Dr. Richard Perkins Professor of Sociology

Preface.

My purpose tonight is to talk about the relationship between Christian faith and academic knowledge. There are many ways faith and learning can interact. Here are some of those ways:

--Christian beliefs can direct scholarly curiosity. --Christian ethics can shape one?s research techniques. --Christian morality can direct the application of scientific knowledge. --Scientific knowledge can have an impact on the validity of some religious beliefs (as in "You get me the bones of Jesus and I'll stop being a Christian"--that sort of thing). --Scientific knowledge can shape the way a Christian interprets and applies The Gospel.

All these topics are worthy of discussion. . .but I'm not going to talk about any of them. Instead, I'm going to talk about the challenges of teaching as social scientists and as Christians. Introduction: the challenge of integrating Christian faith with academic knowledge.

The sign down in the village announces that we are a "Christian college of arts and sciences." Because of the promise implied in that title, you students expect us to give an account of the ways our faith intersects with our academic learning. You want to know how we conduct ourselves as Christian physicists, Christian artists, Christian historians, and so forth. You're curious to know how our research, our lectures, our syllabi would be different if we were, say, Muslims or agnostics.

Of course, the possibilities of linking faith and learning vary quite a bit depending on the discipline. I don't imagine anybody takes too seriously the prospect of "Christian math." At the other extreme, courses in "Christian theology" have long been in our catalog. But what about all the other disciplines operating in the space between theology and math?

Tonight I want to focus on a sub-set of these disciplines containing my own field, sociology: the social sciences. And the question I ask is this: can students reasonably expect professors to integrate faith with knowledge in disciplines like social psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and anthropology?

My answer to this question is a qualified but nonetheless emphatic "Yes." You have good reason to expect us to be Christian scholars and thinkers--to expect that our religious commitments will show up repeatedly and explicitly in our lectures, and that there will be an integrative effort made to join the two. So, I give a qualified "yes" to the question. Tonight I want to specify these qualifications, and give reasons for them.

The first half of my speech concerns epistemology: that is, how we get to know what we think is true. The second half concerns pedagogy: how professors should teach.

The general topic--the proper role of values in the social sciences--is hardly a new one. It has been hotly debated for more than a century. So, I chart one possible course for Christians through heavily populated territory. Sociology majors will recognize that I'll be following a path cleared by Max Weber part of the way.

Religious and scientific efforts to discover the truth are divided by important epistemological differences.

To be a "professor" is, as I understand it, to be an academic who professes the truth. The search for truth takes many paths, two of which are science, characterized by the disciplined use of observational methods, and religion, characterized by supernatural revelations and its associated theological traditions.

However, both the scientific and the religious quests for truth are hampered by the tendency of humans to be biased--to see things in a certain predetermined way.

Where we are socially located (that is, our statuses, such as age, education, gender, income, and so on) help to shape our experiences and our interests. These in turn, influence the way we interpret the world around us.

Being rich or poor, white or black, young or old can make a big difference in how we see the world.

Bias thwarts our efforts to locate the unvarnished truth. Scientists want the straight truth, the actual truth, the objective truth about the natural and social worlds. Similarly, orthodox Christians seek to understand and comply with The Authentic Voice of God: God's objective Truth.

That's what we want.

The problem is: we can never be sure if that's what we get. Our knowledge of The Truth can be altered, influenced, and distorted by our subjective inclinations to see the world as we wish to see it, not as it actually is.

This isn't news. It's commonplace to acknowledge the effects of interpretative bias. Consequently, no reputable modern scientist would say her theory has been "proven" in the sense that there is no possibility of error. Likewise, knowledgeable Christians don't claim that their theology comes straight from God, free from any human interpretation. We know our understanding is filtered through all sorts of prisms including opinions, values, ideologies, maybe a sub-culture, a culture, and a world-view.

That's a lot of filtering.

Billy Graham likes to say "The Bible says. . . ," but he knows the Bible doesn't "say" anything. It's a book, and we have to read it. And to read it, we have to make sense of it. I assume what Billy means is: "Here's what I think the writer wants us to believe about this."

The educated Christians I know don't claim any special objectivity--as if being a Christian represents a special exemption from bias. [1]

Nor do Christian scholars give up on the quest for truth--as did Diogenes, that ancient cynic who concluded that--since nobody knew what they were talking about--he would go live in a barrel.

And he did.

The great majority of Christian scholars position themselves somewhere between the cynics, who have given up on the objective Truth, and the Fundamentalists, who claim a hot line to Heaven.

The normative Christian scholarly position is associated with the traditional Enlightenment goal of seeking The Truth--both scientific and spiritual forms--despite our belief that The Truth eludes us to an unknown degree. Yet we believe approximations of that Truth are attainable. So we strive for what we can get.

With St. Paul we claim to see through a glass darkly. That claim suggests that, although we may see in distorted ways, we are not blind. Paul affirms that we do see--which of course presumes there?s something out there to see.

So, we proceed in faith, believing that Truth exists, and that we can have a relationship with the Truth, however incomplete it may be.

Let's switch from the spiritual to the scientific quest for truth. What is the purpose of science? Philosophers I have read reject description and prediction as primary goals. Description is only a first step to explanation, they say, and prediction without explanation is just another form of magic. Instead, they argue that science is in the business of constructing testable theories--explanations which make the best sense of our observations: explanations which unify facts into a coherent whole.

Theories are constructed out of propositions--that is, statements of the relationship between variables, articulated as concepts, in the form:

"X varies inversely with Y under conditions Z"--that sort of thing.

But here's the key: these propositions must be open to observational test. That's because we need to establish confidence that what we observe is what actually exists--and not just what we wish exists. In short, tests are devised in an effort to control the effects of bias.

Such procedures will necessarily differ from the natural to the social sciences. But regardless of their form, we will always have a need to test our theories, due to our suspicions about observer bias. Thus, scientific claims must be strictly limited to those events which can be studied in disciplined ways--events referred to as "empirical events." Whether we are talking about the rotation of the earth or the degree to which members of a group share a common definition of the situation, empirical events are open to observation by multiple observers using standard measuring instruments.

Empirical events are therefore public events. They can be replicated; that is, they can be repeatedly observed using the same measurement procedures.

This is precisely where the scientific quest for knowledge parts company with religious faith: science has nothing to say about religious claims, such as whether Jesus is still alive, or whether God created everything that is. Such matters cannot be resolved by empirical study and thus have nothing to do with science. Why? Because faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Such is not the case with science. The motto of science is something like: "Go, observe: tell us what you see." This "evidence of things not seen" stuff doesn't fit with science. No reputable scientist formulates scientific knowledge on the basis of religious faith.

Now, I realize that there is no neat dichotomy between science and morality--that constructing scientific theory is good deal more complex than simply taking a look around. Further, I acknowledge that key terms like "deviance," "family," or "minority grouping" cannot be defined without implying certain non-testable assumptions.

In short, I admit that science is not neutral. But I also think the influence of non-empirical assumptions in scientific theory is often overstated. While the desire to reform the world via science may be noble, such thinking is always muddled. The task of science is analysis, not advocacy. Using science to establish priorities in public policy is about as wise as using the first chapter of Genesis as a science text. As Carl Schultz strove to tell us last year, Genesis is a hymn of praise. We are quite literally out of our league whenever we use Genesis to settle scientific disputes, or (for that matter) when we use science as a basis for determining God's existence.

Here's my argument thus far:

[1] I have claimed that the purpose of science is to construct theories which explain empirical events.

[2] In order to control for the effects of bias scientific explanations must be expressed in testable form.

[3] Thus, scientific explanations must be limited to empirical claims.

[4] Consequently, no scientist, speaking as a scientist, can legitimately claim anything about non-empirical events.

Assuming this much is understood, what then is the proper role of social science teachers who are also Christians? How should we conduct discussions with our students, respond to their questions, frame our lectures? For one thing, we do not keep religion and science apart. We couldn?t even if we wanted to. The most intriguing questions combine both empirical and moral concerns. Aren't biologists asked about the beginning and ending of human life: about abortion and euthanasia? Aren't sociologists asked about the morality of capital punishment, or whether legalizing drugs might not be such a bad idea?

Students who ask these questions don't want to be told "Look, this is a science class. You want answers to those questions, go study religion." Nor should they be told that--especially at explicitly religious colleges like Houghton.

But, if we are to respond to such questions, are there then ethical limits which should be practiced by science teachers?

I believe there are such limits, and I believe they ought to be strictly observed. Imagine attending a lecture on "Weeds." Now, a weed is a plant that someone doesn't want in its present location (usually in a lawn or a garden). A plant becomes a "weed" only if and when someone defines the plant as unwanted.

Judgements about where plants should and should not grow are not the proper business of science, for reasons I've already stated.

Now, it's certainly possible to be an expert on weeds, and to give an excellent lecture on the subject--reasonable, informed, and tied coherently to sound scientific knowledge. But when we attend a lecture on weeds, we know the subject matter is not biology; it's gardening.

By the same token, you'll hear sociologists hold forth on topics like gender discrimination or class stratification. But when the subject switches to "the social oppression of women" or "minority rights" then we know sociology has stopped and social criticism has started. Every science is hindered and corrupted to the degree that its practitioners substitute values for concepts, metaphors for propositions, and models for theories.

Famous examples of such slight-of-hand unfortunately abound:

--Karl Marx declared religion to be a form of "false consciousness." If you believe in God, a Marxist will say you've got "false consciousness." But who's to say that Marxian atheism isn't a form of false consciousness? Science can't settle this dispute.

--By the same token, Sigmond Freud said religious people are neurotic. Well, I say Freud was neurotic.

--Lawrence Kohlberg says that moral decision making develops in stages, and that some stages are higher than others. Now, if you were to say "I won't do "X" because God says "X" is bad," Kohlberg would rank your decision making pretty low. But on what basis?

--Let's watch pseudo-science in action. The scene is a bar room: men and woman interacting in one of those wonderfully hormonal-laced situations. What's going on? The woman in the green dress is an anthropologist. She claims to know how to decipher sexual "body language." Let's watch. (Video-taped presentation).

The other day I interviewed a perspective student and her mother. During the entire time both of them ran their fingers through their hair. Yikes!

Problems arising from "methodological agnosticism" for the Christian sociologist.

When we juxtapose religious beliefs and scientific claims the result can sometimes be surprising--even jarring. This is especially evident in my discipline, sociology.

To illustrate what I mean, let's briefly consider Peter Berger's theory of religion.

Berger begins his theory by observing that "Humans are born incomplete." What Berger means is that our social world has not been biologically pre-programmed. If we are to live in a meaningful social world (and we have no choice in that matter), then we'll have to invent one.

And we do.

Now, most of us most of the time don't realize that humans have created the social world. Most of us either ignore the subject of origins altogether, or we attribute social reality to some outside force, such as nature, fate, or the gods.

This is called "reification," and this is where religion comes into the picture: "We didn't do it; God did."

Sociologists presumably know better. As Berger bluntly puts the matter: "Society. . .is a human product, and nothing but a human product" [2]. This claim includes, of course, religion--all its beliefs and ritual practices. Thus, for Berger, religion is a human construction, and nothing but a human construction.

Now there's the rub. To an orthodox Christian, this idea is heresy.

--Conversion experiences? --Baptisms? --Communion services? --Wedding ceremonies?

. . .nothing but social constructions? Human inventions? No way. And yet, no reputable sociologist (Evangelical Christian, Roman Catholic, Muslim, or whatever), speaking as a sociologist, would dispute Berger's assumption--namely that the human world is indeed symbolic, entirely symbolic, and that all its symbols are human constructions.

Consider the communion service. Will we remain in our seats, like the Baptists, and be served bread crumbs by male deacons? Or will we go forward to the rail and receive a wafer from a priest, as Catholics would have it? Bread, wafers, wine, grape juice: aren=t all these human inventions? And isn=t every word spoken during the service a human invention? And how about the garments, the music and songs, the building in which all this takes place? We know Berger=s answer. It=s mine too. We sociologists say that the world is constructed out of symbols. Moreover, the meanings attached to these symbols are relative to their respective social contexts. So-called Atruth here is not necessarily Atruth there. ABeing on time means one thing in Chicago, another thing in Bar Es Salaam.

Noting this fact is what Acultural relativity is all about.

The orthodox Christian way of understanding the communion service is altogether different. Here we're dealing with God's Truth. God's Truth is universal and objective. This Truth is not subject to revision depending on one's social location or social context.

Orthodox Christians prefer to think that the communion service is a God-given reality, not a humanly created symbol.

So, I ask you: does the communion service represent a relative, subjective, defined, invented "truth," or the universal, objective, divinely-ordained Truth?

My answer: both.

Such ambivalence is possible because the two claims belong to two different realms of discourse: the first is a scientific claim (the symbols comprising the communion service are human constructions), while the second is a spiritual claim (the communion service is ordained by God).

I suppose theologians would say that humans are made in the divine image. So, since God can create, humans can too. Which is to say: Christ initiated the idea of communion, but he left the details up to us.

But there's more to it than this. For one thing, science and religion are based on different assumptions. Science has a naturalistic (which is to say, agnostic) default position. To be a player in the science game you have to abide by the rules. Want to play the sociology game? Then you have to accept that people in different social locations define social reality differently. You have to start there: not because I say so, but because it's true, and that truth is wisely recognized as such. And this truth leads inevitably to the conclusion that communion is a social construction.

When I speak as a sociologist, that's what I say. But that's not all I say. I'm not just a sociologist. I'm a lot of other things too: a neighbor, a father, a colleague, a pedestrian, a guest, a host, a voter--and a person who attempts to follow Christ, among other things. And each status carries with it a point of view: a perspective.

So, when I speak to my classes, I sometimes speak from a spiritual perspective. (You can actually do that sort of thing at Houghton.) And because I do, I caution students not to confuse "cultural relativity" with "moral relativism." Relativism is a philosophical claim that there are no universal objective Truths. As any orthodox Christian would, I flatly reject moral relativism.

And what does moral relativism have to do with sociology? Absolutely nothing. But you couldn't guess that from listening to some social scientists. Those sociologists who talk as if there are no universal objective Truths ignore the empirical limits of science--in the same way some Christian sociologists make baseless claims about "Christian sociology."

So, I am convinced that I should speak one way as a sociologist, and another way as a Christian.

Professors need to differentiate carefully between the role of scientist and the role of Christian.

What is a miracle to a Christian is an anomaly to a scientist. What is a healing to a Christian is a spontaneous remission to a physiologist. What is a message from God to a Christian is an account to an anthropologist.

This distinction should be maintained even when the scientist also happens to be a Christian.

Speaking as a social scientist I say this act is deviant only because people say it is. But as a Christian, I may well declare the act to be immoral.

These two ways of defining events are associated with two distinct roles, associated with two distinct ethical perspectives. When I switch one on, the other automatically switches to the stand by position.

Some of my students don't like the sound of this. It appears to them that I am subordinating my Christian commitments to my duties as a social scientist--and of this they do not approve. Aren=t we supposed to put Christ first in all things?

What do I do? First of all, I point out how common it is to practice role differentiation. Fact is, we all do this:

--When an R.A. enforces dorm rules, she applies them evenly to all who live on the floor, including her friends. --When someone wants to take out a library book, he must produce an I.D., even if he's the library clerk's roommate. --When you buy items from a grocery store, you expect to pay for them at the checkout stand, even if the clerk there is your cousin.

We routinely differentiate our roles. We separate out the clerk role from the cousin role, the employee role from the kinship role, and so on.

Of course, sometimes this differentiation is too much for us. That's why most surgeons won=t operate on close relatives.

But imagine a professor whose child is also a student. (This has happened to many professors here.) How do we conduct ourselves in an ethically responsible way, as parents and as professors?

My son Dave took four classes from me--so I've been there, done that.

What did I do? First of all, I need to be aware of the ethical demands of each role--of father and of teacher--and of the possible role conflicts involved. Acting as a professor is not the same as acting as a father. As a father, I make exceptions based on the unique relationship I have with my son. As a teacher, I try to apply the same set of expectations to all students consistently.

So, what happens when a class assignment conflicts with a family obligation--say, a paper is due and Grandma has to be buried?

The first question I ask myself is: "What decision would I make if Dave weren't my son?" In other words, I begin by recognizing my interests and ethical responsibilities associated with each role--as a professor and as a father. Then I try to understand the biasing effects which these interests can have on how I see things. How might being a father bias my efforts to come up with a fair decision in this matter? In other words, what's the difference between what I want to do, and what I should do?

Such self-awareness is called reflexivity. Reflexivity includes asking myself: "Which role takes priority here, and why?" To be reflexive one must be able to maintain role distance--that is, realize that one is playing a role according to a moral and an ethical script--a script that one can rewrite when deemed necessary.

Given all these considerations, I then try to make the most ethically responsible decision I can. We'll bury Grandma, and worry about the paper later.

It's the same with my role as social scientist and my role as Christian. I have learned to differentiate between them, and to be reflexively aware of the moral and ethical commitments associated with each one.

Obviously, any person who can't analyze herself as a role player, or who cannot make meaningful distinctions between what the role demands and who she needs to be--such a person will be incapable of being reflexive. Such a person will also make a poor social scientist (and a poor teacher too).

My task as a sociologist is to teach my students that, in fact, they do play roles, and that norms do vary for different roles depending on the situation, and that we need not let the role control us--that we can exercise control over the role.

And I try to model for my students how it=s possible to perform one role while holding another at a "cognitive distance." This ability is called "disinterestedness."

To be disinterested is not the same thing as being uninterested. Uninterested people don=t care. Interested people care very much. Disinterested people are able to suspend, or set aside, the cares they have.

Do you suppose the scientists down at the American Cancer Institute care if they find a cure or not? I suspect they care a lot. But such care and concern do not have to detract from their efforts to do good science.

However, if the scientists' level of concern causes their hands to shake, or their eyes to well up with tears every time someone mentions the C word, or if they invent data so they can experience the joy of announcing they've finally found a cure, well then, I'd say their level of care is a very big problem.

We don't need scientists like that. Instead, we need skilled, dedicated, disinterested, coolly detached scientists who are willing to set aside their emotional and spiritual commitments to pursue honest, informed, disciplined research.

This includes Christian sociologists who are able to set aside their Christian beliefs whenever they are analyzing interaction as a sociologist--which is, by the way, every waking moment. I don=t stop being a sociologist just because I'm talking with a friend, attending my daughter's wedding, or worshiping in church. Nor, for that matter, do I stop being a Christian whenever I walk into a classroom. But when I speak as a sociologist, I do NOT speak as a Christian, and vice versa. It=s one thing to BE a sociologist or a Christian; it's another to speak as one.

While we're on the topic of being disinterested, I=d like to tell you about a game my son Dave and I invented. We imagine that we know the same person (we'll call this person Phil). We imagine that I like Phil whereas Dave dislikes him (or it could be the reverse). One of us will mention a characteristic of Phil--say, that Phil talks a lot. Quickly, I'm supposed to characterize my friend favorably: so I say Phil is "fluent." Just as quickly, Dave's supposed to characterize this same quality unfavorably: so Dave says Phil is "a loud-mouth." (In this case, I'd get some points because my description is more articulate.)

This game fosters disinterest in several ways. As such, it underscores an important sociological point: namely, that meaning is conferred upon events. In the social sciences, it's not the thing that counts, but what the thing is called.

--To call what is in the womb of a pregnant woman "a baby" or "a tissue" makes a big difference when it comes to abortion policy; --Likewise, to refer to soldiers as "freedom fighters" or as "terrorists" makes a difference when it comes to foreign policy.

Words matter. Knowing this, social scientists need to be careful how they use words.

The social sciences aren't like the natural sciences. Social scientists study people engaged in interpretation. In effect, they interpret the interpretations of people. Now, to the degree that I understand the actions of those I study through the screen of my own beliefs is the degree to which my analysis fails.

Sociologist Jessie Bernard has observed that every marriage consists of a "his" and a "her" marriage, and that the "his" marriage is generally better than the "her" marriage. We presume that Jessie Bernard--a woman, a feminist, and a social scientist--can see the truth (namely, that marriage represents two distinct gender perspectives), and see it clearly enough to state her conclusion as a scientific fact.

I cannot say for sure that Jessie Bernard has successfully suspended her feminist beliefs in making the observation that families contain two marriages. But since her claim is an empirical claim, her conclusions are open to test. So, let's have other people, perhaps some non-feminist males, get trained in research methods and in sociological theory on the family. Then let them go out, observe some families, and publish their results. Did they observe two marriages in every family or not? Certainly, one can be a scientist and a feminist. One can be a scientist and a peace advocate, or a Nazi, or a secular humanist. And of course, one can be a scientist and a Christian. But science is corrupted very time it is forced to serve the narrow ideological ends of feminists, National socialists, secular humanists, or evangelical Christians.

That=s why I say that the role of the social scientist cannot be performed well by Christians unwilling to see the world in secular, non-spiritual terms. Think about it: imagine you go see a doctor who, because of his prudish upbringing, refuses to look at certain parts of your body because, as he puts it, Nice people don't look at that. You'd leave and go looking for a better doctor.

Now imagine a Christian sociologist who refuses to set aside certain Christian beliefs about deviance or the family just because that's the way she prefers to see things as a Christian. I=d go looking for a better social scientist.

Moving beyond disinterestedness: the task of Christian liberal arts educators.

In our college catalog we claim to be a character-building college. We claim that morality matters--that ethics is at the core of what we do. Therefore, our educational goal is a good deal more complex than teaching our students to be dispassionate, detached observers of empirical events, although I will say that the qualities advocated here--empathy, reflexivity, disinterestedness--are moral qualities associated with fairness, which is an important moral virtue.

But these qualities are just a start. Christians espouse a knowledge of Truth which directs the formation of moral character: a Truth that informs our values. For example, some Christians claim to be stewards of the earth because we believe we've been given that responsibility by God. Therefore, if I were a Christian biologist, I would take that belief about stewardship into the classroom and present it along side empirical facts about how ecological systems are being disrupted and destroyed. If biologists were to do so, they would be speaking as biologists and as Christians.

Now, claims that we are the stewards of God's earth and claims that species are in decline are not the same kinds of claims. These claims belong to distinctly different frames of reference: one is scientific, the other is religious.

Juxtaposing and contrasting these two ways of understanding--not mixing and confusing them--is what I think integration of faith and learning should be all about.

The uniqueness of a Christian college like ours is the freedom to link together fact, value, and belief. But such hybrid discussions are worse than presumptuous if our students do not first know what the limits of science are--what constitutes a scientific claim and what should more properly be left to the realm of morals. And how shall they know these limits if we don't teach them, and model those limits continually?

The meat of scientific knowledge and the milk of Christian belief make an excellent meal, but not when mixed indiscriminately on the same plate. To pitch willy-nilly into a value-based analysis in the social sciences is to make an educational mess of our students' minds.

The promise of integration in the social sciences is a limited but an important one. Integration, as I see it, means skillfully joining two distinct analytical strands together--knowing where the one leaves off and where the other properly begins: where our Christian concerns for the unborn child meets the empirical evidence that an abortion may or may not be psychologically traumatic for the woman involved. But no amount of concern for the unborn ought to substitute for, or even influence, the collection and interpretation of evidence regarding psychological trauma and its effects.

I seek to juxtapose two concerns, two ways of thinking: on the one hand, the concern for ethical relevancy, advocacy, and a commitment to spiritual truth, and on the other, a concern for scientific discipline, for dispassionate analysis, and a promise to report faithfully all ideologically inconvenient facts.

The combination which respects the differences and benefits each persepctive can bring is both rare and precious.

Our students deserve no less than this. Thank you.

========== [1] Even so, there are Bible verses which lend support to the claim that God=s followers see what others cannot. See, for example, II Kings 6: 8-17, and (from a different angle) Matt 11: 25.

[2] The Sacred Canopy, Oxford, 1969, p.3, emphasis added.

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