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Academia and Original Sin

As a graduate student and young professor, I spent 14 years as an atheist, thoroughly committed to education, free speech, and democracy as the solutions to mankind’s many problems. We lived alone in a dangerous universe, I believed, a chance product of meaningless evolution. My only faith was in the human mind to right what most educated and sensitive people thought was wrong. My Ph.D. and professorial status made me a priest in a temple of reason, which I thought led to truth and justice. Especially after my first two books were published by Alfred A. Knopf, I became quite impressed by what I saw in the mirror. (C. S. Lewis has observed, “Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best.”)

Still, I didn’t abandon one part of the Judeo-Christian credo because I thought it undeniable: original sin. Nor did I lose my faith in the Evil One who preyed upon our moral frailty. I may not have believed in God, certainly not the loving deity described by St. John, but his opposite appeared everywhere in my experience. History, as well as the daily headlines, told me that something was tragically wrong with the human race. And in my own mind and conscience I seemed to be constantly tempted, berated, and enraged by someone or something greater than myself. I did not find an explanation for this in the standard sources from science and the Enlightenment that sustained me intellectually. After all, thoroughly modern man had banished the supernatural and objective moral standards from the universe. I tried to believe, as Professor Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University continues to boast, that the human race has no more ultimate significance than ants, both evolving from impersonal and senseless nature. I managed for awhile, for such a faith protects self-interest as nothing else can.

It took only a short time, however, to become disillusioned with the Temple of Reason, which is to say academia. The herd mentality of the leftist faculty, especially the unwillingness to permit dissent, was sad to behold. (Today’s truth: It takes no courage or wisdom to be politically correct.) I was also turned off by the faculty’s sloth, grant grubbing, contempt for teaching, and the narcissism that seemed to be the guiding light of the entire enterprise. Campus administrators seemed to be less interested in leadership and scholarship than in avoiding controversy and in advancing their own careers. I had seen better actors in silent movies and professional wrestling.

As academic requirements declined and history enrollments began to shrink, I began to wonder how young people would gain access to the lessons of the past that would reveal the “truths” of human existence. People majoring in Mass Communications, Marketing, and Recreational Administration might be awarded degrees without exposure to history courses and immediately become Rotarians and Methodists. The anti-intellectualism of the students, I thought, was negating the effectiveness of the academic priesthood. I feared that the Temple of Reason was becoming simply the Temple of Commerce. Reading in the history of American higher education indicated that from at least the post-Civil War years, most college and university students went through the academic motions to earn more cash and prestige, and that even in the “best” institutions few were on campus principally to study and learn.

In short, academia, like all walks of life, seemed seriously “bent,” twisted in a way that prevented the emergence of “right reason” and the earthly salvation of the human race. My experiences weren’t limited to my own flyweight campus; everywhere I traveled, for research, lectures, or part-time teaching in better places, a sameness dulled my enthusiasm. Historical conventions, with their strutting, preening, and zealous ideological poppycock, were lessons in themselves.

Moreover, I too felt “bent,” working very hard at publication, in large part to advance my career, win grants, and avoid the classroom. Being a professor seemed more like a job than a calling, and over time I grew dissatisfied to the point of despair.

Thirty years ago this month, with the aid of a loving and wise wife, I was able to break out of the cynical and self-destructive gloom and reenter Christianity. I was now able to see academia in a different way, for I had gained a faith that was greater than “right reason” and mere narcissism. I had no difficulty, moreover, in accepting the theology of the Fall of Man and the reality of a “prince of this world” who, we are told, prowls around like a lion seeking someone to devour. I had known all along that he was there, and had made many an overture to me.

I understood more about this “bent” nature of things by reading C. S. Lewis, my principal guide through these years. William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies was also instructive, for it portrayed the savage nature in us all, concealed behind the trappings of civilization. A most profound examination of academia, my former church, came in 1975 with The History Man, by Malcom Bradbury. In this brilliant novel we see a radical (and all too typical) sociology professor and his colleagues wallowing in shallow leftist terminology, rejecting all established truth, and acting as totalitarians and seekers of pleasure (often in the form of female students and other people’s wives). Bradbury was a professor, and he knew himself and his colleagues all too well. Doctorates and tenure had not defended the faculty from the roar or the subtleties of the lion. How could they?

Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 at 8:21 AM | Comments (2) | Return

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