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Christians and Academic Enquiry in a Postmodern Age

By Rollin Grams

The problem of the nature of academic enquiry is now a very serious concern in light of philosophical shifts in the West over the past 60 or so years, but especially in the past 20 years.  It is rocking the very foundations of education.  The problem is not contained in the public square, particularly the universities, but is also present in faith-based institutions, both Christian colleges or universities and even in seminaries. 

There are four options that seem to be possible, but the challenge to any serious discussion of them is that the dominant option of the last 20 or so years is highly charged with political agendas and has the goal of shutting down all discussion.  Christians, therefore, face both the problem of playing defense as a minority in this public debate and being shut down by activists who refuse to give any platform to opponents.

The four options for academic enquiry are:

1.     Tradition Enquiry: faith seeking understanding;

2.     Modernist Enquiry: understanding built on faith-less foundations of science;

3.     Early Postmodern Enquiry: dynamic understanding gained through consensus of diverse voices;

4.     Late Postmodern Enquiry: fundamentalist understanding gained through critical theory privileging certain voices and de-platforming others.

Tensions over the nature of enquiry have escalated over recent decades as both versions of Postmodernity have attacked Modernist Enquiry.  Two persons will be noted here who have articulated the problems being faced and have offered some solutions.  Chris Newton’s solution to the attack of Late Postmodernity is to return to Early Postmodernity, which at least had some hope for a short while of allowing Christians (Tradition Enquiry) into the conversation (listen to diverse voices).  Peter Boghossian takes a similar approach, although his views seem to rest more in Modernist (‘scientific’) Enquiry: while all views should be heard (Early Postmodernity), there is a right view (Modernism) that students will come to if given the opportunity to explore ideas.  ‘Liberal’ education—not Liberalism—was the foundation of the Modernist university system: open enquiry in all disciplines, with the expectation that scientific enquiry would eventually lead everyone to a consistent universality—the ‘university’ was working towards a unified truth.  Of course, Postmodernity rejects the very notion of truth in the sense of some unified and objective understanding based on certifiable facts.  If ‘truth’ is to be spoken of at all, the Postmodern university would have us believe that it is perspectival (truth for the interpreter or researcher) and locally constructed rather than universal.

What follows are presentations of Newton’s and Boghossian’s viewpoints.  The purpose of this brief report is to identify, in their own words, the challenges being faced in academic education from Late Postmodern Enquiry and hint at how this is a challenge in Christian institutions as well, and to raise a concern over the inadequacies of battling Early and Late Postmodernity with a defense of Modernist Enquiry or a suggestion that we can rely on Early Postmodernity.  Tradition Enquiry is left out of the public conversation altogether, and therein lies the problem for faith-based institutions of higher learning.  A separate study, not offered here (but outlined in the next blog post), is necessary to explore that approach further, as Alasdair MacIntyre has done.[1]

The UK government is pursuing legislation to protect free speech at universities.  In an article by Chris Newton,[2] the problem the government is addressing is explained:

‘… academics have been subjected to event cancellations, petitions calling for their dismissal, or witch trial style disciplinary procedures…. Academics have been denounced for defending Brexit, arguing that British history contains good as well as bad aspects, and for saying that biological sex is scientific fact. These views have been met with cries of “xenophobe”, “racist“, or “transphobe“, among other slurs....  The past few years have witnessed the emergence of “critical theories” or “critical social justice”, once a fringe element, as a powerful force on campus, particularly in the humanities and social sciences.

“Critical theories” include postcolonialism, critical race theory, and critical gender studies, and are descendants of Marxism and Postmodernism. They believe that Western societies are structurally unequal, and ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, and transgender people are systemically oppressed.

There is no room for individual agency; power dynamics are structural and pre-determined by group identity. An ideology that believes that those who question their claims regarding systemic oppression are “complicit” in the discrimination is not exactly going to be open to alternative views.

There has been an increasing expectation from university diversity officers that the whole institution should reflect this new orthodoxy. This is reflected in initiatives such as “decolonising the curriculum”, which seems to be more interested in deleting fundamental content than genuinely making courses more diverse.

Leicester University proposed to ditch Geoffrey Chaucer and Beowulf from the English curriculum in favour of more modules about race and sexuality. Exeter University’s library requested that lecturers decolonise their reading lists, “look beyond traditional textbooks”, and embrace “grey literature” such as tweets. Musicologist Professor Paul Harper-Scott has just resigned from Royal Holloway in London due to the “dogmatic” nature of the decolonising agenda.’ 

Newton applauds the government’s bill to protect free speech at colleges and universities, but he says the efforts are not sufficient.  He explores several additional recommendations, such as (1) a government group to monitor recruitment and grant applications; (2) establishing new institutions (or at least courses/programmes) committed to philosophical pluralism; and (3) an additional bill to protect viewpoint diversity.  Of these, he prefers the third.

Newton mentions Peter Boghossian’s resignation letter from Portland State University because it highlights problems in higher education.  He captures the challenges facing higher education (and, of course, in primary and secondary education as well).[3]  Some excerpts from Boghossian’s letter capture the problem and indicate his view that the answer is free speech and the liberal exploration of diverse viewpoints.

‘I never once believed —  nor do I now —  that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division….

I noticed signs of the illiberalism that has now fully swallowed the academy quite early during my time at Portland State. I witnessed students refusing to engage with different points of view.  Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male….

I decided to study the new values that were engulfing Portland State and so many other educational institutions — values that sound wonderful, like diversity, equity, and inclusion, but might actually be just the opposite. The more I read the primary source material produced by critical theorists, the more I suspected that their conclusions reflected the postulates of an ideology, not insights based on evidence….

In 2018 I co-published a series of absurd or morally repugnant peer-reviewed articles in journals that focused on issues of race and gender. In one of them we argued that there was an epidemic of dog rape at dog parks and proposed that we leash men the way we leash dogs. Our purpose was to show that certain kinds of “scholarship” are based not on finding truth but on advancing social grievances….

I was found guilty of not receiving approval to experiment on human subjects….

Every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, been initially condemned. As individuals, we often seem incapable of remembering this lesson, but that is exactly what our institutions are for: to remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right. Educational institutions should remind us that that right is also our duty.’ 

A defense of Modernist Enquiry—liberal education—in light of the aggressive attacks of Late Postmodern Enquiry, as witnessed by Boghossian at Portland State University, will not suffice for Christian enquiry.  A major agreement between Tradition Enquiry and Modernist Enquiry, one that made it possible for Christians to pursue degrees at universities for centuries, is that there is objective truth.  Christians believe that God is consistent and therefore faith is reasonable.  The tension between the two approaches arose where Modernist universities rejected faith as a basis for enquiry, preferring the Cartesian approach of doubting everything and then seeing what could be discovered for certain.  Moreover, the tension expanded as Modernity sought to establish certainty only through scientific enquiry, thus pitting science against religious convictions, such as sacred texts, theological convictions, and fidelity within an historic community (Church) and tradition.  In non-scientific fields of enquiry in the university, the scientific method prevailed (until the 1970s).

Christians are quick to give a platform to voices challenging Postmodernity in both its forms.  The suggestion in this essay is to be aware that a Modernist approach to Enquiry was itself often antagonistic to the Christian faith.  What is needed is a clearer articulation of faith-based learning.  It will involve a defense of a minority community, not a championing of how things ought to work in a post-Christian West or elsewhere, for that matter.  Newton’s warning that the protection of free speech at the university is not at all a sufficient solution for anyone, let alone Christians, is an important challenge for Christians to think more seriously about the nature of faith-based education.  As a final note, we can be certain that, if we do not take up the challenge, Islam will.  This is true not only as one version of this debate takes place in primary and secondary schools over sex education; it will also be true in the universities of tomorrow.


[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame, 1990).

[3] See his full letter: https://peterboghossian.com/my-resignation-letter (accessed 22 September, 2021). 

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