Religious Studies and Woke Indoctrination

One of the many reasons a traditional Anglican university or college is needful is that what passes for “religious studies” at many universities and colleges is – how to put this nicely – to be avoided, more woke indoctrination than weighty study of religion.

Mark Pulliam has written a withering critique of this situation in the academy.  Here is a sample:

In addition to the LGBTQ agenda, religious studies scholars promote a litany of issues that coincide with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: Marxism/socialism, immigration reform, climate change, criminal justice reform, and identity politics. The ideologues who preach this secular gospel of social justice are supported by a flotilla of sympathetic publications, such as The Immanent Frame, Religion and Politics, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Sojourners, and Religion Dispatches.

The connection to religion is often very loose, bordering on non-existent. One woke religious studies scholar describes herself this way: “I am a scholar of religion with particular interests in the history of capitalism and labor; religion in the Americas; feminist, queer, and critical race theory; and theory and method in the study of religion.”

On many university faculties, there is overlap between religious studies and, for example, African American studies. At Princeton, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., a former president of the AAR, chairs the Department of African American Studies while also serving on the faculty of the Department of Religion. At the University of Texas, religious studies scholar Ashley Coleman Taylor describes her interests as “Black Feminism, Black Genders and Sexualities, Pragmatism, Queer of Color Critique, Africana Religions, Puerto Rican Studies, Atlanta Studies.” She is on the faculty of the Department of Religious Studies but also teaches in the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. The disciplines are seemingly interchangeable.

Apparently so.

It turns out that the Matthew 25 Gathering in 2019 chose as a main speaker a young academic who is very much within this trend of religious studies as woke indoctrination.  Oh, Dr. David Leong does not foam at the mouth and seems more sane than other woke professors.  Yet by his own admission, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is required reading for his Freshman introductory Christian Theology  course.

One or more Freshman students have asked him why they were reading Coates for a Christian Theology course.  A good question indeed.  Leong tries to answer the question in his Gathering lecture.  I do not think he does so well, but see for yourself, beginning at 12 minutes into this video.

The rest of his lecture reveals some more wokeness although, again, I am sure he is not as high on the wokeness meter as many.  At the same time, I find his endorsement of Soong-Chan Rah’s work telling.

Remember the Matthew 25 Initiative and its Gatherings are sponsored by the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a mostly orthodox Anglican denomination for those not familiar with it.  This trend of Religious Studies as woke indoctrination is not just a Berkeley/Oberlin Leftist fringe development.  It is just about everywhere in academia as well as in the church where traditional orthodox have not successfully rejected it.

Some therefore advise prospective ministers not to take religion courses at the undergraduate level, and I suspect that this is good advice for most students at most universities.  I also think it all the more behooves traditional Anglicans to provide alternatives at the undergraduate level, including creating Anglican colleges.