Academic freedom vs. doctrinal faithfulness in evangelical colleges

Academic freedom is a significant value in scholarship and should be promoted and encouraged.  Without free scholarly inquiry, there is not much point in organizing into learning communities/universities.  In recent times, evangelical Christian colleges (the schools that were founded around evangelical values in the past 100+ years) have especially emphasized academic freedom.  In the desire and need for more majors, the curriculum has shifted from the old 'Bible College' model to a 'university' model.  The consequence, with some exceptions, is that core requirements in Bible and theology have been reduced in emphasis and institutional significance.

In the process, the role of the doctrinal statements upon which these schools were founded has shifted from being a driving force in terms of ethos among faculty and replaced by academic freedom as the more significant value.  While faculty have to sign these doctrinal statements, in reality, the value of academic freedom supersedes the documents.  So, the adage seems to work, "Values on the wall vs. values down the hall." To paraphrase the words of a president (who is himself theologically conservative) at a famous evangelical college in the midwest, doctrinal disciplinary matters are the purview of the Church, not the college.  I think it's fair to say we are in a phase that is "accommodationist."  If a prof has views that are in some ways in contradictions to the doctrinal statement, the "don't ask, don't tell" approach will be applied.  No one college wants the publicity of a "witch hunt" or "heresy trials" on the front page of the CT website!

In my field (Old Testament exegesis and history and archaeology of the ancient Near East), the debates have shifted considerably among Christian college professors. A previous generation of  evangelical scholars in evangelical colleges (say, 20 years ago) would have been trained at the best universities in the world and produced (and continue to produce) first rate research.  So in this respect, nothing has changed. Younger profs also receive their degrees from great programs and conduct their research at the highest levels of scholarship. The marked difference is that a former generation  deeply anchored their research within a confessional framework and a broad apologetic context: "We are studying archaeology and history to demonstrate that the Bible is true." Theological loyalty and accountability was first and academic freedom came second.  Profs knew they were ultimately serving the Church at the college.  World missions and world evangelization, coupled with a deep conviction of the authority, sufficiency and normative nature of God's Word were all strong identity markers.

Nowadays, however, the focus of research in Christian colleges and universities has shifted from this apologetic bend and is now directed more specifically toward academic inquiry divorced from theological considerations.  While this is clearly not the case everywhere, the sense of obligation to a doctrinal statement stems out of heritage rather than deep personal convictions.  The sense that the ground is/has shifted is real when you consider some of the discussions going in these colleges.  The  question of the historicity of Adam is now an accepted debate.  As Biologos (a group with deep evangelical ties; see the endorsements) says on their website: we don't make a value judgment whether Adam was real or not.  I can't imagine this statement to have stood without an uproar only a few years ago.  Now, however, it's pretty much accepted that you can actually be evangelical and hold to a non-historical view of Adam.   Within this accommodationism, inerrancy is re-imagined so that it conforms to views on the Biblical text that clearly align with the classical higher critical tradition:  David didn't write the Psalms that have the "of David" superscription (but see Hebrews 3 and 4 on Ps 95); the Pentateuch has a Mosaic "core" but we're not sure at all "how much" was actually written at the time of Moses (some of its composition, it's argued, occurred as late as the 7th cent. BC).  Deutero-Isaiah is taken as fact (as opposed to a compositional unity of the book of Isaiah that harks back to Isaiah in the 8th Cent. BC).   What is striking is to read previous generations of mainstream critical scholarship (G.E. Wright, G. Mendenhall,  John Bright, among others) and find the discourse of current evangelical scholars remarkably similar. In this climate, I often ask myself, where is the sense of wonder at God's providential activity in empowering these writers to write the very word of God? Unfortunately, it seems this sense of awe is now "ein Anachronismus."
 
The real challenge for these schools will be how they choose to define themselves in the short-term future:  Christ-centered schools? Or schools with a Christian heritage?  There is a world of difference between the two!  You know the narrative: When Harvard moved away from its Puritan-evangelical roots, other colleges were founded. Let's pray history doesn't repeat itself and let's pray our flagship evangelical institutions remain the "Harvards [or Stanfords] of evangelicalism" rather than only other "Harvards" and "Stanfords" of the world.