Academic Freedom or Confessional Responsibility

Where are the limits of academic freedom in Adventist schools?

For some time now Seventh-day Adventists have experienced a growing sense of unease. People are confused as they sense mixed signals being sent their way by educators and preachers. They sense a loss of conviction concerning the Advent message, uncertainty concerning Adventist identity, and the adoption of open-ended values. In educational circles, could it be that in our concern for academic freedom we have minimized our distinctive beliefs? Has confessional responsibility taken second place, if it has a place at all, to academic freedom? What is the proper relationship between confessional responsibility and academic freedom?

Academic Freedom Limited

In 1987 the Annual Council of the General Conference Committee adopted a statement on academic freedom in Seventh-day Adventist schools. It holds that academic freedom constitutes "the guarantee that teachers and students will be able to carry on the functions of learning, research, and teaching with a minimum of restrictions" in an "atmosphere of open inquiry necessary in an academic community if learning is to be honest and thorough."¹ But it also holds that teaching at any level in Adventist schools must be done "with a due regard for the character and aims of the institution which provides [the teacher] with credentials, and with concern for the spiritual and intellectual needs of [the] students."² Furthermore, the church recognizes that "freedoms are never absolute and that they imply commensurate responsibilities," including "limitations made necessary by the religious aims of a Christian institution."³

The widest liberty may be appropriate for a school of religion in which all points of view, all religions, are given equal value. But it is not appropriate in a church-related school whose fundamental reason for existence is to inculcate the faith and to train workers for the church that founded it. The church, including its schools, is a community of believers, not a debating society.

The beliefs of a church are its greatest treasure; they comprise the fundamental philosophy governing instruction and administration in its schools, and it is obligated to resist all attempts to explain them away. The more certain a church is of its beliefs, the more certain will be its survival and the propagation of its faith. So academic freedom is subject to the limitations imposed by the "religious aims of a Christian institution." This is not a matter of disallowing free investigation, but of subordinating that search to the doctrinal beliefs of the church. By no stretch of the imagination could such limitations be viewed as suppression of academic freedom, except by those who refuse to take confessional responsibility seriously.

Thinkers or Doubters?

God created us to think and to reason, and that ability cannot be limited by any human authority. However, while Christian education is to "train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men's thought,"⁴ it was never intended to train them to become doubters, unable to make distinctions between true and false, right and wrong. To insist on total academic freedom within a confessional institution is to deny the authority of Scripture.

Unfortunately, doubt rests too comfortably in the church's ranks, often in its highest halls of learning. The goal of much Biblical interpretation today is to prove that the Bible does not mean what it says nor say what it means, that there can be no certain knowledge when it comes to God's revelation of Himself. Belief has thus become individualized and every person is a confession unto himself. This situation has led some schools to hire ecumenical faculties, upon which many different Christian denominations, or even world religions, are represented.

Accountability

Teachers in a church-related school are accountable first to the doctrinal beliefs of the church rather than to faculty peers, administration, or professional bodies such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) or accrediting agencies. If a choice must be made between confessional responsibility and academic freedom, confessional responsibility must take precedence. The questions the Christian teacher faces are, "Are all views of equal value? Are all opinions of scholars and teachers of equal value? Will I sacrifice faith to doubt or doubt to faith?"

James T. Draper, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant church in North America, writes: "The sanctity of academic freedom is also being used against conservative Christians today. We are told that the 'fundamentalists' are not really interested in genuine education; they are intent instead on pushing a narrow indoctrination. Furthermore, those in academia never tire of suggesting that 'creedal interference' from constituents may well jeopardize institutional accreditation and drive away the most competent faculty members. Again, academic freedom is a valuable concept when correctly perceived, but it is not a blank check for faculty members to teach anything they please."⁵

Contrary to what one writer in the Adventist Review said recently, Seventh-day Adventists do not distrust education and learning. They distrust educators who, under the guise of academic freedom, do not uphold what the church believes but who instead undermine that corporate confession. What they fear is the neglect, the distortion, the suppression, the "reinterpretation" of the truth as revealed in the Bible. Those who cry the loudest for academic freedom are often the most intolerant of those who hold conservative theological views. Some will whine about all authority but their own. Under the guise of concern for freedom they determine to modify, reinterpret, even destroy the historic faith of the church.

Subversion

Any attempt to undermine the beliefs of the church from the inside is a form of subversion and is morally and ethically unacceptable. One who cannot conscientiously teach what the church believes, who no longer believes what the church confesses, is morally obligated to leave church employment. One is not free to teach views in a confessional institution that are in contradiction to the beliefs of the church to which the institution belongs.

"It would be an irresponsible use of a worker's freedom to press a viewpoint that would endanger the unity of the church body which is as much a part of truth itself as are the formulated statements of doctrine (see Phil 1:27; Rom 15:5-6)."⁶

One may think wrong, but he does not have either the right or the freedom to do wrong. A teacher in a church school has a major responsibility, going far beyond that of a teacher in a secular school. For this reason God's Word says that those "who teach will be judged more strictly" (James 3:1). They must "teach what is in accord with sound doctrine" (Titus 2:1). To teach what is not the beliefs of the institution served would be wrong, and it ought to disturb the conscience. The faith of the church is a fact. To disregard that fact is an act of lawlessness.

Guard the Truth

Academic freedom in the service of confessional responsibility will bow to the fact of the church's faith, because the church has the duty to "guard" the truth that God entrusted to it (1 Tim 6:20) from that which it considers to be harmful to its faith and mission, and to guard those whom God has entrusted to its spiritual care. If it does not do this it will not be the church. Members of a church have rights too, such as the right to be protected in the truth they have accepted, and the right to protest when that truth is misrepresented or adulterated. To guarantee equal freedom to all faiths or interpretations that creep in is self-destructive for any church.

It is not possible to teach a Biblical faith apart from Biblical facts. There are certain things which must remain fixed. Biblical doctrine, the fundamental facts of a church's faith, must remain fixed. Theology, which explores the meaning and application of those facts for a given age, by its very nature is subject to criticism and change. However, theology must not change the fundamental facts in its search for meaning and application. There is, after all, a differentiation to be made between the genuine and the spurious. The faithful are to "hold to what you have until I come" (Rev 2:25). It is the same process by which the early church was able to distinguish between genuine and false gospels in the recognition of the Spirit-inspired Biblical canon.

What should be the attitude of the church toward views which explain away the facts of the faith? Faculty do not decide theological direction in a confessional institution. By virtue of its responsibility to guard the truth and bear witness to the truth, it must resist anyone trying to modify or destroy its beliefs. Any person who cannot hold to the confession of the church that pays the person's salary has already separated from that church. While the church insists on the individual's right to believe as conscience dictates, it is not obligated to retain in its ranks, let alone in its employ, those who dissent from its beliefs. The church must exercise its freedom and right to protect its beliefs and its members from what it considers to be teaching not in harmony with those beliefs.

Who Shall Teach?

Must the church grant the widest liberty to all opinions, and challenge no teacher or teaching? Faculty do not decide theological direction in a confessional institution. The Annual Council maintained that the Adventist Church "reserves the right to employ only those individuals who personally believe in and are committed to upholding the doctrinal tenets of the Church as summarized in the document, 'Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists (1980).'"⁷

Academic freedom in the schools of the church, including Sabbath Schools, is not an end in itself. That freedom is not moral if its result is to undermine and destroy the faith of the church and its institutions, if it creates doubt rather than builds faith. Any other goal for the institutions of the church than building faith is unacceptable. The purpose for the church and its preaching/teaching ministry is "for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:12-13, RSV).

Freedom to research, to investigate, must be maintained. But that freedom does not extend to indoctrinating with that which is tentative, which has not been accepted as fact or truth by the body. Constituents cannot be expected to support sacrificially that which is uncertain and/or tentative. There are some ideas that are wrong, that contradict Scripture, and there are some teachers who are wrong. We must not permit the skeptics to win the arguments by letting our schools drift from uncompromising belief into loosely-held opinion. A confessional school is not a place where nobody can ever be wrong or it would be a place where nobody can ever be right. That would deprive the school of its fundamental subject matter and of its integrity.

Limits

If we are not willing to establish some limits, some parameters, to what can be taught or who can teach in our schools, then we have already decided that anything goes and have flung the door wide open for pluralism of doctrine and teaching faculties. No one would be able to raise objections because there would be no right or wrong views.

Academic freedom for the denominational teacher does "not include the license to express views that may injure or destroy the very community that supports and provides for him."⁸ Therefore, a confessional institution cannot tolerate teachers who, while hiding behind academic freedom, ridicule the beliefs of the church and undermine and destroy the faith of students.

The meeting at Glacier View, which considered issues raised by one of our teachers, is an excellent example of the way in which the church should respond to a challenge to its beliefs. It demonstrates the wisdom of wide counsel, provided that those who do the investigation and render a decision are themselves true to the beliefs of the church. The right to investigate, interpret, and share the results with peers must be maintained. However, when the investigation is concluded and judgments have been reached, the teacher whose views have been under scrutiny must abide by the consensus of peers. If the teacher cannot do this it is the teacher's moral duty to resign the teaching appointment. If that is not voluntarily done, it becomes the moral obligation of the church to release that teacher from employment.

The church has the responsibility and obligation to protect its integrity and identity. "Freedom for the individual grows out of his belonging to the community of Christ. No one is free in the Biblical sense who is out of relationship with God or others. Theological truth, therefore, is affirmed by community study and confirmation."⁹

Confessional Teaching

A good teacher will encourage his students to investigate all views, providing the most accurate sources for that investigation. But that in itself does not fulfill the teaching responsibility of an Adventist teacher in an Adventist classroom. A good Adventist teacher will go beyond such investigation and show the students where the truth lies, as confessed by the church, in relation to all views. For example, in regard to the theory of evolution, the Adventist teacher has a responsibility to expose the student to it, then teach what the church believes regarding creation and human origin, and on what basis it is believed and why. Furthermore, the teacher will unhesitatingly and passionately share with students his or her own confession of faith. Confessional responsibility requires that the personal doctrinal beliefs of the teacher harmonize with those of the church.

There must always be room for differences of opinion on issues that do not involve testing truth. But there must be some control over what our teachers teach when it comes to the essential doctrines held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Proper Relationship

Academic freedom and confessional responsibility are not mutually exclusive. It is not a matter of having one without the other. It is a matter of the proper relationship between the two, with academic freedom subordinate to confessional responsibility. We must always remember that without freedom of thought and inquiry no one could ever come to the faith. Yet at the same time we must assert that without the preservation of the faith no amount of freedom of thought will bring a person to know the truth. The most stable and lasting growth in the church occurs when confessional responsibility is primary.

Education, thinking, intelligence, intellect, investigation, in themselves are not the greatest values. Such things have been valued and employed by some of the most evil forces in human history. The greatest values are faith in Christ and service in His name. If all we do in our schools is teach our students to be clever, to be successful in this world, we have miserably failed. We must always appeal for the highest reaches of intellect among our scholars and students, but always in the context of strong, unshakable convictions and beliefs.

Many who have lost the faith would passionately promote the evolution of Adventism into something that they can accept. In my former denomination I once knew a man who resisted membership in the church until the church had changed sufficiently for him to feel comfortable in its ranks. Must those who believe most fervently give way to those who believe less fervently, and then to those who do not believe at all? The moment Seventh-day Adventists and their educational institutions cease to stand for something definite, the cause is lost and the reason-for-existence collapses. It has happened before to Christian schools.

Danger of Secularizing

Many great universities founded by Christian denominations, such as Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Chicago, have become thoroughly secular, not because thinking and learning were stifled but because the confession of faith was abandoned. Lay businessmen replaced clergy as trustees, professional educators with doctoral degrees from prestigious secular universities replaced them as presidents and administrators. Scholarship was promoted in an intellectual environment where there was to be total freedom from limitations on curriculum and from doctrinal constraints. The study of theology and religion was separated from other disciplines, and resistance to the trend by conservative clergymen was ridiculed. The education taught in these once great Christian schools became thoroughly secularized. Student behavioral standards were drastically modified or abandoned altogether, as was adherence by faculty to a statement of faith. Faculty productivity, in the form of publications, became increasingly important as a criterion for employment, promotion, and tenure. Having begun with the mission of promoting and defending the Christian faith, such schools have gradually evolved into institutions that undermine or oppose it instead.

There is only one justification for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to be engaged in Christian education, and it is found in Christ's commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matt 28:19-20, emphasis supplied).