Nothing consistent about this blog, I know...
In this first post, we will discuss these questions as
regards libraries in general, but before we go there, I will talk about the
library of which I am a part. This,
however, involves talking about the institution of which I am a part: Concordia
University in St. Paul, whose mission it is to “prepare students for thoughtful
and informed living, for dedicated service to God and humanity, for enlightened
care of God's creation, all within the context of the Christian Gospel”.
In his book, The Gift
and Task of Lutheran Education, Tom Christensen says “Education in a
Lutheran college or university should be surprisingly bold, open,
multidimensional, challenging, experimental, diverse, and engaging; never
frightened, closed, authoritarian, sanitized, and defensive.” (p. 139)
I agree in full with Christensen – this is not something we
want. We want rather a place where
conversation flows freely – though I think never apart from informed and
orthodox Christian teachers guiding – or at the very least being a part of –
that conversation. Even if swimming into
such waters may indeed present a danger to souls in this or that occasion, I
think here of how the father of the prodigal son, when he thinks the time is
right, lets him “go free”. Several
characters of the Bible, not least the Apostle Paul, were familiar with and
valued the learning of their pagan neighbors.
Further, if we would love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind
– and our neighbors as ourselves – I suggest that there is indeed some risk
that goes along with this.
First of all, as regards libraries, I am confident we can
say this: just as there is no such thing as absolutely complete academic
freedom in any university, there is also no such thing as libraries that don’t
practice censorship. Now, when it comes
to some kinds of libraries, I am actually a proponent of limited forms of
conscious censorship (that is another blog post, but I agree with much of what
this man says here). Further, of course there is also that
indirect form of censorship that takes place every time a library decides to
either “weed” or develop their collection - according to the mission statement(s)
it is directed by.
That said, there is this ideal that librarians
tend to have about how extensive the collection should be – the works that
should be available to us (an ideal, that thanks to interlibrary loan, is in
large part attainable). I will confess
that one of the reasons becoming a librarian appealed to me is because I liked
the idea of trying to “organize the world’s knowledge” (with the purpose of
making it easily findable for others of course!) I remember the first time discovering a
“subject browse” list in a library catalog – I fell in love with the sheer Enlightenment-style
audacity of its comprehensiveness. As I
am now one who helps to create that catalog, perhaps this was “cataloger
predestination”.
In any case, at this point let us talk about libraries more
in terms of ideals – collections that, as much as possible, are comprehensive, making
serious efforts to collect not only works that have been highly influential in
the world, but also all educated views on all topics that anyone finds to be
important and interesting. I am not excluding
a great fiction collection from our ideal library, but at this point am
thinking primarily in terms of non-fiction.
To that end, I do not think there
is any better place to start than librarian-philosopher Wayne Bivens-Tatum’s
provocative article “Libraries
as Indoctrination Mills”.
First, regarding American colleges, Bivens-Tatum says they indoctrinate
students “into methods for how they should form beliefs about the world”. He claims that:
“The motivation for scholarship and
teaching is to investigate any topic of interest and follow the investigation
wherever the evidence leads. It doesn’t matter if the evidence contradicts some
religious authority. In the battle between reasoned argument and the
unsupported claims of a religious text, reason wins, at least in the academy. One goal of a college education is to
indoctrinate students to believe that this method of scholarship is a good
thing.”
Regarding libraries, he says:
“Academic library collections are
designed to support critical thinking, skepticism about the known, and
curiosity about the unknown… we [challenge] students to think critically about
what they read and see, to ask hard questions: Who claims that? How do they
know? What do others say? What are the arguments and evidence on every side?
These seem like harmless questions designed to provoke skepticism and critical
thinking, harmless, that is, until you realize skepticism and critical thinking
are not the foundations upon which religions are built.
…Reason, analysis, evidence, critical
thinking, and temperate debate: these are all good things indifferent to
political or religious beliefs… If those are bad things, there’s little purpose
to universities or academic libraries.”
I appreciate Wayne Bivens-Tatum
as a philosopher and deep thinker when it comes to libraries and their
role. He is, after all, also the author of
what I consider a very informative work of scholarship, “Libraries and the
Enlightenment”.
That said, there is much room to
question some of what he says. My first
point would be note that there is biblical warrant for many of the
“Enlightenment values” he espouses (see p. 190) – there is, after all, a good
reason why so many Christians went along with the “Enlightenment program” he
discusses in its early stages. Second,
note for example the phenomenon of Calvin College, a Christian college of the
Dutch Reformed persuasion. Calvin
is well-known for its “many noted writers, poets, philosophers, theologians,
politicians, and teachers” (Benne, Robert, Quality With Soul, Eerdmans, 2001,
p. 69). And yet, at Calvin College, they
explicitly instruct students that belief in God is a basic belief – meaning
that it is a belief one argues from and not one we argue to. For world-renowned Calvin professor, Alvin
Plantiga, St. Augustine’s statement about “faith seeking understanding” – which
Bivens-Tatum is critical of – makes perfect sense. Belief in God is rational, he argues, even
though it is a logical error to give reasons for it* (Christenson, Tom, The
Gift and Task of Lutheran Higher Education, Augsburg Fortress, 2004, p. 95).
We’ll explore the issue of religious faith, knowledge, and
“neutrality” more in the next post in this series (Monday)
*interesting as regards assertions like this: http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/do-atheists-really-believe-in-god/32301
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