Decent Exposure

A friend linked to this blog post as her Facebook status, and as I read it I realized that it seemed to be entirely beside the point. The blogger, a Christian psychologist, reported this exchange with a student:

"I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God."

I responded, "Why would you want to do that?"

Startled she says, "What do you mean?"

"Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?"

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"

"Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you've wronged?"

She thinks and answers, "Yes."

"Well, why don't you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God."

"Obviously," he continued, "I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture." He doesn't object to spending time with Jesus, he wrote, but "all too often ... has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being." He concluded, "I truly want people to spend time working on their relationship with God. I just want them to do it by taking the time to care about the person standing right in front of them."

What bothered me initially was that the writer seemed to equate being a decent human being with a Christian, though given our ecumenical times I'm sure he would reject the imputation. I wrote to my friend in comments that trying to be a decent human being doesn't require Christianity -- many Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucianists, and people from most other religious traditions would agree, I think, that learning to be a decent human being is valuable. Nor, I think, is any kind of deity needed: as an atheist, how to be a decent human being is one of the questions, and practices, that matter most to me. Other atheists might not agree, but that doesn't affect the point. (To read some atheists, I gather that they don't think you can be a decent human being if you don't believe in evolution, or if you believe in astrology; I think that's obviously not true. This position would be the mirror image of certain kinds of Christian piety.)

True, you could try to reconcile the blogger's position with the teachings of Jesus, who's reported to have said things like this passage from Matthew:

41“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45“Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

The trouble is that teachings like this aren't about "trying to become a more decent human being": they're about trying to escape damnation and get into the Kingdom of Heaven. (Though it could also be argued that they aren't about "working on your relationship with God" either, for the same reason.) Jesus also taught his followers to abandon their families, to forego their parents' funerals, and so on; the goal was to be saved, not to become a more decent human being -- which, insofar as it matters to the Jesus of the gospels at all, was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Some Christians have tried to moralize Jesus' teachings that don't fit the model, by claiming for example, that Jesus forbade divorce because he was concerned about the fate of divorced women in a patriarchal society. Maybe someone who was so driven by sexual craving that it led him to impose himself on others might have become a more decent human being by gouging out his own eye, or by becoming a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven. But the context of such teachings makes it pretty clear that Jesus' primary concern wasn't with ethics.

Which brings me to the other side of the question. Every religion has important stuff in it which has nothing to do with being a decent human being. What does believing that Jesus is the Son of God, or being baptized, have to do with being a decent human being? What do circumcision, keeping kosher and going to micva have to do with being a decent human being? What does the system of purity and impurity in Hinduism, or its caste system, have to do with being a decent human being? What does praying five times a day while facing Mecca have to do with being a decent human being? Even Buddhism, which along with Confucianism is one of the more purely ethical religious structures, has plenty of features that have nothing I can see to do with being a decent human being. And these concerns are not supposed to be part of what my friend called putting on a "pious front": they are just as essential to religion as ethical teaching and practice. Which is one reason I'm not religious, because they aren't important to me at all.

These teachings, beliefs, and practices are important to many people. I'm thinking of the poll I wrote about here, which indicated that neither interpersonal ethics nor one's "relationship with God" are what concern most Christians in the US today: the pollsters found that a majority of those who "join a faith" (74 percent) cited "the attraction of religious services and styles of worship" as a key factor in their lifestyle choice. And there are parallels outside of theism. To read some atheists, I gather that they don't think you can be a decent human being if you don't believe in evolution, or if you believe in astrology; I think that's obviously not true. Just as obviously, believing in evolution or not believing in astrology doesn't make you a decent human being.

This division also comes up in some of the ethical philosophy I've been reading lately. It's not enough, philosophers say, just to do the right thing; you have to do it for the right reasons from the right disposition, and strive to be a good person. I can't really deny that -- on some level I agree that the two aspects of ethics are inseparable -- but something about it still bothers me. For example, does it imply that if I am not yet a good person, I shouldn't do the right thing? Of course not, if only because doing the right thing is part of the process of becoming a good, or at least better person.

It's somewhat like asking about the relationship between being a good artist and being a decent human being. Numerous great artists have been failures in their relations with other people, and it has been debated how significant that is. Can you be a great artist even if you neglect or abandon your wife and children in the pursuit of Art? I'd also insist that many great religious teachers -- I'd include Jesus in that number -- have been poor role models for interpersonal relationships. The Buddha abandoned his family, because human attachment was an obstacle to enlightenment. At the same time, he produced some moral teachings that I consider valuable. I'm just saying that I don't think one can reduce Christianity, or any other religion, to being a decent human being. Putting stress on that aspect may be helpful when people go too far in the direction of ritual and piety, just as it would have been proper to suggest to Paul Gauguin that he lay off the absinthe and support his kids. But that would not necessarily have made him a better artist.

Political Correctness Run Amok

I stumbled recently on this British novel, A Campus Conspiracy, by Anonymous, published by Impress Books in 2006, and the front-cover blurb made me decide to have a go at it:

I charged through the opening chapters with a growing sense of horror, paranoia – and recognition. This is a rattling read, and a chilling exposé of political correctness on campus. – Boris Johnson

(That's Johnson up there, looking like the son of Donald Trump.) I decided it might be entertaining to get a look at an English academic's version of this myth. Johnson, I later learned, was the Conservatives' Shadow Minister for Higher Education, as well as the current mayor of London, but whoever he was, he hadn't really read the book.

A Campus Conspiracy is narrated by the protagonist, Harry Gilbert, professor of Christian Ethics at St. Sebastian's University. Sixty and overweight (he keeps noticing and complaining that his clothes are too tight), Harry is mostly content with his life. He produced a textbook on Christian ethics that was well-received and is widely used, and his newest book, Paradox of Selfishness, is about to be published. He's happily married to the beautiful and classy Victoria, the daughter of a baronet. He's financially comfortable and doesn't really need his job, but he likes teaching, likes research, and likes writing. As the novel opens his main concern is the "Research Assessment Exercise" or RAE:

Over the last decade this ordeal has plagued all university departments. Each person's four best publications are evaluated and scored every few years; government money is then allocated on the basis of the result. In the past, departments were ranked depending on the income. Those academics who were left out of the exercise altogether were humiliated, and their careers severely damaged [4].

But it quickly turns out that the RAE is the least of Harry's problems. Lisa Gold, "an attractive blonde undergraduate" who seems to share Harry's "problem of bursting out of her clothes" (1), appears in his Christian ethics class and visits his office for tutoring. A transfer student, she hands Harry a paper she wrote for a previous class and asks if she can get course credit for it. "I can make it worth your while," she tells him, crossing her legs and "exposing her thighs" (9). When Harry reads the paper, he recognizes that it has been plagiarized, and when he refuses to give her credit for it, Lisa files a sexual harassment complaint against him. The University Chancellor can't act against him for lack of evidence, but he hints that Harry should consider early retirement, which Harry refuses to do.

Harry then gets a phone call from Lisa Gold's rabbi, who tells him that Lisa had been involved in a similar incident at at the synagogue, where her wealthy father is very influential, having pledged a hefty sum to the building fund. "Though I have to say," the rabbi tells Harry, "they tend to promise more than they deliver" (33). The assistant rabbi Lisa accused was fired, though he got a new job in Florida. This reassures Harry a bit, since he emerged pretty well unscathed from Lisa's complaint against him, thanks partly to his tenure and partly to support from his academic union.

But another incident occurs, over Harry's having to keep reminding the college librarian to order more copies of his textbook for the students in his class, enrollment having jumped as a result of his sudden notoriety. The librarian, it turns out, is the Registrar's wife. The Vice Chancellor reports that he has received a letter from Lisa Gold's father, who says he'd been considering making a generous donation to St. Sebastian's until Harry "molested" Lisa. Harry is urged once again to consider retirement; again he refuses.

And so it goes. Harry's problem isn't "political correctness," it's the highly nepotistic administration of St. Sebastian's, combined with decreasing government support for higher education. As the regional union representative tells Harry,

“You know, he said, “your Vice-Chancellor is not as evil as you think. He’s entirely at the mercy of the government who have starved universities of funds for years. He is forced to take more and more students, and he has to educate them on less and less money. So he puts his managers under pressure. All Vice-Chancellors do it. He can’t afford to train anyone properly and, in any case, most academics are not natural managers. They’re too much like prima donnas. So it ends up a mess. It all comes down to money in the end. Universities simply don’t have enough of it. They’ll do anything for cash, like getting involved with that shark Gold. And there you are. Everyone suffers …” [178].

"Political correctness" is explicitly mentioned in A Campus Conspiracy only near the end. Harry benefits as much from the old-boy network (helped by his wife's family and class connections) as he suffers from it. As his troubles at St. Sebastian's mount, he's invited to give a guest lecture at Sweetpea University in South Carolina, where he and Victoria are such a hit that Harry is offered a distinguished professorship, and Victoria is offered a job writing about antiques for the Washington Post. The only blemish on their triumph is their meeting with Harry's department chairman Joel Perley and his wife Mimi, who reveal that Sweetpea U isn't Eden either. The Perleys are Baptists, which for some reason baffles both Harry and Victoria (there are Baptists in England, you know; surely a scholar of Christianity like Harry has heard of them, even if he's never met any). Joel tells Harry some of the gritty realities of American universities: legacy students, for example (also part of the English landscape), and

We're under political pressure to have about twenty percent of our student body black and chicano. But every college in America wants these students if they're any good. So we've got to finance them generously if we want them to come here. We've also got to have scholarships for football and basketball stars. ... What it comes down to is if you happen to be a straightforward, studious, white kid, there isn't a great deal of scholarship money available" (200).

Mimi Perley's even more overtly racist, and Joel explains, "She sometimes forgets that we've all got to be politically correct on the modern college campus" (201). The Perleys also "don't feel that the college chapel has very much to do with Christianity" (198); I bet they even let the homosexuals in. Must be rough.

The depiction of the Perleys and the conclusion of the novel suggest (to me, at least) that Anonymous might be more sensible than his protagonist. I rather hope so.