in suggesting that, say, my ideas about God are no more meaningful than a toddler's, but mine are informed by critical study of what the biblical text says and what theologians and philosophers down the centuries have said. How I relate that to a God that I believe in and worship is entirely up to me and outside of the academic sphere. I must not, and do not, allow my Christian faith to predetermine my conclusions. But as I said to you before, the methodology of theology is solid - it is its foundational assumptions that are open to question, and that is true of a number of other disciplines which no one ever thinks for a moment to question (most obviously quantum physics).
I'm aware of the work of Avalos and find his ideas interesting, but I'm sure you will be aware that his ideas have not been met with anything approaching widespread acceptance even among progressive biblical scholars.
In terms of breaking up theology and distributing its parts elsewhere (sounds like a Babylonian creation myth to me): well, sure, if you want to, why not? But I think those UK universities that have done something like this have lived to regret it because they have lost the focus and coherency that holding all the different aspects of Theology & Religious Studies together retained. Sticking a scholar of the Pentateuch in the Law dept and one of the Ancient Near East in History will just stop them talking as effectively and result in poor research being done in both Law and History. I would argue that a self-contained focus on the broader discipline of theology is still the best way (and it ensures that the speculative element of theology is kept in some kind of critical context too).
For what it's worth I'd be very happy to train clergy etc outside of the university system, but my country, the UK, has a long-standing tradition of accepting the role of religion in education which it clings to as strongly as the US does to its principle of separation. Just because the US does it differently doesn't mean we should ;-)
As I said, we're not going to agree - I just wanted to suggest to you that things aren't quite as black and white as you seem to want to portray them.
Best wishes,
Andrew
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