A Religious Perspective on Writing and Teaching History

Abstract

This collection of essays grew out of a 1994 conference sponsored by the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals. The conference considered two issues: the relationship between religious belief and the writing and teaching of American history, and the role of religion in the mainstream research university. The collection features essays by secular historians as well as believers. Most of the believers are evangelical Protestants. Many of the contributors address what Peter Novick in That Noble Dream (1988) called the objectivity question-whether it is possible to write valuefree history that explains truly the actions of human beings who lived in the past. Significantly, all of the contributors who express an opinion on the question, believers as well as secular historians, take a relativist rather than an objectivist stance. The contributors also respond to other manifestations of the epistemological crisis within the historical profession: the fragmentation of the discipline of history into increasingly specialized, narrowly defined fields; the abdication (perhaps as an outgrowth of relativism and fragmentation) of the task of synthesis; and the abandonment of ideas of unitary truth and universalism in favor of particularist perspectives based on race, ethnicity, religion, ideology, sex, or sexual orientation.' Undoubtedly the basic text for the ISAE conference, and one frequently cited by the contributors, was The Soul of the American University (1994) by George M. Marsden. In it Marsden traced the decline of a Protestant presence and influence in mainstream American universities from the colonial period to the present, which he says ended in the virtual establishment of nonbelief (p. 6) and the exclusion of normative religious perspectives from academic life. He also prescribed a first step in restoring a place for religious perspectives in higher learning that would seem to describe the intention of most of the believers who contributed to Religious Advocacy and American History: religiously committed scholars must establish academic credibility for expressed religious viewpoints (p. 439).