I had lunch this summer with a prospective graduate student at the evangelical college where I teach. I will call him John because that happens to be his name. John has done well academically at a public university. Nevertheless, as often happens, he said that he was looking forward to coming to a Christian university, and then launched into a story of religious discrimination.
John had been a straight-A student until he enrolled in English writing. The assignment was an “opinion” piece and the required theme was “traditional marriage.” John is a Southern Baptist and he felt it was his duty to give his honest opinion and explain how it was grounded in his faith. The professor was annoyed that John claimed the support of the Bible for his views, scribbling in the margin, “Which Bible would that be?” On the very same page, John’s phrase, “Christians who read the Bible,” provoked the same retort, “Would that be the Aramaic Bible, the Greek Bible, or the Hebrew Bible?” (What could the point of this be? Did the professor want John to imagine that while the Greek text might support his view of traditional marriage, the Aramaic version did not?) The paper was rejected as a “sermon,” and given an F, with the words, “I reject your dogmatism,” written at the bottom by way of explanation.
Very interesting paper from a very interesting author. Dr. Larsen’s books are to be recommended.
The author found that Yale University Press sent his book proposal to reader assessors, who replied with bizarrely sneering comments about Christianity. Ah yes. Courageous Yale University Press – the people who published a book about the furore over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, but declined to include the cartoons in the book.
I don’t know about some of the other comments but the association of Eliot with the Taliban is just insane.
Perhaps their was religious bias on the part of the teacher in this episode or perhaps not. Unless I could read the actual text of the paper(s) in question, I care not to judge. The comments do sound a bit snippy, but the case could also logically be that this student was simply not a good writer. Most college kids these days cannot make a rhetorically logical argument to save their life. Faux moral outrage in rant form is not logical argumentation or research; this comes as a great shock to many people.