Faith and Science in Evangelical Colleges

A recent article details the ongoing struggle of Evangelical colleges over the theory of evolution:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-james-clark/science-religion-christian-colleges_b_5565641.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
Beneath this struggle is biblical literalism, which was the conceptual womb of many Evangelical colleges. In the commentary to my most recent book We Make the Road by Walking, I call this the “innocent literal” approach. It is diametrically opposed to what I call “critical literal” approach. (I propose a different alternative altogether – a critical literary approach.)
Innocent (or naive) Biblical literalism lies behind several other struggles too, including:
– Inability or unwillingness to rethink sexual orientation in light of new biological, psychological, and sociological science, resulting in ongoing stigmatization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people, including their own sons and daughters.
– Inability or unwillingness to address the science of global warming, which has staggering consequences for life on our planet.
– Inability or unwillingness to see beyond a facile good-guy/bad-guy typology of the Israel-Palestine situation, which results in a prolongation (even an apocalpyt-ization) of a conflict that needs to be resolved.
– Inability or unwillingness to grapple with full equality for women as well as men, nonChristians as well as Christians, people of all races and nationalities, etc.
Among Evangelicals, innocent literalism is typically called “a high view of Scripture.” It is time for Evangelicals to realize that this is actually an immature view of Scripture. A critical literary approach takes the text in all its granularity more seriously and seeks meaning and truth in all the facets of the text. It is unafraid to ask any question or face any evidence. It takes seriously all dimensions of the text, including the evidence for how the compositions of Scripture evolved over time. It is, in this sense, a much “higher view.”
It is time for Evangelical parents to realize that spending $50,000-100,000+ in lower forms of higher education for their daughters and sons is a bad investment. We need Christian colleges to defect from the innocent-literal approach and dare to actually educate. And we need a new nationwide campus ministry that will also dare to defect from that unhelpful approach. (More on that soon.)
Church leaders, college and university leaders, campus ministry leaders alike – higher education demands a higher view of Scripture than the innocent-literalism that currently holds the purse-strings and pulls the puppet-strings.