The New Academic Freedom and the Changing Face of Baptist Higher Education
Adam C. English
Campbell University
After a comparison of a number of different denominational traditions, Richard T.
Hughes, Distinguished Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University, comes to the conclusion that “the Baptist tradition possesses some of the richest theological resources for sustaining the life of the mind that one can possibly imagine.” 1 It is a high compliment coming from a respected authority in the subject of faith and higher education. The compliment is even higher when one discovers that Hughes is not himself a Baptist. What Hughes finds attractive in the historic Baptist tradition is the centrality of freedom. Hughes explains that the Baptist heritage of liberty in Christ and soul competency before God are well suited for direct application to the university setting, where academic freedom and individual scholastic competency are necessary virtues.
Yet, after twenty-five years of dramatic changes, is the Baptist understanding of freedom now the same as the historic understanding of Baptist freedom that Hughes applauds?
The contention of this essay is that it is not.
Baptists, broadly speaking, have always been represented by a number of denominations. The largest denomination of Baptists, the Southern Baptist Convention
(SBC), underwent a pernicious split over the course of the eighties and nineties, sending fragments of Baptists at the national and state level flying in a number of directions. Of course, the SBC was not the only denomination to endure conflict during this time; others within the wider Baptist communion had their share. Compounded to the stress of
1 Richard T. Hughes, “Christian Faith and the Life of the Mind,” Faithful Learning and the Christian
Scholarly Vocation , edited by Douglas Henry and Bob Agee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 23.

2 conflict was a general decline in church growth and conversions as well as a psychological drift away from strong denominational allegiance, as evidenced in the explosion of non-denominational churches. As a result, Baptists on the whole were forced to reevaluate, rework and re-define many of their “distinctives.” One of those
“distinctives” that underwent change was freedom , an umbrella-concept that broadly includes such ideas as soul competency, autonomy of the local congregation, religious liberty, separation of church and state, voluntarism, believer’s baptism, priesthood of the believer(s), freedom to interpret Scripture, freedom of press and pulpit, and—most importantly for this study—academic freedom.
The thesis of this essay is that within recent Baptist higher education a new model of academic freedom has ousted the modern, liberal one. The older notion of academic freedom as scholarly independence and intellectual license has been and is being replaced by a profound recovery of an older sense of “freedom,” namely the right to associate and to establish a common identity. The change in outlook corresponds with the emergence of a new educational philosophy. From conservative to moderate and from researchoriented to vocation-focused Christian schools, the new academic freedom has meant the reassertion of confessional identity. Many schools with Baptist roots are claiming the freedom to identify themselves unapologetically with Christian faith and making concerted efforts to integrate faith and learning. This essay will explore this ideological shift as well as some of the practical outcomes and new tensions it has created.
Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Freedom
In retrospect, the reorienting of “freedom” within the Baptist heritage over the

3 past twenty-five years may have been a Copernican revolution of sorts. Individualistic, autonomous, rationalized notions of freedom were traded by Baptists, both conservative and moderate, for more confessional, communal, and holistic conceptions of freedom.
For instance, with regards to an issue like separation of church and state, numerous
Baptists have abandoned a simplistic affirmation of “a wall of separation” touted by the faithful since the days of Roger Williams. There is an acknowledged blurring of the lines between state and church, politics and faith, the civic and the ecclesial.
2 Even the courts have begun a slow shift from church-state separation to a position of “formal neutrality” between areas of religion and non-religion. Thomas Berg, in a survey of Supreme Court rulings on religious liberties at the end of the twentieth century, observes: “In the 1980s and 1990s…the Court began to move gradually from church-state separation, with its distinctive treatment of religion, toward an emphasis on the equality of religion with other ideas.” 3
One now hears the language of religious liberty used not simply in the sense of liberty from religious coercion but as liberty to be religious, the freedom of people of faith to enter the public square and engage civil society and government from an unabashedly confessional standpoint.
4
From Richard Land, a key architect of the “conservative resurgence” in the SBC and named one of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals in America by Time
Magazine in February 2005, to the Baptist Manifesto, the controversial statement written by six leading non-fundamentalist Baptist theologians in 1997 and signed by over fifty
Baptist educators and leaders, the ideology of “separation” is now criticized as outmoded
2 Ronnie Prevost, “SBC Resolutions Regarding Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State
(1940-1997): A Fundamental Shift,” Baptist History and Heritage 34 (Spring 1999), 73-94
3 Thomas Berg, “Religious Liberty in America at the End of the Century,” Journal of Law and Religion
16.2 (2001), 188.

4 and prejudicial.
5
Critics of separationism are concerned that such an ideology suggests people ought to cordon off their religious convictions whenever they are enter public policy debate; private religious ideas should be put on a shelf in order to discuss public matters of the state and the common good.
What is happening to the way many Baptists think about church and state and religious liberty is happening to the way those same Baptists conceptualize every form of freedom. The emphasis has shifted from a Mullins-styled liberty of each individual to hold his or her own private religious beliefs to an appreciation of the freedom created by
God’s covenanting Spirit at work in the community of those who have pledged allegiance to redemption in Christ. The freedom of the fellowship of believers is identified by their participation in and commitment to the story of God’s love in Christ. As it turns out, this
“new” way of thinking about freedom is not new at all. In fact, it is a recovery of a much older way of thinking.
As a part of his new cultural history of America, historian David Hackett Fischer explores the fascinating origins of the two terms, liberty and freedom. Fischer,
University Professor at Brandeis University, explains, “In early uses, both words implied a power of choice, an ability to exercise one’s will, and a condition that was distinct from
4 Ibid., 187-192, Berg traces in these pages what has been called the “lingering death of separationism.”
5 Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commision, navigates faith and politics under what he calls an “accomodationalist” model. By this he means to find the median between avoidance or religious expression and government-funded acknowledgment of religion. He worries that the mantra of separation can lead to total avoidance of all religious expression in the public square. See his web sites and postings on these matters, http://www.sbc.net/redirect.asp?url=http://www.erlc.com and http://www.beliefnet.com/story/61/story_6191_2.html.
Likewise, the Manifesto states, “We therefore reject any an all efforts to allow secular political versions of church-state separation to define the boundaries or the nature of our witness as the free and faithful people of God. We call others to the freedom of faithful and communal witness in society.” Mikael
Broadway, et. al., Re-Envisioning Baptist Identity: A Manifesto for Baptist Communities in North America
(1997), 4.

5 slavery.” 6
However, “liberty,” a term originating in the Mediterranean world, originally indicated “independence, separation, and autonomy for individuals or groups,” and in that sense distinct from slavery.
7
Liberty indicates a break, to be loosed from compulsion.
So, for instance, one might hear on the news of rebels fighting to liberate their people from a tyrannical government. “Freedom,” on the other hand, comes from the languages of the European north. It meant the right to belong or to join voluntarily, and in that sense distinct from slavery: “The English words freedom and free have the same root as friend, as do their German cousins frei and Freund . Free meant someone who was joined to a tribe of free people by ties of kinship and rights of belonging.”
8
Eastern Orthodox theologian David B. Hart adds, “to be free was to be able to flourish as the kind of being one was, so as to attain the ontological good towards which one’s nature was oriented
(i.e., human excellence, charity, the contemplation of God, and so on).” 9 Freedom indicates the capacity to make associations with others and to be a part of a group.
Observing their etymologies, Fischer notes that liberty and freedom are not only synonyms, they are antonyms. Although both refer to a state of not being enslaved, one depicts that state in terms of separation and the other in terms of connection, one means unrestricted and the other bound by choice, one directs away from social bonds the other toward them.
10
The two distinct senses of liberty and freedom have carried over into the
American heritage. Liberty appears as “liberty of conscience” and “religious liberty,”
6 David H. Fischer, Liberty and Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4.
7 Ibid., 10.
8 Ibid., 5.
9 David B. Hart, “The Pornography Culture,” The New Atlantis 6 (Summer 2004), 87, 82-89. Also, see
Hart, The Doors of the Sea (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 71.
10 Hart says that they are not necessarily opposites, but that “Liberty of choice was only the possibility of freedom, not its realization,” Hart, “Culture,” 87.

6 meaning that citizens are released from compulsory religious participation. The government cannot force anyone to violate their conscience in matters of religion.
Freedom appears as “free exercise of religion” and “soul freedom,”
11
meaning the freedom to choose religion, freedom of different religions to coexist peacefully, and freedom to have one’s own relationship with God.
12
The appropriate name for what we are discussing is academic freedom , not academic liberty . Academic liberty, or independence from coercion of academic belief, research, and practice, is important at the institutional level of a private school. By this I mean that academic liberty should be guaranteed to universities, colleges, and seminaries by local, state and national government agencies. Government should not attempt to measure or regulate the intellectual enterprises of individual schools. The government’s role is to protect schools’ rights as well as the rights of consumers who may attend or contribute to educational institutions. In this regard, states do play a small role in legitimizing private educational institutions to protect consumers against fraud by licensing schools. But, the main role of monitoring and sanctioning the liberties of institutions is granted—by voluntary submission—to accrediting agencies, which consist of peer institutions. The constraint on liberty comes from peers within the profession, not from outside regulators. Those institutions which refuse to comply with the recommendations of their peers—as represented by the accrediting agencies—simply lose their accreditation, i.e., their right to associate with this or that body of schools.
Whereas academic liberty is a matter external to the institution, academic freedom
11 “Soul freedom” may not be as widely recognized a phrase as the others mentioned in this paragraph. On the concept, see Grady Cothen and James Dunn, Soul Freedom: Baptist Battle Cry (Macon: Smyth &
Helwys, 2000).
12 Fischer., 10.

7 is internal to the institution. George Marsden makes a case for this position when he says, “One of the oldest meanings of ‘academic freedom’ is that educational institutions should be able to set their own standards, free from outside interference.” 13
Each school must determine its own boundaries of identity. If those boundaries that an institution chooses for itself are too wide or too narrow, then accreditation boards and collegiate unionizing associations may investigate, but nevertheless, it is the prerogative of the school to shape its own identity. In the Supreme Court case, Sweezy v. New Hampshire
(1957), Justice Frankfurter notes in a concurring opinion the “‘four essential freedoms’ of a university—to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” 14
According to the
Court, the university has not one academic freedom but four, and each of the four is related to how the university shapes its own identity.
It was only in modern times, however, that a novel understanding of academic freedom emerged according to which individual professors claim the right to bypass the school of which they are employed, and perhaps the scholarly guilds to which they belong, in order to appeal directly to their liberties as American citizens to think and say what they want. The trend was for professors to appeal, as independent, private citizens, to their constitutional rights of thought and speech over against the freedom of their home
13 George Marsden, “Liberating Academic Freedom,” First Things 88 (December 1998), 13. I have tried to nuance my position as he has: “None of this means, of course, that we do not continue to need national standards for procedural justice. Some religious schools have been dictatorial and unfair in their practices of hiring and firing faculty or in inhibiting what may be taught or published. It needs to be emphasized that a religiously defined school’s freedom to set its own standards does not provide license to arbitrarily enforce those standards. Religious institutions need to be up-front about their rules and follow openly stated standards of due process,” Marsden, 14.
14 Quoted in Warren Nord, Religion & American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 270. For more on the history of the development of these freedoms, see Richard Hofstadter, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York:

8 institutions to oversee and even restrict what employees produce.
15
A great reversal had occurred: what passed for an assertion of academic freedom was really an assertion of academic liberty . In the modern world, academic freedom could no longer be seen as the freedom of belonging to community and tradition such that one’s identity was in part determined by that tradition and community; such submission was disdained as an abdication of freedom. Modern freedom could only mean license, i.e., liberation from restraint. Freedom was equated with liberty.
The release of “freedom” from every hint of limitation did not open up new possibilities of creativity and progress, however. It only introduced new confusions. The confusion created by equating freedom with liberty was expressed well in an essay published in 2000 by Stanley Fish, now dean emeritus at University of Illinois at
Chicago. Fish begins the essay with a reflection on the “Trent University Statement of
Free Inquiry and Expression,” which says that “academic freedom makes commitment possible.” 16
Fish points out that, when read through the thick lenses of modernity which blur freedom and liberty, this statement makes no sense. Only when one has in mind the root meaning of freedom, i.e., freedom to be a part of community, does the statement come into focus. But in the modernized world, freedom cannot lead to commitment,
“No, it makes commitment, except to expression, suspect, or rather, it makes possible and mandates commitment to academic freedom, which requires as the price for being able to
Columbia University Press, 1955) and more recently, Stephen Aby and James Kuhn, Academic Freedom: A
Guide to the Literature (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000).
15 This trend is reflected in the American Association of University Professor’s 1940 Statement on
Principles , the 1970 Interpretive Comments on those principles, and even in the 1996 qualifications made to the Interpretive Comments . See James Nuechterlein, “The Idol of Academic Freedom,” First Things
(December 1993), 12-16; Marsden, 11-12.
16 Stanley Fish, “What’s Sauce for One Goose: The Logic of Academic Freedom,” Academic Freedom and the Inclusive University (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), 5-6. The Council of Societies for the Study of
Religion Bulletin devoted an issue (vol. 29.2, April 2000) to Fish’s essay and the ideas raised therein.

9 proclaim your views that you tolerate the views of others.”
17
Freedom that makes commitment possible is not only an anomaly, in the world come of age it represents an unacceptable contradiction in terms. So much the worse for schools with religious affiliations. According to Fish, “religion can be part of university life so long as it renounces its claim to have a privileged purchase on the truth, which is the claim that defines a religion as a religion as opposed to a mere opinion.” 18
Any self-respecting university cannot privilege one group’s claim to truth over another and any selfrespecting religion cannot give up its claim to truth for the sake of university pursuits.
Religion and university life are simply incompatible and irreconcilable.
The Reassertion of Academic Freedom
Something unexpected has happened since Fish’s gloomy pronouncement in
2000. Instead of schools becoming ever more pluralistic and ever less bound to tradition and faith commitment, as might be expected if the modern world were to stay its course, many schools are reaffirming and reasserting their religious heritage and identity.
Michael Hamilton has dubbed this trend the “re-Christianization” of church-based education.
19 A recent spate of books and articles devoted to evaluating and enhancing the religious character and commitment of schools of higher education testify to the popular support for the idea. John Wilcox and Irene King’s edited volume on Enhancing
Religious Identity: Best Practices from Catholic Campuses (2000), Robert Benne’s
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 7.
19 Michael Hamilton, “A Higher Education,” Christianity Today 49.6 (June 2005), 30. It is possible to describe this shift less charitably as the emergence of a “new sectarianism.” Graham Good would depict it as such, “The New Sectarianism and the Liberal University,” Academic Freedom and the Inclusive
University , 84-93.

10
Quality with Soul (2001), Richard T. Hughes’s How Christian Faith Can Sustain the Life of the Mind (2001), Paul Dovre’s edited volume on The Future of Religious Colleges
(2002), Douglas Henry and Bob Agee’s edited volume on Faithful Learning and the
Christian Scholarly Vocation (2003), Duane Liftin’s Conceiving the Christian College
(2004), Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Educating for Shalom (2004), Michael Budde and John
Wright’s
Conflicting Allegiances (2004), and Naomi Riley’s God on the Quad (2005) are some of the key book-length endeavors, not to mention the vast array of articles, essays, conference papers and presentations that could be mentioned.
20
The “re-Christianizers” have been hard at work. As is evidenced by these works, since the turn of the new millennium, a vibrant new interest in the promotion of openly Christian education has emerged.
What has happened is nothing less than an undoing of the great reversal. The slick modern overcoat placed upon freedom has been pulled back to reveal an older but more ornate garment. The undoing began with the collective recognition, in the words of
Michael Hollerich, assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St.
Paul, Minnesota, that academic freedom is not an end in itself:
Its goal is not to create a safe haven in which people can say, teach, and write whatever they wish simply because it pleases them to do so. Rather, as a precondition for the successful flourishing of colleges and universities, it is not a
20 John Wilcox and Irene King, eds., Enhancing Religious Identity: Best Practices from Catholic Campuses
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000), Robert Benne, Quality with Soul (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2001), Richard T. Hughes, How Christian Faith Can Sustain the Life of the Mind (2001), Paul
Dovre, editor, The Future of Religious Colleges (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), Douglas Henry and Bob
Agee, eds., Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), and
Duane Liftin, Conceiving the Christian College (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); Nicholas Wolterstorff,
Educating for Shalom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); Michael Budde and John Wright, Conflicting
Allegiances: The Church-Based University in a Liberal Democratic Society (Baker, 2004); Naomi Riley,

11 freedom from so much as a freedom for .
21
Among Baptists, this notion has almost attained the status of a common-place truism in recent days. One hears Baptist scholars stating it as if it were a given assumption and not something that twenty years ago would have needed to be explained and defended. For instance, Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, states that Southeastern unabashedly exercises its freedom for commitment to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the Abstract of Principles, and the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, and reserves the right to refuse to higher anyone who cannot affirm those statements
“without reservation or hesitation.” He says, “If they want to believe something else, fine, they can go teach somewhere else, as well.” 22
Ironically, Bill Leonard, who as dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest University is Akin’s geographical neighbor but theological opposite, offers almost the exact same sentiment as Akin. Leonard has said,
“Baptist organizations have every right to shape their policies as they choose. … If the majority decides to change those rules and set limits on membership, then the people who stay choose to live in those boundaries.”
23
Of course, this does not mean that dissent has no place.
Those who disagree with the majority must decide whether they will dissent from within or leave and dissent from without. Dissent has always been a part of the Baptist story, and at each major junction, Baptists have had to decide what form their dissent will
God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation are Changing America (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005).
21 Michael Hollerich, “Academic Freedom and the Catholic University: One Generation after Land
O’Lakes,” Enhancing Religious Identity: Best Practices from Catholic Campuses , edited by John Wilcox and Irene King (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 202.
22 Danny Akin, quoted in Tony Cartledge, “Akin Prescribes Formula for N.C. Baptist Future,” Biblical
Recorder (May 28, 2005), 17.
23 Greg Warner, “’Conformity’ Trend in State Conventions Worries Some, Encourages Others”, Associated
Baptist Press (December 01, 2004), http://www.abpnews.com/news/news_detail.cfm?NEWS_ID=382.

12 take. But we must be clear: a dissent that breaks ties with associations and fellowships is not, properly speaking, an expression of freedom, but an act of liberation. Such manifestations of dissent may be called for and even unavoidable at times, but they come with a price – namely identification with a community. The body of Christ in America and especially among Baptists may indeed be a very liberated body, but it is also a very fragmented and disjointed body.
The dual commitment to institutional autonomy and freedom for self-formation manifests itself in other ways. For example, beginning in 2003, the American
Association of University Professors (AAUP) investigated Cumberland College,
24
a school with Baptist roots and commitment located in Williamsburg, Kentucky, for two possible violations of academic freedom. Professor Robert J. Day was pressured to resign by the president of the college, Jim Taylor, for creating a web site that criticized the university’s administration and policies. Day’s immediate superior, Professor James
Bailey, was caught in between Day and the administration. For his role in the drama,
Bailey’s tenure agreement was effectively ended. When the AAUP asked for permission to investigate in 2004, President Taylor responded:
As President of Cumberland College, I am accountable only to the Board of
Trustees of Cumberland College. . . . The College is an autonomous academic institution with no duty, and no desire, to subject its policies, practices, and judgments to the review of your Association.
Cumberland College enjoys the academic freedom to choose who will teach what to whom. Therefore, your Association's opinions, counsel, and advice on the

subject of the College's employment policies and practices are totally gratuitous and irrelevant.
25
13
Of interest for this present study, President Taylor makes a crucial distinction in this statement between liberty and freedom, reflective of the trend I am describing. He affirms on the one hand that Cumberland College is “an autonomous academic institution” and is not obligated to the AAUP or any such organization. Because of such liberty, the college “enjoys the academic freedom to choose who will teach and to whom.” We might legitimately protest that this example represents a misuse of freedom.
President Taylor is invoking the privilege as a way to skirt a legitimate investigation.
Such an exercise of academic freedom only isolates the institution from “outsiders” and incites fear, suspicion and distrust among “insiders.” The result is a bunker mentality that kills the very freedom Taylor’s action was meant to protect. Nevertheless, whatever the merits of the AAUP case, I mention it for the reason that Taylor’s statement takes for granted what Leonard and Akin also assume: namely the freedom—indeed the “academic freedom”—of institutions over against the liberties of the individual professor and outside peer-review boards. His argument relies upon an appeal to the institution’s academic freedom.
This communal understanding of academic freedom is embedded even in the standard Southern Baptist confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message (in both the
1963 and the 2000 edition). In its statement on education, the Faith and Message reads:
“The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the
24 As of January 2005 the college became affiliated with the University of the Cumberlands.

14 pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.” 26 At first glance, this statement seems to assume the modern definition of freedom qua liberty, because it describes freedom as something which must be limited. However, the wording belies the meaning. The freedom being described here is not one of autonomy, independence, or license, but one of association and commitment. The context of the statement suggests that the phrase “is limited by” should be understood as “is defined by.” The sentences immediately preceding the statement give an indication as to how to interpret it: “In Christian education there should be a proper balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility. Freedom in any orderly relationship of human life is always limited and never absolute.”
27
The authors do distinguish between freedom and responsibility, but their concern is clearly with the nature of freedom, which they define as a type of responsibility, namely responsibility to Christ, Scriptures, and the mission of the school.
For the authors of the Baptist Faith and Message, freedom to identify with is defined by responsibility, not limited by it. A comment from Oliver O’Donovan’s latest work, The
Ways of Judgment , is pertinent at this point: “Without adults who demand mature behavior, the child is not free to grow up; without teachers to set standards of excellence, the scholar is not free to excel; without prophets to uphold ideals of virtue, society is not
25 See “Report on Academic Freedom and Tenure: University of the Cumberlands (formerly Cumberland
College)”, posted April, 2005 on the AAUP web site, as authorized by Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, accessed June 1, 2005, http://www.aaup.org/Com-a/Institutions/cumberlands.htm.
26 Baptist Faith and Message, arranged in three columns for comparison between the 1925, 1963, and 2000 versions (accessed June 11, 2005), http://www.sbc.net/bfm/bfmcomparison.asp. The revisions made in
2000 ignited a great deal of controversy, as the new Faith and Message contained hard-line statements on such topics as women in ministry and homosexuality in addition to subordinating the person of Jesus Christ to the authority of the Bible. These changes are lamentable. Critics of the changes might also suspect that the 2000 version would condense the 1963 statement on education; interestingly, the new version expands it. The expansion of the statement coordinates with the greater interest in Christianizing education that is being explored in this paper.

15 free to realize its common good. To be under authority is to be freer than to be independent.” 28
In such a reconfiguration of freedom and liberty, what then might count as a violation of academic freedom? The scope of violations cannot be limited to cases in which a school trespasses its own personnel policies or attempts to regulate what a professor teaches or researches. Those are only symptoms of a greater problem: that of mistrust. A true violation of academic freedom is a violation of trust—the trust of the administration or trustees, the trust of individual scholars or communities of scholars, the trust of students, alumni, supporters and friends of the institution. Administration must be able to trust its professors and researchers to explore sensitive and perhaps even disagreeable subjects with professional decorum and Christian commitment, which is also commitment to seeking the truth, wherever that search leads. Faculty must be able to trust the support of the administration when it embarks on such explorations, even if the students are skeptical. Academic freedom is the trust that both administration and faculty share in the Christ who is the full measure of truth and mercy (John 14:6,
Colossians 2:2-10).
What Works in Theory
At this point in the discussion, I am reminded of Immanuel Kant’s aptly titled essay, “On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in
27 Ibid.
28 Oliver O’Donovan , The Ways of Judgment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

16
Practice.’”
29
For, it is not at all clear how this “trust” can be built into policies and contracts. How should the new understanding of “freedom to be religious” be implemented in religiously affiliated schools? Is it possible for an institution to be confessionally Christian, or—still further—Baptist, and yet also foster an atmosphere of openness to every question from every angle, both in class and in research? More basically, we need to know if an institution can craft a policy of academic freedom that upholds Christian identity and good scholarship.
These urgent questions have manifested themselves in a variety of ways in recent history. A few examples will suffice to show that the reorienting of academic freedom and the reassertion of religious identity have created enormous tensions, sometimes constructive and sometimes destructive.
● In 2004, Louisiana College, a self-described Baptist school, came into accreditation turmoil when its board of regents required faculty to have all classroom materials approved by academic deans. The school also expected new hires to affirm the 2000 version of the “Baptist Faith and Message,” a practice that the six Southern Baptist seminaries had adopted immediately following the revisions. Interestingly, Louisiana College’s board of regents defended its actions as necessary to remaining faithful to the school’s Baptist heritage.
30
In this case, the liberty of individual professors to define for themselves the terms on which they were Baptist was curtailed by the freedom of the board of regents to define
29 Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in
Practice,” Kant: Political Writings , 2 nd ed., translated by H. B. Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 61.

17
“Baptist” for its employees.
● A motion proposed by T. C. Pickney and Bruce Shortt for consideration by the resolution committee for the 2004 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist
Convention made headlines because it called for parents to pull their children out of the “godless” public school systems. While the resolutions committee did not endorse the proposal, the call for an “exodus” from public to private and homebased schooling nonetheless resonated with many Baptists.
31 Indeed, this instance helps us to recognize that concern for education that is Christian in nature extends beyond the college and seminary levels to the primary and secondary levels. The same group that proposed the motion in 2004 is asking the SBC to reconsider the issue at the 2005 meeting with a series of new recommendations.
32
● Since 2002 Baylor University has envisioned and attempted to incarnate a renewed vision of academic freedom, such as has been discussed in this paper.
With a ten-year 2012 program of upgrading and “re-Christianizing” itself,
Baylor’s goal was to navigate its educational paradigm beyond the impasse of modernity’s Scylla and Charybdis of liberalism and fundamentalism to a place of confessional Christianity combined with first-class scholarship and education.
From the beginning, the problem has been conveying and convincing others of the vision (especially those who worry that it was fundamentalism in academic regalia). In 2004, Baylor University’s AAUP chapter sponsored a debate between
30 Robert Marus, “Louisiana College’s Board Chair Resigns; School’s Accreditation under Investigation”
Associated Baptist Press (July 9, 2004), http://www.abpnews.com/news/news_detail.cfm?NEWS_ID=115.
Robert Marus has covered the case for the Associated Baptist Press since early in 2004 to the present.
31 Ken Camp and Greg Warner, “Annual Southern Baptist Meeting to Consider BWA Withdrawal, Mark
Conservative Anniversary,” Associated Baptist Press (June 8, 2004), http://www.abpnews.com/news/news_detail.cfm?NEWS_ID=14.
32 “SBC Asked to Take Second Look at Public Schools,” Biblical Recorder (June 11, 2005), 9, 11.

18
William Underwood, then Law Professor, and David Lyle Jeffrey, then provost of the university (Jeffrey was relieved of his duties as provost upon Underwood becoming interim president in early summer 2005). The debate, which grew heated at times, revolved around the relationship of academic and religious freedom. Anxiety during the debate was expressed over the administration’s attempt to amend the academic freedom policy and create a more expressly
Christian climate on campus.
33 In this debate, the prerogative of the university to maintain and nurture its Christian vision was at stake, but also the concerns of many professors and others for traditionally held notions of academic integrity and scholarly rights.
● In the spring of 2005, Baylor hosted a follow-up conference on the future of
Baptist higher education. Tensions mounted when Bill Leonard of Wake Forest charged the conveners and participants of the conference with carelessness for saying that Wake Forest and other such schools had lost their religious identity.
On one of the brochures for the conference a quotation was printed from James
Burtchaell’s
The Dying of the Light . The quotation had Burtchaell naming The
University of Richmond, Wake Forest University, Stetson University, Furman
University, and Meredith College as some traditionally Baptist schools which had left their Baptist roots and Christian identities. Leonard was understandably incensed at the conference organizers’ apparent approval of Burtchaell’s judgment and demanded an apology, which Donald Schmeltekopf, Baylor’s
33 Vicki Marsh Kabat, “Academic and Religious Freedom: Can Baylor Get it Right?” Baylor Magazine
(February 2005), 34-39.

19 provost emeritus, immediately gave.
34
Nevertheless, the incident brought to light the vexing problem of who determines identity and how it is recognized.
Each of these instances seems to indicate that while a renewed vision of freedom—defined primarily as freedom to be religious—may be commendable in theory, in practice it tends to result in combative or unaccommodating situations. But, perhaps this is not the right conclusion to draw. These instances made headlines because they were sensational and involved conflict. It seems there is yet hope for the Christian education project, if we be willing to approach it in a more humble and less sensational manner. Many schools have made intentional efforts to reassert and enlarge their
Christian vision without the controversy and publicity of the cases discussed above. For instance, my own school, Campbell University, a North Carolina school with Baptist roots, simply changed the name of its compulsory “chapel” service for undergraduate students from Cultural Enrichment Program to Campbell University Worship (CUW).
The change in name also reflects a change in focus and structure. Every CUW service is viewed as a worship experience, often including praise music, prayer, scripture, and a
Christian message. Changes such as these do not indicate a radical shift in the mission of
Campbell, but rather a way of embodying that mission. It is not an innovation but a gentle reminder of the school’s very purposes and intentions. It is a way of making visible own Statement of Purpose which reads, in part:
The purpose of Campbell University arises out of three basic theological and
Biblical presuppositions: learning is appointed and conserved by God as essential to the fulfillment of human destiny; in Christ, all things consist and find ultimate
34 Ken Camp, “Right to Dissent May be Key Mark of Baptist Colleges, Leonard Suggests,” Associated

20 unity; and the Kingdom of God in this world is rooted and grounded in Christian community.
35
This statement offers a concise rationale for committed Christian education that is commendable for its theological insightfulness. But, lest I be guilty of unduly favoring my own institution, it should be noted that Campbell University has also had its share of academic freedom controversy. In 1985, the university refused to renew the contract of one of its faculty members, Clyde Edgerton, for publishing a novel, Raney, which satirized the beliefs and ways of a southern (Free Will) Baptist family. For its action,
Campbell was widely shamed.
36
As the history of my own institution shows, the recovery of a more historic sense of academic freedom in which administrators, professors, and students are free to seek the mind of Christ occurs by fits and starts, not by “darkly heroic,” sweeping acts. It is becoming evident that when true freedom is rediscovered, so is the tension between freedom and liberty. Such tension appears intractable, yet our prayer and hope is in
Christ, who perfects all knowledge and makes all things new.
Freedom, Affinity, and Goods Worth Pursuing
Freedom, like liberty, is never a “good” in and of itself, but a condition for the good to flourish. It is never an end, but always a means. So, the real question is not a pragmatic one (How should academic freedom most efficiently and effectively function?), but a teleological one. What kinds of aims should this community or
Baptist Press website (April 21, 2005), www.abpnews.com/news/news_detail.cfm?NEWS_ID=637.
35 See http://www.campbell.edu/welcome.html. Richard J. Neuhaus expands this rationale from three points to eleven in “The Christian University: Eleven Theses,” First Things (January 1996), 20-22.

21 institution pursue? What kinds of people do we want to be and what kind of people do we want our students to be? Goals and goods will vary from institution to institution, and so we should not be surprised to find that the expectations and implementations of freedom vary from school to school as well. A Roman Catholic college and a statefunded public university, although they both serve the cause of education, do not share the same goals for education; it is only natural, then, that they do not share the same conceptions of freedom either. One might apply the same distinctions to compare, on a more finely graded scale, conservative Baptist schools and progressive Baptist schools.
Freedom is a tool; it serves the pleasure of the institution under the institution’s agreed upon authority. When the goods of the institution are ill-conceived, so will the freedoms that serve them; when the goods are well-formed, then the freedoms will be rightly ordered.
Even so, this is not the full story. It is true that one of the hinge differences that makes an education Christian is lodged in the question of teleology. It is a thin, barely perceptible difference: the difference between everything as given and everything as gift, between nothingness and creation out of nothing.
37
Such a difference is not founded on a formal distinction or a speculative proposition, but upon a material distinction, a lived conviction. It must be rooted in a tradition of practice. Hence, Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition of a practice as: any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and
36 George Hovis, “The Raney Controversy: Clyde Edgerton’s Fight for Creative Freedom,” Southern
Cultures (Summer 2001), 60-83.

22 partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.
38
The goods or ends of an institution do not spontaneously self-generate, they must be wrought from the actual life of the institution itself. Teleology should not function as a distant aspiration to greater good without any real bearing on the day to day activity of the institution. With regards to education, the actual practice of educating makes evident the real aims and goods of education, and shows all other supposed aims to be irrelevant.
The goals, principles, ends, and goods of the institution must be those things which guide daily routines and everyday practice. A living tradition is not one which has fossilized its goals out of reverence for them; a living tradition is one that continues to test, challenge, and enact its values in the daily gauntlet. As MacIntyre has famously said, “a living tradition then is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.”
39
The aims of higher education can never be dissociated from the practice of higher education. Likewise, the goals of academic freedom can never be separated from the exercise of academic freedom. Here we might appeal to St Thomas Aquinas, who makes clear, “every agent, in acting, intends some end.” 40
For Aquinas, ends and actions cannot be divorced: to act is to intend something and to intend something is to act. The question is not an either/or (act or intention), but one of fit between act and intent. St Thomas comments:
37 Denys Turner, Faith Seeking (London: SCM Press, 2002), 42.
38 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue , 2 nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 187.
39 Ibid., 222.

23
That every agent acts for the sake of an end is manifest from the fact that every agent tends to something determinate and what it determinately tends towards must be fitting for it, because it would tend towards it only because of some fittingness to itself. But, what is fitting to something is its good. Therefore every agent acts for the sake of the good.
41
He extends this argument about the nature of action to a consideration of the relationship between Creator and creation. God’s intention is that all creatures be “ordered to God as to their ultimate end.”
42
Creation is the enactment of God’s intentions, hence it is creation’s task to return to God so as to fulfill God’s intentions in the act of creating, indeed so that the word does not return to its sender void. Aquinas argues that this is possible, with the aid of grace opening our eyes to the purposes of grace, because between God and creation there is a certain fit or “similarity” as between an intention and an act. Indeed, it might be better to describe this fit as an “affinity” for God, and in this way distinguish it from a “liking” of God. All creation has a “natural attraction” toward
God in spite of which we must also say that not all creatures have a “liking” for God.
Recalling the Latin root, affinitas
, we are, as it were, “related by marriage” to God. By extension we say that in rejecting God we reject this natural affinity within ourselves, and thus absurdly reject not only God but ourselves.
This excursion into Aquinas is to contend that a theology of freedom that can extend to the concerns of academic freedom must be elastic. It should not be stand-alone principle but rather is the underlying link ( vinculum ) between grace and nature, faith and
40 St Thomas Aquinas , S. c. G ., III, 2, Selected Writings , edited by Ralph McInerny (New York: Penguin,
1998), 260.
41 Ibid., 262.
42 Ibid., 264.

24 reason, Creator and creation. Our affinity with God, i.e., being made in the image of God, is itself the essence of Christian freedom. Realization, by the power of the Spirit, of such an affinity, which is our true identity, obliterates all other claims upon life—claims of law, nature, family, and economics—so that one is truly freed.
43
As Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). Less drastically, Paul writes,
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female” (Gal 3:28a). Here is a freedom that explodes natural boundaries and social categories. But, if that were all, it would not be a freedom but a mere liberty, a simple release from one’s assigned role. Salvation is a freedom in that it not only dissolves bonds of sin, necessity, and nature, but also opens up the possibility of new commitments. Paul concludes his litany of freedoms by saying, “for all of you are one in
Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28b). To be free in Christ is to be called to be like Christ, to realize our true affinity. This we do only as we join Christ’s body, the new people of God, the church. It is here that we find a community that has not been coerced into existence nor created out of natural, familial bonds. Rather this is a community of persons freely bound to one another in the Spirit of love, obedience to the Father, and embodiment of the will of Christ.
Academic freedom, as an extension of Christian freedom, is always for the good of the body of Christ. This does not mean that the goods or benefits will always be immediately evident, instantaneously realized, or warmly received by all—it takes trust and faith that the pursuit of truth is a godly pursuit if one is to make genuine, open, and
43 See John Milbank, “Culture: The Gospel of Affinity,” Being Reconciled (New York: Routledge, 2003),
187-211, esp. 196-7.

25 honest academic inquiry. It means is that academic freedom is an expression of the image of God in which we were created. Thus, it is a communal stance, since the image of God is expressive of us all, and not a right limited to the individual. Academic freedom, in its truest form, does not tear down community and disassemble identity; rather it constitutes identity, even if by the exchange of ideas and arguments themselves.
Which is finally to say, it is constructive, not destructive.