The Decline of the Secular University

Abstract

The basic thesis of this provocative and important book is twofold. On the one hand, it is that colleges and universities should not just teach about religion but should also allow distinctive religious perspectives and arguments to be a significant part of academic curricula and of discussions about educational outlooks, meanings, and values in academic communities. On the other hand, the author's thesis is that secularism should not just be assumed as the underlying and pervasive outlook of colleges and universities, but that secularism itself should be taught about, just as religion is now taught about (e.g., in religious studies programs or history courses), in order critically to identify and analyze secularism's own basic assumptions about the nature of reality and the character of responsible human life in the world. Failure in this task means that students are simply being indoctrinated into secularist views without being given opportunity clearly to recognize them as such or to bring them under critical scrutiny.