FREEDOM AT ABILENE

We all know about the unrest on college campuses across the nation. Those closest to the scene are taking a long look at what the causes may be, all of which are surely related in some way to the uneasiness within society at large. Campus revolt is a symptom of the national disease of loss of direction. Frustration and desperation lie in the wake of meaninglessness. A nation that is unsure of its sense of values will surely lose its youth. The campus rebel is telling us that he is lost. Paul Tillich would prefer to call it alienation. It all adds up to irrational conduct. And when man has lost his sense of mission he will be irrational.

This has to do with the principle of freedom in a very important way. The boiling campus cauldrons have served as cruel reminders that we are less free today than we were yesterday. Only a disciplined people are a truly free people. Riots on the campuses and in the ghettoes have laid bare our lack of discipline. Our values have bogged down in our preoccupation with things.

We hardly know how to talk with each other any more. Not only is there a generation gap, but a moral gap as well. An accomplished violinist, who has attained excellence through a lifetime of rigid self-discipline, is a freer man than the musician who is only mediocre because he never learned to say no to himself. The free man has learned the wisdom of self-restraint. It is the unfree man who must be restrained by others. We see it in the campus revolt. The punk who takes over the office of the college president, propping his feet on the prexy’s desk and smoking his cigars, is unrestrained because he is unfree. Above all else he wants the dignity that only freedom can give. His desperation lies in the fact that he never learned to be free. The same can be said for the nation that produced him. Far from being an age of reason, ours is an era of irrationality. Desperation haunts our way.

This is all as evident on the campuses of Church of Christ colleges as anywhere. It may be a quieter desperation, but it is as insidious as that at Cornell, Berkeley or Columbia. And to those near the scene it is as apparent. Professors have been fired (some of the better ones, as is usually the case); others are resigning or threatening to resign in large numbers; students are demonstrating, though still on tiptoe; petitions are being circulated; heresy hunters are stalking in the hallways; and even “inquisitions” are being held, to quote a Disciples editor in his comments over recent events at Freed-Hardeman College in Tennessee. Moreover, doctrinal statements are being demanded of faculty people, something new in the story of Church of Christ colleges.

It is the same desperation that broods over campuses throughout the land. We have become nervous and unsure of ourselves. We have turned to academic stuttering, a symptom traceable to causes similar to those that make a man stammer in his speech. It is a fear that something might happen, something that we cannot handle, or something with no handles on it.

An illustration of all this is the kind of freedom being dished up out at Abilene Christian College, Out in the West where liberty, like babies, is both assumed and prized.

The college has just released a statement on “Academic Freedom and Tenure in Abilene Christian College,” a four-page document that endorses the position taken by agencies of higher learning on academic freedom.

But there is a “rider” attached, a qualification that may augur ill for many an unsuspecting professor in years to come. Not that ACC needs any such clauses, hidden or otherwise, to dispose of its controversial faculty people, for a number in recent years have left “under fire,” without the need of any stated limitation to the accepted norms of academic freedom. The principle of “due process” is yet to be discovered by the administrations of most of our colleges.

The basic principles of academic freedom that ACC subscribed to were initiated by the American Association of University Professors and the Civil Liberties Union and more recently supported by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Coordinating Board of Texas College and University System. Most Texas colleges and universities have accepted the statements without qualification.

The principles boil down to the idea that an instructor is to be free in the pursuit of truth and in his teaching of what he sees to be truth. He is to be at liberty to express his opinions on all questions related to his discipline, however controversial those questions may be. There is to be no pressure or duress from the authorities over him. He is limited in what he says in the classroom only by his own sense of professorial responsibility and is not to be dictated to by the administration or pressured by his colleagues. Moreover, the college should seek to maintain the kind of academic environment that the instructor will be encouraged to pursue every avenue open to him, without prejudice, in examining all sides of every question.

The ACC statement says: Abilene Christian College accepts the foregoing statement, with the qualification that this is a Christian college, and, as such, it has certain responsibilities not found in every institution.

Surely an institution that professes to be Christian has a mission and a message that is distinctive. One is left to wonder, however, how this would effect an instructor’s freedom on the campus. Academic freedom as generally accepted does not give a teacher the license to say or do anything. A Harvard professor was fired for LSD activity, while an instructor at Texas was dismissed for advocating revolution. Immorality and incompetency have long been reasons for firing instructors in institutions that unequivocally adhere to the principle of academic freedom.

In other words the teacher is limited by the principle of freedom itself. He is free to pursue truth without interference, but the quest for truth obligates him to be both reasonable and responsible. This is defined by all that is meant by liberal education.

One wonders what further limitation a Christian institution would want to place upon an instructor than this. Is an English teacher, for example, to teach Shakespeare or Chaucer any differently at Abilene than at Rice? Suppose it is a Christian teacher who is exploring Shakespeare with his students. Is it “Christian education” when he does so at Abilene, but “secular” when he does so at Rice? When he moves from one campus to the other, does he change his Shakespeare? What further limitation would Abilene place upon him that he does not already place upon himself by virtue of the dignity of his profession in his teaching at Rice?

The ACC statement continues: In the Christian college, as well as in other institutions of higher learning, there should be a proper balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility. Freedom in an orderly society is always limited and never absolute.

Here ACC is saying that all colleges are alike is recognizing that freedom implies responsibility. All will likewise agree that freedom is limited and never absolute. The accepted statements on academic freedom, of course, recognize this, as we have already suggested. The point of our concern is what further restrictions ACC feels compelled to impose upon the professor beyond those accepted by all responsible academicians. The next statement tells us.

The freedom of a teacher in Abilene Christian College, therefore, is limited by his relationships in society, by the authority of the Scriptures, and by those purposes for which the college exists.

The first and last of these restrictions could hardly be questioned. Even as I sit at my desk this moment in my own home my freedom is limited by my relationships in society. I am not free to step outside and chunk rocks at my neighbors’ windows. How many more limitations are upon me as an educator in the community! I am not free to dress, speak and act just any old way. It would follow that the greater my responsibility in the community or the university the more restricted my freedom would be. The mayor of a great city or the president of a university can hardly go anywhere, not even on a vacation, without being subject to immediate recall at any time.

So with the last. If I cannot respect the objectives and purposes of a college, I should not join its faculty. I once served on the staff of a Christian college where there was an instructor who vented his spleen over “this Jesus bit” and was always poking fun at Christian values. He should not have been on the faculty. This does not mean that an infidel should not serve on a Christian faculty, but that he should be an unbeliever who at least respects religious faith as held by others. A college’s philosophy should be clearly stated to prospective faculty, and if they find themselves unsympathetic with it they should seek employment elsewhere.

It is the second qualification that ACC states that troubles me. The teacher is limited in his freedom by the authority of the Scriptures. If it read by his respect for the Scriptures, it could hardly be questioned. Even an infidel teaching at ACC could properly be expected to respect the Scriptures, but I don’t see how a college could place such a one under the authority of the Scriptures.

But this is not the main difficulty. Assuming that it is proper for an ACC instructor to be limited in his freedom by the authority of the Scriptures, who is to be the interpreter of the Scriptures when a question arises about something the instructor has said or believes?

Weigh the point well. You are an instructor at Abilene and you are a free man in the classroom—free to pursue truth with your students. But you are restricted by the authority of the Scriptures. If this means you are allowed to be your own interpreter of the Scriptures, then your freedom would not be impaired. If this is what ACC means, well and good. I consider myself under the authority of the Scriptures whether I am a teacher, business man or coach. But I zealously defend my right to interpret the Scriptures for myself. I have no yen for someone else to sit as a supreme court over my own conscience.

But I am fearful that ACC means something else when they talk about an instructor being limited by the authority of the Scriptures. Past performances at Abilene and at other of our colleges would indicate that the professor is limited by the traditions of a party. One of our colleges dismissed several profs because they believed in tongue-speaking. Others have been fired for being “liberal,” which means everything from accepting other believers as Christians to playing down the big deal that we’ve made of instrumental music. We could put together a rather large and highly competent faculty made up of men fired by Church of Christ colleges, representing virtually every field of teaching. In each case the man was fired because he crossed the party line, which has the alias of “violating the authority of the Scriptures.”

Again we ask, who is going to be the interpreter out Abilene way when a problem arises about what a professor believes or teaches? The trustees? The administration? A faculty committee? All may agree that the Scriptures are authoritative, including the instructor in question. But who is going to say what the Scriptures mean in the case in question?

I should like to ask some questions about what limitations “the authority of the Scriptures” would place upon an ACC teacher.

Would a biology teacher be free to present the theory of evolution alongside creationism, explaining that it is his personal conclusion that evolution is the stronger case, while all along respecting the opposing viewpoint?

Could a sociologist express as his opinion the appropriateness of the dance in the life of youth, that the Church of Christ might do well to follow other religious groups and have dances for their youth in fellowship halls, that since ACC’ers do so much parking, they should not get too excited about a little dance? All of this said, of course, in a friendly way and in an effort to get people to think and to be honest.

Could a teacher dealing with social problems point out that a case can be made for moderate drinking, and that he sees this consistent with the Scriptures, for Jesus was himself a drinker, and that the most serious problems related to drinking occur with people from non-drinking homes where the parents made a big deal out of it? Could he add that, in fact, he himself has for years taken a toddy just before going to bed and that he has found it a meaningful Christian experience, even more than overeating at Catchings cafeteria?

Would a Bible teacher be free to espouse the documentary hypothesis, date Daniel in the Maccabean period, or question the Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles? Not dogmatically of course, but as views held tentatively, as having the stronger case in his research at the time.

Could a teacher gently suggest that we must forget this bit about being the only Christians and the true church, that there are surely Christians in many denominations, and that we do well when we are Christians only without bothering to be the only Christians? Can he suggest that the boundaries of fellowship should be extended to include all those who are in Christ, whether Baptists, premills, or Christian Church folk?

Would an English teacher be free to assign something like Ulysses for literary criticism and Christian dialogue, believing that the Scriptures authorize this kind of confrontation with the problem of evil?

Would an instructor in political science be free to be a left-wing Kennedy man as much as a right-wing Goldwater man? Could he be an enthusiast for Americans for Democratic Action as easily as a Bircher?

Could he, while a professor at ACC, transfer his membership from the College Church of Christ to the First Christian Church?

Answers to such questions would help us to understand what academic freedom means at Abilene Christian College.

If we are to be a free people of God, then the authority of the Scriptures must always be personal rather than institutional. Even a priest teaching in a Roman Catholic seminary has a kind of freedom, one limited by the traditions of his church. A teacher at ACC must be free to teach as he sees it or freedom has no meaning. If the way he sees it is in conflict with the way the Church of Christ has always been seeing it, or different from the way the administration sees it, he must be allowed to be different. He has the right to be wrong—wrong being anything different from what we’ve always taught!—the Editor