I am a Christian.
I am not a Marxist or a feminist or a deconstructionist. I am not a liberal or a neo-liberal or a conservative. I am not a monarchist or an oligarchist or an anarchist or any other political “ist.”
I am a Christian.
While this is all well and good in my personal-private life, I feel there is no room for Christ in my "public" life as an educator, scholar, and artist. As "secular" enterprises in a secularized Western world, academics and the arts resist religious critical perspectives. What is unfortunate about this is that I have been forced to adopt an academic and artistic "mask" of sorts, to look through secularized spectacles instead of being allowed to describe the world as I see it, through my own, more authentic, Christ-colored glasses. Academics and artists who ascribe to these other ideological perspectives find outlets for their critical theorizing--consider bell hooks, the acclaimed Black feminist; or Theodor Adorno, the Marxist critic. Indeed, in critical theory, we are taught how one might use any number of secular-humanist perspectives as a “lens” through which to do scholarship, to see and analyze the world. These critical theories are meant to empower one's educational practice, to direct one's scholarship, to inform one's art. In most cases, the perspective are acceptable, publishable, teachable, and (depending on my audience) laudable one.
But not so, I sense, with my Christianity. Not to fall into the all-too-familiar Christian persecution complex, but I sense if I attempted to teach and embody a Christ-informed critical perspective, I would encounter significantly more resistance in the public sphere--NOT to my ideas, which would encounter resistance no matter what they were, but to my choice of critical perspective.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I sense if I were to use Christianity as the lens through which I did my research (I unavoidably read everything through this ideological lens, anyway, whether it makes it into my actual writing or not), I would not be publishable or hireable.[1] I would be outcast.
But not so, I sense, with my Christianity. Not to fall into the all-too-familiar Christian persecution complex, but I sense if I attempted to teach and embody a Christ-informed critical perspective, I would encounter significantly more resistance in the public sphere--NOT to my ideas, which would encounter resistance no matter what they were, but to my choice of critical perspective.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I sense if I were to use Christianity as the lens through which I did my research (I unavoidably read everything through this ideological lens, anyway, whether it makes it into my actual writing or not), I would not be publishable or hireable.[1] I would be outcast.
Well, that last comment may be a little harsh. In truth, everyone I work with knows my religious affiliation—I make sure of it—and I have yet to receive any real feelings of exclusion or prejudice because of it. Indeed, one of my favorite colleagues is a woman whose lifestyle and politics are completely opposed to my own. . .granted, I’m not certain how much she knows I disagree with her in specifics, but she must have an idea.
No, the truth, I think, is simply this: if I was to attempt to publish as a “Christ-ist critic,” the secular-humanist academic world just wouldn’t know what to do with me.
So, since I don't feel a place for me there, I've come here. I'll write, and I'll attempt to develop myself as a "Christ-centered" scholar on my own time, in my own space, under an assumed name, and. . . I don't know. I'll see what happens.
[1] A work on rhetoric that came out recently—Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth Century England by Ryan J. Stark—seems to be written from a Christian-informed rhetorical theoretical perspective. Are there more writings like this?
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