3 Introduction In a recent editorial published in the Chronicles of Higher Education, an Ivy League professor warned of the danger to “skeptical and unfettered inquiry” occurring at “intellectually compromised institutions” — namely, evangelical colleges and universities — that “erect religious tests for truth” or arbitrarily “draw lines around what is regarded as acceptable teaching and research.” According to the author, the “primacy of reason has been abandoned” at such places, given their naïve faith in the truth of Scripture — a faith that is impervious to any scientific evidence suggesting otherwise. According to him, any statement of faith that dogmatically establishes a set of nonnegotiable doctrinal commitments unavoidably interferes with the academic freedom of the scholar to pursue the truth wherever it may lead. As such, these Christian institutions of higher learning are unquestionably guilty of subverting the “core academic mission by this or that species of dogma,” and thus do not meet the strictly rational criteria of the secular research university. At Cedarville University, we have a statement of faith that guides and structures our academic inquiry. No doubt many in the secular academy, like the author above, will accuse us of indoctrinating rather than educating our students. To this we reply with a question: What is the real difference between the two? The word educate in Latin (educatus) means “to lead” forth in a definite direction. All educators, including those at secular institutions, begin somewhere and lead their students somewhere; at Cedarville, we openly acknowledge that our fundamental starting point is the Word of God, which commands us to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov. 22:6) so that he will not depart from the only foundation of wisdom and knowledge: Christ (Col. 2:3). There is no such thing as “skeptical and unfettered inquiry” — not even in the public university. The so-called intellectual neutrality of knowledge, such as the scholarly detachment from religious beliefs or value-free inquiry, is a myth. No one can rationally start with an open mind, objectively analyzing evidence in order to evaluate the credibility of a particular worldview or system of thought. Rather, it is one’s personal worldview that ultimately gives intelligible meaning and interpretation to all the facts of his or her experiences. Because one’s fundamental beliefs are the principles that inform one’s scholarship, no one can impartially handle his or her basic beliefs or articles of faith as objects of scholarly study — that is, as just another point of view among others within the
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