Fr. Anthony Roeber
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My remarks come from my observations and experiences in three distinct but inter-related perspectives. I am a priest of the Antiochian Archdiocese and have now served for some 16 years as deacon and priest. My second point of view is shaped by a more than 40-year career as a professor of history and religious studies in both private and public universities in the U.S. and lecturing in European universities. Finally, I served for 10 years as a university administrator heading one of the largest departments of history in the United States and directing a research institute.

For these reflections I chose to use the title of a 1927 book by the French author Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals. The title was intended as an indictment of the intelligentsia for failing in their public duty to pursue integrity in analyzing the issues and authoritarian persons threatening contemporary society regardless of the social or political costs to themselves. The American situation is slightly different because historically Americans have seldom been inclined to defer to the wisdom of the highly educated in any way comparable to what has been the case, and remains so even today, in many European countries. Historians of higher education in the U.S. have pointed out that Americans have been willing to support what we would call “practical knowledge”. Land grant universities that furthered the progress of agriculture, industry, and national defense did not generate hostility on the part of the population as a whole.  If we think of what were traditionally called the “learned professions” of clergy, lawyers, and medical doctors, public trust was placed in those three groups in exactly that order—and to a degree that has not changed even today. (For an example, see Donald M. Scott, From Office to Professions: A Social History of the New England Ministry, 1750-1850 (Philadelphia, 1978).  As late as the 1920s most Americans were not high school graduates, and a college degree remained beyond the hopes of the majority of Americans until after World War II. Only the availability of the GI Bill enabled male veterans into aspire to study—and in some notable cases— to pursue careers, in the American academy. Through the so-called Sputnik scare of the early 1960s Americans paid little attention to experts in the humanities and social sciences, but they were not uniformly hostile, either. (See Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976). But all of this has changed in the past half-century.

I want to argue for two main causes for the shift in attitude. One has to do with an internal change in university and college life. Through the 1960s, faculty who taught in the humanities and social sciences were not especially well paid—“genteel poverty” was what described the life of those men and some women who were drawn from agricultural, small town, urban, and suburban communities. But the competition for government grants and money transformed the major universities and many of the elite liberal arts colleges during the 1960s into entrepreneurial institutions where competition to hire the best and the brightest led to a market-place mentality that meant faculty showed little loyalty to an institution or religious tradition and a readiness to be bought up by elite institutions that could afford to pay more and offer a prestige title as well. The brief change in undergraduate enrollment of the late 1940s and 50s that had recruited working class, rural, and in some cases, minority candidates, began to disappear as well. By the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of graduate students and new faculty were suburban, white, and with few or no memories of the working class or farming communities that had briefly produced teachers and researchers in the American academy. Politically, this has led to a distinct shift in political identity to the left, generated in part by the loathing with which academics had regarded the communist-red-baiting of the Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. The alienation was already obvious to some scholars, most famously Richard Hofstadter whose 1963 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life should have generated more self-criticism within the academy than it did. If there has been a treason of the intellectuals during the past half century, part of that has manifested itself in an indifference toward the disappearance of conservative, religiously observant colleagues and a shameful willingness to bow to the pressure of student consumers who now insist on being protected from speech, knowledge, and discussion they claim to find threatening.  Some have suggested that there is nothing new in these patterns—for example David F. Labaree, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendency of American Higher Education (Chicago, 2017).  But at least for North Americans looking to do graduate work in theology, I conclude that the situation has in fact, become far more dire. This shift in university culture coincided with the alienation of many Protestant and Catholic Christians from the faculties of theology in the elite universities, a development chronicled by George Marsden’s 1994 analysis The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Non-belief. That alienation occurred just as the old American industrial economy imploded leaving ethnic, working class Christian neighborhoods and entire cities facing what is by now a multi-generational struggle with social, economic, and political marginalization.

The secondary cause of the fraught relationship of the Orthodox with the Academy is rooted in this first sequence of events. With rare exceptions, candidates for the Orthodox clergy in the United States have been recruited from the ethnic, white, working classes that had little or no positive personal or collective engagement with the American research university or its internal transformation. Fear, and lack of personal experience have driven too many Orthodox critics of the academy to a kind of guilt by association mentality where even participation by Orthodox scholars in non-Orthodox events have come to be regarded with hostility. Despite the creation of the Assembly of Bishop’s predecessor body in 1960, the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops of the Americas did not include all bishops. The 1994 meeting of 29 bishops at Ligonier, Pennsylvania began a process of bishops getting to know one another personally, but with rare exceptions, these men had never enjoyed the opportunity for advanced study in theology or any other discipline. Moreover, the refusal of the various “mother churches” to endorse a move away from “diaspora” thinking toward a unified Orthodox Church re-enforced attacks that had already been directed at the theologians of the old Metropolia such as Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff,  or Thomas Hopko who labored in the attempt to create and sustain a tradition of scholarly theological inquiry inherited from the St Sergius Institute in Paris. Movement back to the familiar, the tribal, and the comfortable has not only accelerated among the various jurisdictions in North America since the 1990s. The more insidious tendency to contrast theological learning coupled with genuine expertise in other fields of knowledge with a “spirituality” has also intensified into a myopic vision that sees only a “Christ against culture” model of the church as authentically Orthodox in North America. This spurious version of a hyper-Orthodoxy claims its roots in a romanticized past located only in the “traditional” geographic centers of the Orthodox world where the pernicious effects of the apostate West have, so it is claimed, been kept at bay. The threat of attack from these quarters has also worked against those few bishops who might be positively inclined to call upon lay and ordained academic expertise as the Orthodox in North America confront the challenges of living in a society and culture where they, at least for the foreseeable future, will need to summon the courage to be a vocal, but informed,  minority voice. Both bishops, and the lower clergy and laity need to re-commit themselves to an informed, critical, but mutually supportive realization of authentic Orthodox Tradition in a self-ruled Church of North America.

Dcn. Nicholas Denysenko
Emil and Elfriede Jochum Professor and Chair, Valparaiso University
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In the midst of a rapid surge of controversial social issues emerging like wildfires throughout the world, Orthodox Christians in the academy are confronting a dilemma. How should they respond to the force of social changes pressing upon the world? Should intellectuals engage ideologues of vastly different perspectives in dialogue? Or is it safer to protect the Church from ideas that might afflict the body of Christ? 

Certainly, there is no consensus on how theologians should respond. Adopting a defensive posture to resist and fight against external ideologies is one reaction to fear. Drawing deeply from the intellectual tradition is a better response, as it has the capacity to contribute to the common good and repel variants of political extremism.

The Church needs to respond with a twofold strategy consisting of inquiry and dialogue. This strategy includes dialogue with secular humanism.

Let us begin with an example of the value of a dialogue with secular humanism. This approach is essential because secular humanism—or the catch-all category of secularism—is the usual villain identified by Christian cultural warriors. Orthodox tend to depict secularists as a large and anonymous community of sociologists, politicians, and technocrats who push for modernity and progress by eliminating religious institutions. For some, secularism is a catch-all term for anyone promoting progressive initiatives that challenge the Church’s core values.

It is somewhat misleading to categorize progressives who do not endorse religious values and traditions as secularists. Secularism originated as a concept of time, a focus on the present, and therefore, the this-worldly perspective. The tendency to dismiss the transcendence of time in God led theologians like Alexander Schmemann—whose critiques of secularism are oft-quoted—to define secularism as the “negation of worship.”

What Christians seem to truly fear about secularism is how it has evolved from its origins as a concept of time into a spirit described by Belgian theologian Joris Geldhof as “opposed of any claim made in the name of something transcendent of this world and its interests.” The problem seems to be the anthropocentric tendencies of secularism, especially those that pursue initiatives exclusively for human progress and flourishing and leave no space for religion at the table of public discourse. Geldhof observes that secular critique has made it “no longer possible” to talk about heaven and earth at all.

Geldhof is one of many influential voices who favors Christian engagement with secularism. He states that Christian liturgy occurs in a space where heaven and earth are one, bringing God’s reign into the present as the Church continues on its journey to heaven. In other words, the kingdom of God is not indifferent to secular agendas.  

Jaroslav Pelikan strongly encouraged robust Christian participation in dialogue on difficult public issues. In a commencement speech at Wittenberg University in 1960, Pelikan reminded graduates of the value of inquiry into all topics, including the natural sciences. He noted that the pioneers of the natural sciences had delivered a necessary chastening to the Christian intellectual tradition by reminding us that life is always a process of becoming.

Our expanded understanding of the natural world, the universe, and humanity was empowered by the Holy Spirit, whom he described as the “agent of change and the ground of variety.” Feting the “new insights” of secular studies, especially the social sciences, Pelikan illustrated the value of engaging them instead of dismissing them as antithetical to Christianity:

Instead of panicking at these insights and trying to evade them, as much of Christian thought has done, we need to recognize their validity and their limits as guides to human thought and behavior. What if these insights shake our stereotypes of what men are or puncture our clichés about how men act!   

Pelikan suggested that the Christian intellectual is always a learner, and a member of a community of learning that is willing to reflect critically on its own presuppositions.

The Orthodox academy can make a substantial contribution toward resolving ominous global problems. Consider the impending catastrophe of water scarcity, which is a reality for billions of global citizens. The Orthodox liturgical tradition reveals and proclaims water as God’s precious gift to the world—so precious, that God uses it as an instrument of our salvation, over and over again. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s commitment to protecting the environment is well known. Imagine the prophetic message Orthodox theologians could send to governments and corporations if we marshaled our intellectual resources to show that water is God’s gift, and that the world’s response should be to preserve and share the divine gift equitably.  

We are capable of harnessing our intellectual tradition to critique dangerous secular ideologies as well. No voice demonstrates the power of Christian dialogue with secularism more powerfully than the Czech priest Tomáŝ Halik, a former political prisoner and dissident of the Communist era. Halik provides multiple examples of populists who capitalize on fear in developing narratives that oppose the initiatives of so-called elitists. He writes that populist narratives appeal especially to frustrated people, especially those longing for a strong sense of group identity—which they find in communities that demonize the “outside world.”

Halik appeals to the Christian intellectual tradition—including universities and churches—as society’s “immune system” that prevents dangerous political ideologies from infecting communities. He appeals to learning in community through critical thinking and engagement as the path to healthy public discourse and the repudiation of extremism.

Orthodox theologians and leaders are at a crossroads today. One can draw from the new populism that demonizes secularism and make churches and educational institutions into outposts that defend the faith from enemies. This popular approach runs the risk of alienating the Church from the world and its troubles.

The alternative is to reboot the vocation of the Orthodox intellectual tradition and re-enter the arena of public discourse in a spirit of self-reflection, inquiry, and confidence that God is making all things new (and not just new things) by the power of the Holy Spirit. God grant us the courage to overcome our fear and meet the challenges of our time with wisdom.

Sources:

Geldhof, Joris. Liturgy and Secularism: Beyond the Divide. Collegeville, MN; Liturgical press, 2018.

Halik, Tomáŝ. “Society’s Immune System Against Extremism is Failing.” https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/societys-immune-system-against-extremism-failing. Accessed February 8, 2021.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. “A Portrait of the Christian as a Young Intellectual.” http://thecresset.org/Pelikan/Pelikan_June_1961.html. Accessed February 8, 2021.

Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988.

Fr. John A. Jillions
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…Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
–2 Cor. 3:17

In the age of “fake news,” the freedom to explore truth and reality is under threat everywhere. Of course, our age isn’t unique. Ever since the serpent beguiled Adam and Eve with lies about God, the Father of Lies has been sowing tares to pollute, obfuscate, confuse, distract, and set people at enmity. Freedom—hand in hand with critical evaluation of the truth—must be vigorously defended in our universities, seminaries, and churches.  Scholars, clergy and faithful should be able to explore questions and express their conscience without fear of retribution.

I can compile quite a list of anecdotal evidence that academic freedom is being torpedoed in all parts of the Orthodox world. Scholars censored, side-lined or expelled for their research, writing, teaching, associations and conference attendance. Writers, clergy, and teachers who self-censor for fear of retribution from bishops, administration, trustees, donors who might question and criticize teaching and research and threaten to cut off financial support or employment. Faculty discouraged or explicitly forbidden from collaborating with “liberal” institutions, publications, or websites, or from pursuing topics deemed too controversial. Lay scholars reluctant to be ordained over anxiety about losing their academic freedom in the ecclesiastical establishment, knowing that clergy often are forbidden from expressing their views. OTSA members could surely compile their own portfolios of evidence.

Within Orthodox contexts it is those labeled “progressives” or “liberals” who have the most trouble exercising academic freedom. But Orthodox scholars—especially those who identify as conservative—who teach and do research in non-Orthodox institutions can also face serious constraints on their academic freedom from their superiors, colleagues and institutions. Here too there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that scholars who dare to express their Christian views could face reprisals, and could face serious limits on their research and promotion possibilities should they pursue areas of research not deemed politically correct.

In both cases it takes courage to stand one’s ground.

Jesus and Prophetic Freedom

One of the remarkable facts about the Bible’s place in the institutional life of Judaism and Christianity is that it enshrines the prophetic tradition as an entire category of bold communal criticism, renewal, and reform. The prophet can call the community to do better, to return to its vocation, or to leave its comfort zone and head into unfamiliar territory. This prophetic teaching, in both Old and New Testaments, is undomesticated, messy, and unpredictable, and our Lord Jesus Christ continued this raw prophetic tradition. Indeed, it was his relentless questioning of the received tradition that pushed religious leaders to call for his crucifixion.

From the very beginning of his ministry one can find illustrations of Jesus’ courage in speaking the truth freely. According to the Gospel of Luke, the hometown crowd in Nazareth at first “wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.” But then it turned ugly and he called out their religious exclusivity.

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; ²⁶ yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷ There were also many lepersin Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian. (Luke 4:24-26).

Jesus had hit a nerve, and “all in the synagogue were filled with wrath,” driving him out of town to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:30).

Jesus persisted in speaking his mind despite criticism, rebuke, and attempts to silence him. His enemies were constantly on watch to see if he would break the rules. And when he did, “they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus” (Luke 6:11). Jesus didn’t ask permission to speak the truth, and thus demonstrated time after time that freedom is taken, not given.

No prophet, martyr, or saint was ever shut down for being too polite and obedient. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”[1] Similarly, academic freedom only becomes an issue when someone in authority doesn’t like what you said or wrote or are researching. Or with whom you’re collaborating. (But as Dr David Bradshaw pointed out at the 2020 conference of the Orthodox Theological Society in America—OTSA—it doesn’t have to be authorities who object: it could be colleagues, students, church members or online commentators named and unnamed).  And at that point you have to decide whether your integrity allows you to back down, or if it’s an issue of consequence that requires you to stand your ground.

Jaroslav Pelikan on Academic Freedom

Throughout his book The Idea of the University: A Reexamination, Jaroslav Pelikan underlines that communal life is at the heart of the academy, and that this community cannot be sustained without freedom of inquiry and intellectual honesty. “What is needed is the skill and art of holding views strongly and yet of respecting views that are diametrically opposed.”[2]

This ideal ought to apply equally in the Church, which was the model for the university as a learning community. “The university is, in God’s good world, the principal community through which human rationality can examine all existing communities, families and structures—including itself, but also including the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church—and thus can help them to become what they are.”[3]

But in the polarized world that increasingly infects the church, finding such a forum for an exchange of ideas is becoming difficult. Even the term “dialogue” is now often dismissed as a covert attempt to convert. Thus “dialoguing” with those whose position you must vehemently deny can only pollute you and the hearers; hence, to allow their execrable views into the space between you is dangerous and irresponsible, especially if there are any “little ones” listening in.

Rod Dreher: Listening to those who disagree

Is there any way to get beyond this standoff and bring people of opposing views within the Orthodox Church together, in an atmosphere that gives oxygen to both freedom and truth? I’ve been surprisingly encouraged by an approach I heard from an unexpected voice: conservative columnist Rod Dreher, in a 2018 presentation at St Vladimir’s Seminary on “How To Listen to Those Who Disagree.” He made the point that American culture has become “emotivist,” i.e.,  “If I feel something is true, then it is true.”And this makes it difficult or even impossible to engage someone simply by using arguments based on logic. He admitted that over many years as a combative opinion journalist, he built his career on argument. But as he came to appreciate this deep emotivist current, he realized that he had to take a step back to better understand where others were coming from. One first needs to listen empathetically to understand why the other believes what they believe. This may not bring one side over to the ideas of the other, but it’s not designed to do that. It’s meant to facilitate the sharing of personal experiences that lead to hard-won convictions about these ideas.

Whether or not minds are changed, that kind of engagement with one other in an atmosphere of freedom and truth is vital for a healthy higher educational institution, especially in the Church. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware says that a college is a place for the cultivation of wonder and the pursuit of truth, both of which require freedom in order to flourish.

Wonder can be evoked but not compelled; and truth, as Christ observed, makes us free (John 8:32). In any university it is our task to bear witness to the value of freedom, and to resist all that erodes or diminishes our liberty. If I am asked by my students at Oxford, ‘What are you trying to teach us here?’ then perhaps my best answer is to say no more than this: ‘We want you to learn to be free.’[4] “We want you to learn to be free.”  That would be a striking addition to any Orthodox school’s values.

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This is an abbreviated version of “Academic Freedom,” The Wheel, 21/22 (Spring/Summer 2020), 51-58.

[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” in I Have a Dream: Letters and Speeches that Changed the World, ed. James M. Washington (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), 90, 87.

[2] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 48, 55.

[3] Pelikan, 67.

[4] Kallistos Ware, “A Sense of Wonder,” in The Inner Kingdom, Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2000, 73.

Fr. Michael Plekon
Professor Emeritus, Sociology, Religion and Culture
City University of New York–Baruch College
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In over forty years teaching at The City University of New York and elsewhere, I’ve had numerous, powerful experiences of prayer.  In honors courses on writers and their spiritual journeys we read several of Sara Miles’ books about ministry in San Francisco. We also read about the houses of hospitality set up in the early 1930s in New York and Paris by Dorothy Day and Mother Maria Skobtsova. This was no stereotypical exercise in hagiography. Rather, following the accounts of these women, also Mary Oliver, Barbara Brown Taylor, and the searing memoirs of Mary Karr and Mira Bartok, students amazed each other and me with their willingness to share equally striking situations with which they were living.

One student began her reflection to the class by apologizing that she had not been raised with much religion. In the course we had encountered Karr and Bartok’s accounts of tortured childhoods with emotionally ill, severely dysfunctional parents. Karr was often asked, “How is it that you are alive today?” The student could have stuck to the text but chose to do a mini-memoir of her own life at home. As a girl, she was never praised or encouraged. She was also expected, no matter her schoolwork and job, to help with cleaning, cooking and the like. She did very well in school and was admitted to one of the city’s most prestigious high schools. With the decline of her grandmother, home became a nightmare. Asian culture demanded that an elder be cared for at home, by the family. The student described how her grandmother with dementia would wail and scream through the night. Care of this afflicted soul was women’s work, this the student and her mother never got a full night’s sleep. Eventually the student’s mother needed treatment herself, but no allowance was ever made for the student’s school and work obligations.

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Fr. Stelyios Muksuris, PhD, ThD
Protopresbyter, Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh
Chair and Professor of Liturgical Theology and Languages, Byzantine Catholic Seminary
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In the midst of the horrific Covid-19 pandemic, it would appear that humanity has entered into what many persons have labeled a “new norm.” Governments, societies, and communities have been making constant adjustments in policies and procedures not only to keep people safe but also to somehow maintain a sense of functionality without betraying the comfort levels of past generations. During this disconcerting time, the Church has likewise been facing unprecedented challenges in her own right with regard to liturgical practices,^[1] requiring her to make swift, time-sensitive decisions for the welfare of her flock.

One of these areas has been the manner of the distribution of holy communion, whose discussion has flooded various social media platforms and has seemingly generated an array of controversial stances, leading to further angst and divisiveness within communities. While the Church, in her sensitivity to mitigate the dilemma, has offered textbook and politically-correct resolutions to address the communion issue, it seems she did not pursue consulting the expertise of liturgical scholars within the Academy, clergy and laity. Several of my colleagues felt compelled to commit to writing their own assessment of this dire situation and to offer their own recommendations,^[2] on the basis surely of the availability of historical precedent, feasibility, and plain common sense. Unfortunately, there was no open dialogue, no tête-à-tête with the academic community. Nevertheless, albeit generally unsolicited and out of a sense of personal integrity (φιλότιμο) and love for our Church, several of us proceeded to express our thoughts and ideas and publish them online. Our continuous hope is to set into motion the synergistic process of informing and reforming,^[3] which ultimately leads to balanced, thoughtful, and judiciously considered decisions.

Continue reading “Can We Talk? The Church and Her Academy in the Dialogue of Liturgical Renewal” →