TRANSMITTING WISDOM: THE NECESSITY OF CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY IN CHRISTIAN TEACHING *JAMES L. SAUER* Director of the Library Eastern College I want to thank Mr. Perkins for opening the issue of teaching and its relationship to ideology. [Richard Perkins, "The Place of Ideology in Christian Liberal Arts: Why We Need More `Ought' and Less `Is'," Faculty Dialogue, Fall/Winter, 1986/87] But I am afraid that his proposed solution of substituting "ideological analysis" for the conservative ideology of Western Christendom is more destructive to the aim of education than the mainstream value system he challenges. Recognizing what he perceives as a conservative bias in evangelical Christianity-at-large, he has proposed a mechanism for subverting the transmission of revealed, rational, and empirical truth through a theological sociology of permanent agnosticism. I disagree with Mr. Perkins in a number of areas: First, I feel he has made at least one false assumption; secondly, I feel he has inadequately presented the conservative position; and thirdly, I think he has solved the problem of "hidden agenda" ideological teaching by embracing the ideology which deconstructs our value system: Leftism. The solution ought rather to be the open embracing of the values of order, law, piety, redeemed creativity, and economic productivity--in a phrase, Biblical Conservatism. Let us first examine Mr. Perkins' assumptions. His first assumption can't be argued with: "None of us within the liberal arts have a choice or not to engage in ideologically based teaching." Agreed, we teach from within a given perspective--the Christian Tradition. Nor is his second assumption disputable: "Ideological commitments are most influential in ways contrary to the ideals of liberal learning to the degree that these commitments are either denied or ignored." It is one thing to take as stand, fly the colors, and proclaim a creed; it is quite another thing to card stack, and engage in subtle indoctrination. It is with Mr. Perkins' third major assumption, however, that I disagree. Mr. Perkins asserts that "Most evangelical Christians are ideological conservatives. Our evangelical colleges are full of conservatives--wall to wall conservatives." On the contrary, I think that most evangelical Christians are habitual, unthinking conservatives--and would be hard pressed to define a thoughtful ideological conservative worldview. I think our Christian colleges are much more liberal than Mr. Perkins would admit. I think that Mr. Perkins' opinion on this last assumption, as well as my own opinion, are not based wholly upon any hard data, but upon our respective experiences and intuitions. (Perhaps some scholar has already done work on the theological, political, philosophic, and denominational composition of evangelical higher education--but I am unaware of it.) Mr. Perkins certainly offers no backup for his assumption; and I can offer only a few contrary impressions. First, there is a clear emphasis on must Christian colleges for "social activism." Liberal organizations like Evangelicals for Social Action flourish; while there are no similar conservative organizations. The culture of the Christian collegiate feeds off a number of "social activist" journals: The Otherside, Sojourners, Christianity and Crisis, Daughters of Sarah, and The Wittenburg Door. Again, no Christian conservative journal exists in this category. Couple this with growth of leftward theologies--liberation theology, process theology, biblical feminism, antinomianism, pro-homosexuality, pro-choice abortionism, and socialist solidarity--which one encounters here and there on the Christian college campus, and the notion that conservatives are a dominant force in Christian higher education comes into question. If conservatives are in a majority, they are an apathetic, inarticulate majority. Mr. Perkins sets up the strawman of a conservative establishment in order to have an ideology to use his "ideological analysis" against. The only problem is, the conservatives aren't in charge. The second error Mr. Perkins falls into involves his failure to define conservatism adequately. First, one is struck by the near-Marxist definition of ideology as an attempt "to explain and justify a method of distributing goods unequally." Would any conservative use an economic framework to define "ideology"? I think not. Nor does Mr. Perkins seem to be aware of the debated issue among a number of conservative theorists as to whether the term "ideology" is a pejorative; and whether conservatism is an "ideology," or whether it is the embodiment of all "anti-ideology." Conservatism according to this view is the negation of all views of social perfectionism. Mr. Perkins' choice of capitalism as a central element in conservative definition is also problematic. Actually, capitalism is a "liberal" movement. It is only in the last 50 years that capitalism has been pushed into common cause with the traditionalism conservatives. The Whigs have been forced to join the Tories in order to fight the Jacobins. As George H. Nash points out in his study, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945, the genius of contemporary conservatism is that it has brought together three separate "legs"--Traditionalism, Anti-Communism, and libertarian Capitalism; to form the present movement. If a fourth "leg" could be noted; it would be the emergence of the Evangelical Right. Perkins further suggests that conservatism is individualist. Again, the Burkean tradition argues for importance of "the little platoon" and amazingly dovetails with the current New Christian Right emphasis on the centrality of the family. Mr. Perkins' definition of conservatism presents it as a me-centered, materialist philosophy; when it is community centered, spiritual philosophy. I recommend for Mr. Perkins an examination of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, and also that he listen very closely to the moral law epistemology of the entire New Christian Right. Men like the late Francis Schaeffer spoke from a biblical framework; a framework which called for compassion within community; and castigated the materialistic hedonism of the "personal peace and affluence" crowd. Finally, I think Mr. Perkins errs by his advocacy of a system for making every academic subject a tool for his ideology. His doctrine of "ideological analysis," when it is translated into other academic areas empties them of traditional value and content, and fills them with relative value and ideological meaning. Not being content to teach sociology in sociology classes, he now suggests that we teach sociology in everyone else's class as well. The charge is borne out by his own words. Art and music stop being about art and music, and become lectures in "ideological significance" and "social stratification." Biology becomes a gab fest concerning the effects of technology on "the democratic process." Theology becomes a tool for studying "social class," and biblical study is turned into an apology for social relevance as we see how Jesus responded to "women, the rich, the political rulers, and the poor." My favorite plan of Mr. Perkins is to purge classist counter-revolutionaries like Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Johnson, Lewis, and Chesterton from our literature, and to replace them with "revolutionary leaders,...the vanquished, the powerless, the poor; more from those people who do not ordinarily get much of a chance to write at all." As the great poet of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Tse Tung, said: "Let a thousand flowers blossom." Mr. Perkins' proposals are self-refuting for anyone who believes that Western Christendom has produced any culture worth preserving. If this kind of social deconstruction is indicative of the values clarification, or social awareness, or ideological analysis, or whatever you wish to call the politicizing and constant critiquing of received wisdom, then perhaps Mr. Perkins is right and it is time to reconstruct the Christian college curriculum. But the revision we need may not be in the direction Mr. Perkins envisions.