Florida professor called religious students “bigots”
Prof. Pettigrew on why he was wrong
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Religion is a sensitive topic for many, so discussion of it in the university classroom can be difficult. In my case, religion often comes up in literature classes and I do my best to not impose too much of my own views, lest the discussion turn too much to the religious questions per se and not enough on the literary questions. As I point out to my students, it doesn’t matter what you believe about God, but it does matter what Milton thought about God—at least when you’re reading Milton.
When your class material is religion itself though, things must become muddier. And I’ve heard many stories from colleagues over the years about awkward moments when religious students vigorously advanced their views against evolution or the Big Bang or could not be persuaded to entertain different point of view because “that’s just not what I believe.”
So I have some sympathy for Charles Negy, the angry University of Central Florida prof who recently lashed out at his stridently religious students. According to reports, a small number of Negy’s students argued that their religion, Christianity, was superior to all others, a position some other students, not surprisingly, took issue with. Later, Negy emailed all the students in the class denouncing those who made the pro-Christian claims for their “arrogance and bigotry.”
The key point here—and one that is too often overlooked—is that religion is not the same kind of thing as race. One is born into a race and so there is no sense in which your race can be wrong. It is what it is. Moreover, all claims of overall differences in racial abilities has been thoroughly debunked (I recommend picking up a copy of Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man on this point).
Religion on the other hand, is a set of beliefs, and beliefs can be right or wrong. Further, in a wide variety of ways, religions contradict each other, so they can’t all be right. So of course a religious person would think their dogma was right while others were wrong. What would be the point of having a religion if you didn’t think it was right?
In a strange way then, the students in this class were doing what religious people ought logically to do if they really believe—try to convince others that their position is better than others. The reason it came off as stupid and mean-spirited is not that they were arrogant in their beliefs, but that the beliefs themselves are illogical and unsupported.
The fact that most religious beliefs—when considered objectively—are patently silly has led many (including scholars) to treat religion as off limits in the way that race is. Since everyone knows that no one is impregnated without sex, or that angels don’t really talk to people, or that folks are not reborn over and over again, we avoid the topic by deciding that decent people don’t dwell on such things.
But ideas should never be beyond debate. Not at university at least.
Todd Pettigrew is an associate professor of English at Cape Breton University.