Plato's Playground
My grandfather was a German Evangelical minister. His grandfather was a German shepherd from somewhere near the Oder, who came to America just in time to die in the American Civil War. He fought under the command of a German poet who escaped from Landau prison (that's in Germany) wearing womens clothes shortly after the failed 1848 Revolution. My grandfather died twenty years before I was born. My parents met at the college established around the seminary my grandfather attended. My mother came from South Bend, Indiana, descended from a line of four generations of Pennsylvania Dutch ministers known as the Brethren. Phillip begat Elias, Elias begat Michael, Michael begat Ira. The Brethren didn't really have a theology. They believed in baptism, non-violence and moving west. Phillip, Elias and Michael all moved west. Ira was born in the Promised Land (Indiana) and he stayed there. The promise was made by George Washington and it was fulfilled when the Indians moved west. My mother's father was born at the turn of the century. The seminary then was forty years old. He went to school there, but the college had expanded considerably so he trained to become a teacher. He tried teaching for several years in Ohio and Pennsylvania among those his family had left behind, but he returned to South Bend before the Great Depression hit. He eventually took a job as some kind of clerk with the "electric company" in Fort Wayne. I had always assumed it was a public utility of some kind, but ask any Hoosier. The electric company in Fort Wayne is GE. My mother's brother trained as a teacher and taught English at a military academy for twenty years. My mother was an English major, but my father took an interest in clinical psychology, eventually earning a Ph.D. at the University of Kansas where I was born. They moved to the west coast where I was raised and left behind the church and its Civil War seminary and the college that grew up around it. A merger in the 50s combined the United Brethren with the German Evangelical Association and another merger in 1968 made them both part of the much larger United Methodist Church. I grew up believing in the secular humanism espoused by my church, the state land- grant university system. I took a stab at graduate school during the Reagan years and actually thought I was doing fairly well in the English Department until I found out that admission to graduate school did not include admission to doctoral candidacy. I was told that unfortunately all of those seats had been reserved as a haven for Ivy League refugees. I remember the work-study job I had at that time. It involved lots of photocopying. One of the things I was given to photocopy was a collection of documents a feminist study group on the faculty wanted to discuss. Apparently there were episodes of Star Trek that never aired in prime time or in re-runs, but it seems the scripts were quite popular among some librarians with access t
craig---interesting stuff, if a bit sideways to my question. welcome to our place. are you still a secular humanist?
bist du eine kobold?
Sorry about the truncated post. Wasn't aware of the limit and figured out how to retrieve the remainder after it was too late. No, not up to mischief. Actually had a point I was trying to make about English departments and the alleged separation of church and state. I stopped practicing secular humanism when the degree they gave me pulled the plug on my financial aid. Organized religion's influence in the sciences is confined to issues where science conflicts with religion. The arts, however, particularly fields like language, literature, history and education, despite all the talk and appearance of diversity, are still religiously regulated through gate-keeping functions. Not necessarily evil and perhaps even a necessary evil, though it does tend to limit possibilities. I view state education as an edifice modeled after the medieval church. The question then is what role do unchurched "evangelicals" play in constructing that edifice beyond paying tuition?
Hey Craig, I'm not sure I completely understand what you are saying but as far as I know, if I understand you correctly, this is less of a problem today. My grandfather got his doctorate in English at Harvard, but he couldn't get a faculty job at BU because he wasn't a Methodist. He wound up teaching at NYU. But that wouldn't happen today. Obviously you've got an edge at BC or Notre Dame if you're Catholic, at Brandeis if you're Jewish, at BYU if you're Mormon, etc. but much of the university system is secular. As an atheist, I feel that the academy is about the safest place to be, actually, though I'm not sure that will continue to be the case.
Craig-- Are you saying that because you aren't a practicing secular humanist anymore you couldn't get into grad school? Or, you couldn't get a teaching job after you had gotten an advanced degree--that the gatekeepers kept you out because of your religious-politcal philosophy? Were the gatekeepers the admissions office or the financial aid office?
Well, let's just say that for all my education, the closest thing I have to an occupation can be summed up in the term spouse. And it's a cushy gig. Too good to pass up. But that certainly wasn't my aim in pursuing advanced degrees in English. Some of the people admitted to the doctoral program I applied to nearly twenty years ago are still teaching classes or working in administrative positions there related to the program without having ever completed dissertations. Why compete in a brutal open market for professorships if you've already burrowed in and carved a suitable niche? Many jobs in education don't conform to a traditonal humanities career ladder, but they do at least allow people to work and participate in what they regard as their field. The degree I earned mainly meant that my library card had been revoked. I would have enjoyed teaching community college English, but as a hobby I found it too expensive. The economics of the humanities sector makes it much easier for organized religion to exert influence on upper campus which can tend to stifle independent thought. Nearly all of the Protestant denominations grew out of dissent from established modes of worship. Atheism and agnosticism can be interpreted as simply forms of dissent, particularly at times when believers hold enormous sway. I inherited a religious tradition, but have never belonged to a church.
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