another reason for TRACS?

"Negresit, n'avem indrazneala sa ne punem alaturi sau in rindul unora din aceia cari se lauda singuri. Dar ei, prin faptul ca se masoara cu ei insisi, sint fara pricepere. Noi, insa, nu ne laudam dincole de masura noastra, ci in masura marginilor, pe cari le-a insemnat Dumnezeu cimpului nostru ca sa ajungem pina la voi."
--Pavel

 

I wasn't going to respond to this, but seeing as how Russell is continuing to flog it unmercifully, I think that I will.

As I understand it, a critical aspect of academic and professional writing is cogency and intelligence.

Uncle Janko's post that offended Russell had interesting things to say in response to what I had written about TRACS. I respect that, and I don't think that use of some colorful speech detracts in any way from the point that he made.

Perhaps his choice of phrase would be inappropriate in formal professional writing. But Degreeinfo is an informal internet discussion group, not a published journal or a DL trade publication.

In my personal opinion, Russell's jokes and banter are probably just as disruptive to serious discussion as is an occasional "off color" word. They are certainly as out of place in formal academic and professional writing.

Nevertheless, it is precisely those kind of "transgressions" that keep us sane and human. Without them we would be little more than machines.

Perhaps part of the problem is the on-line medium. What we are doing here is not informal verbal conversation exactly, but it isn't formal professional writing either. It's hard to strike a balance that's comfortable for everyone.

 

Hi BillDayson: I thought maybe if I just quoted the Bible
my *language* wouldn't upset anybody. Peace, peace...

 

I can't believe that Steve Levicoff is missing this thread.


Bruce

 

me neither...

 

What I was hoping someone might wish to respond to, I guess mostly for personal reasons, is the possible realtionship between the TRACS doctrinal stand and the "guide for research papers" of a TRACS school which I asked about above.

 

addendum

...that question seems at least of equal importance to academics and professionalism as Janko's word choice.

 

DegreeInfo is NOT a place of formal academic and professional writing , i.e., none of us are writing a thesis/dissertation when we post. So while your point is well taken that neither off color language, nor jokes and banter, are acceptable in formal academic writing, it is not germaine to my post.

DegreeInfo IS a public forum where academics and professionals post, and many who are not lurk and read. And since we do have a forum for "Jokes & Banter," this would seem to be in order.

Perhaps we need a forum titled "Off Color, Vulgar & Profanity." Those who do not appreciate such would not visit that particular forum, and the three or four who do could have at it.

 

Bill Grover,

I apologize this thread was hi-jacked, it was not intentional.

 

Hi Bill:
I begin to understand why Melanchthon drove Luther a little bit nuts. (Can I say nuts?)
It might be interesting to see which came first, the chicken or the chickenegg, in comparing the TRACS confessional requirement and the school requirement you mentioned. I suspect that I am even more conservative than you are, so the book restriction doesn't bother me as much--especially in a controlled setting. I also wonder how much of a restriction it really is. My guess--and it's only a guess--is that the school in question either 1) does not want people reading, say, Hartshorne and thinking Hartshorne's evangelical/basing their own intellectual development through a paper or course upon sources not really evangelical or 2) does not want people wandering around in a prissy way (can I say prissy?) complaining about going to this school and being forced to read liberal stuff at an avowedly evangelical school or 3) coming to mistaken conclusions about what the school wants to transmit to its students as far as doctrinal content is concerned.
Even at my own denominational seminary, which is as conservative as BJU (can I say BJU?) on a left-right spectrum, tho sharply different in its theology, does not hesitate to discuss fully--and usually fairly--points of view which would be utterly rejected by the denomination and never personally espoused by any of the seminary professors.
My suspicion is that the evangelical requirement at the school you mention may be designed just as much to keep the discussion open to all the varieties of evangelicalism instead of narrowing down to this or that one of the partisanships you listed, as it is to keep various forms of liberalism (can I say liberalism?) from creeping in.
"Acum dar ramin aceste trei: credinta, nadejdea si dragostea; dar cea mai mare dintre eie este dragostea."--Pavel

 

TRACS (for Bill)

Bill’s Question: Therefore, I wonder if a TRACS conservative creedal requisite could be used, or misconstrued, to influence a school's curricula detrimentally. Could the zeal to teach conservatism exclusively dampen valuable learning? What I hope is that I am applying the above guidelines too stringently or that this example of one school is not typical of the other TRACS accredited institutions in general. Any answers?

Bill,

Here are my thoughts. I don't think that TRACS imposes the policy you mentioned on the anonymous school in question. I think this policy ("The student should use mainline evangelical sources that uphold historical Christianity") is exclusive to the school you mentioned.

At Liberty Baptist (RA/TRACS school), one of the three texts for the Gospel of John class was by a writer who held far more liberal views than the other two (D. A. Carson and Andreas Koestenberger). While this first author identified himself as an evangelical, the ideology of the assigned reading for the class was by no means monolithic.

I respectfully disagree with the premise that to become a theologically mature Christian, one needs to use both liberal and conservative sources. Need I also read a commentary on John by a Muslim or a Mormon? I do not think that their perspectives would be helpful. Since liberalism and orthodox Christianity are quite different, i.e. many liberals deny the deity of Christ or the historicity of the Bible, I am not sure that their perspective is necessarily helpful either. It can be difficult for students to differentiate between a text being used to provide another perspective, perhaps for the sake of argument, or the text being used to convey the doctrinal position of the school.

I think that the school is within their rights to state that students “should use mainline evangelical sources that uphold historical Christianity”. Liberalism and orthodox Christianity are opposed to one another, and only one version of events can be true. If the school wants to defend truth, it has that right. If a liberal school wishes to defend the naturalistic or existential worldview as truth and state that their students should use sources like Barth or Wellhausen, but not Thiessen or Walvoord, they have that right.

While I think that there is value in being exposed to the arguments of the other side, one can develop critical thinking skills within the boundaries of either camp.

Dave

 

=============================================
B
"hetoimoi aei pros apologian", 1 Pet 3

 

Wait a minute. Are we discussing a ThD or a DMin program? It might make a difference.

 

What is this? How is it relevant to this thread? What language is this? Who is Pavel?

This is way too esoteric for me.

 

I'm not.

(If the smileys were working, there would be a big-assed grin here.)

 

TRACS Part 1 of 3

Well, if I must . . .

This is what I wrote on this very issue in When the TRACS Stop Short back in 1994.
____________________________

The Church-State Ramifications of TRACS

One of the most essential issues inherent in the recognition of TRACS by the United States Department of Education that has not been addressed significantly is its ramifications under the principles of constitutional law. We live in an era of social and political hostility toward religion in general, and Christianity in particular, and not to engage in an examination of this issue would amount to negligence.

As in the realm of Christianity, church-state affairs have their own set of doctrines. Before looking at the specific issue of TRACS, it may be helpful to provide a brief survey of how the law impacts religion in general.

The Constitutional Basis for Religious Rights

The entire realm of law and its impact on religion can be gleaned from the first sixteen words of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The religion clauses of the First Amendment can further be broken down into the "Establishment Clause," which forbids the government from any action that could be construed as establishing religion, and the "Free Exercise Clause," which forbids the government from interfering with the right of an individual or group to exercise their beliefs. Needless to say, on more than one occasion the two clauses have conflicted with each other.

The impact of the First Amendment comes, for better or worse, not as much through the words themselves as through the way they are interpreted by civil courts at the local, state, and federal levels.

There are essentially three schools of thought regarding constitutional interpretation and the intersection of religion and law in the United States. In brief, they are:

* Accommodationist. Accommodationists hold that religion is a preferred freedom, often called "the first freedom" because of its position in the First Amendment, and that the government may accommodate religious beliefs without violating constitutional principles. Accommodationists acknowledge that the First Amendment prevents the United States from establishing a "state church," but otherwise feel that America is a Christian nation and should allow Christianity to be expressed in areas such as public education and government life.

* Benevolent neutrality. This methodology holds that the government may accommodate religious beliefs if it does so in a neutral manner, and that laws or other government action may benefit religion if such benefit is incidental and not intended as a primary effect.

* Separationist. The separationist school of thinking holds that there should be no positive intersection of religion and law, i.e., that there be a total separation of church and state and that, while the government must acknowledge the religious freedoms of individuals, it should not accommodate corporate religious activities on a national scale through official sanction.

An easy way to differentiate the three positions is to look at a prominent issue such as religion in public education. There are two primary types of religious expression in public schools: organized school prayer and equal access. School prayer per se normally takes place in the context of the school day, is sponsored or mandated by the school itself (hence, it has government endorsement), and, even though it may be voluntary in nature, students feel compelled to participate. Equal access, on the other hand, consists of activities such as Bible-study clubs that are student-initiated rather than state-mandated, take place in non-curricular periods, and are voluntary in both nature and practice.

The accommodationist would support both organized school prayer and equal access; separationists tend to be against both school prayer and equal access. Those holding to the benevolent neutrality position would stand against school prayer because it suggests government sponsorship and coercion, but would support voluntary equal access activities as an expression of student free exercise and free speech rights. (If you haven't yet figured it out, I'm in the benevolent neutrality camp.)

It's easy to stereotype these positions according to a person's religious or political belief system, but that oversimplifies the issue. For example, most people assume that the separationist position is represented by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. True. However, church-state separation is also the historical position of many evangelical, and even Fundamental, fellowships including Baptist churches (to the extent that the state of Rhode Island was founded as a "safe haven" for Baptists who had been persecuted by Congregationalists in the other New England states), Mennonites, evangelical Friends, and a host of other born-again, Bible-believing churches.

Yet when all the theorizing is said and done, there's another distinction to be made about the intersection of religion and law. As pastors, theologians, educators, and scholars, we tend to pontificate about the way things ought to be. That, however, is not as relevant as the way things are. This is the is-versus-ought distinction, and it's important that we understand that, in terms of TRACS' approval by the Department of Education, civil courts decide cases on the basis of the is, not the ought.

Another relevant factor in the adjudication of cases by civil courts is the doctrine of stare decisis (literally, "the decision stands"), also known as the principle of precedent. While all religious issues are ultimately ruled by the First Amendment, courts generally decide cases on the basis of similar cases that have been adjudicated in the past. For better or worse, these decisions are also influenced by current legal thinking and methodologies, as well as by the political philosophies of judges that may be sitting on a given court at the time a case is heard.

The key question we must address here is: If the Department of Education's approval of TRACS were to be challenged through the judicial system, how might a court rule in terms of the constitutionality of that recognition?

(Continued)

 

TRACS Part 2 of 3

TRACS and the Lemon Test

In the early 1970's, the United States Supreme Court was presented with two cases which raised questions as to statutes in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island that provided state aid to church-related elementary and secondary schools through the reimbursement for the cost of teachers' salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials in secular subjects in Pennsylvania and the supplementation of teachers' salaries in Rhode Island. The two cases were consolidated under the name Lemon v. Kurtzman, and the Court's decision was published in June 1971.<2<

Declaring that both statutes were unconstitutional, the Court articulated a three-prong test for determining the constitutionality of statutes. The test holds that for a statute to be constitutional, the following three conditions must be met:

In addition to statutes, the Lemon test has been held applicable to local laws, governmental policies and procedures, and other governmental actions dealing with religion or religious entities. The criteria have since been applied to everything from the display of nativity scenes on government property to school prayer and other public education cases. Most recently, in the 1992 case of Lee v. Weisman, the Court affirmed the Lemon test in ruling that invocations and benedictions offered in the course of public high school graduation ceremonies were unconstitutional.<4<

If a law, policy, procedure, or other government action violates any of the three prongs of the Lemon test, that action is unconstitutional. And, if the Department of Education's approval of TRACS were to be challenged in a civil court, that recognition could be declared a violation of all three prongs of the test:

* The act of recognizing TRACS may appear to have a secular purpose - maintaining quality standards in programs of higher education. However, the Department's approval is specifically geared toward the recognition of a religious accrediting agency whose sole purpose is the accreditation of Christian programs.

* The Department's approval of TRACS advances religion in general, and evangelical Christianity in particular. While you or I may not have a problem with such an endorsement, the courts have consistently construed that the advancement of religion over non-religion, or of one particular faith over another, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

* The courts are likely to construe the monitoring of TRACS by the Department of Education to be an excessive entanglement of government with a pervasively Christian agency.

As a side note, the same issues could theoretically be raised about the American Association of Bible Colleges and the Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools, both of which have specific doctrinal bases and both of which are also recognized by the Department of Education. However, AABC was approved by the Department in 1952 (almost twenty years before the Lemon test was articulated), and AARTS was approved in 1974 (only three years after the Lemon opinion was written and before it was commonly applied to other issues). The Association of Theological Schools and the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education do not fall into this area, as they do not have denomination-specific doctrinal statements and do not commonly discriminate against particular religious faiths. For the three accrediting agencies recognized by the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation, the Lemon test is irrelevant since COPA is a non-governmental agency.

TRACS and the Everson Test

The ultimate arbiter of the law in the United States is the Supreme Court, and while limited space prevents me from engaging in a major treatise on the adjudication of religious issues, I can provide the Court's primary guidelines on interpreting legal questions in this area in one brief quote from the case of Everson v. Board of Education:

Everson was a 1947 case which affirmed the right of state to reimburse bus fares for children enrolled in parochial schools. While the issue at trial may seem similar to the statutes adjudicated twenty-four years later in Lemon, the Court decided Everson based on the "child benefit" theory: the aid to the schools was permissible because it was indirect (through reimbursement to the parents) rather than direct (through reimbursement to the schools).

The principles enumerated in Everson, however, have direct relevance to the Department of Education's recognition of TRACS. In light of TRACS' doctrinal statement, for example, the Department ends up not only endorsing one religion (Christianity), but also preferring a particular doctrinal system within Christianity insofar as TRACS specifically enumerates policies vis-…-vis creation, historicity, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and other doctrines.

Additionally, through their monitoring and approval of TRACS, the Department violates not only the entanglement prong of the Lemon test, but the holding in Everson that the government can, neither openly nor secretly, "participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice-versa."

TRACS and the Larkin Test

In the early 1980's, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had a statute that prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages within 500 feet of a school or church if the governing body of the school or church filed a written objection to the application of a liquor license. Grendel's Den, a restaurant in Cambridge located ten feet away from the Holy Cross Armenian Catholic Parish, sued in federal court after the church objected to its liquor license and, in the 1982 case of Larkin v. Grendel's Den, the United States Supreme Court cited the Lemon test in ruling that it was unconstitutional for the government to grant such veto authority to the church.

 

TRACS Part 3 of 3

The Court held that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with zoning statutes that insulated schools and churches from businesses selling alcoholic beverages, but because the church assumed a role normally residing in a governing agency, the statute failed both the effect and entanglement prongs of the Lemon test. Then-Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote for the Court:

The Larkin test is implicated in the Department of Education's recognition of TRACS, since the Department's approval gives TRACS, a pervasively religious agency, the right to determine the accreditation status of institutions of higher education. It is easy to argue that the same right is granted to any accrediting agency, whether one of the regionals or a specialized accreditor. The difference, however, is that the other agencies, including those that accredit schools in particular professional fields, are not religious agencies and, therefore, do not violate the Larkin test.

Summary of Church-State Concerns

The combined Lemon, Everson, and Larkin tests indicate that the recognition of TRACS by the Department of Education and the granting of authority for TRACS to determine the credibility of religious colleges, universities, and seminaries, is a direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The key issue is not whether TRACS has the right to accredit Christian schools; there's no doubt that they do. The question is whether their accreditation should be granted governmental recognition that conveys benefits to those schools through the funding of students' educational programs.

At the same time, the issue is not whether students are able to secure government financial assistance to aid their higher education; there's no doubt that they can and should be able to do so. There is a myriad of Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries that are accredited by non-Christian agencies such as the regional accreditors, and the ability of students to secure financial aid is appropriate as an extension of the "child benefit" doctrine enumerated in Everson. In these cases, the aid goes to the schools indirectly, as a result of the students' choice to attend those schools.<7<

The determination of a school's institutional quality by a regional accrediting agency or by a non-sectarian agency that addresses religious institutions, such as the Association of Theological Schools or the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (neither of which have pervasively Christian doctrinal statements), is in the best tradition of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and does not implicate the Establishment Clause by violating any of the judicial tests discussed here. Unfortunately, this is not the case with TRACS.

One final word is appropriate regarding the church-state connotations of TRACS' approval by the Department of Education. Many schools claim that their degree-granting authority comes from God and not the government (which is an absurdity - see my discussion of the lack of biblical guidelines on academic degrees in Name It and Frame It). They claim that their right to engage in Christian education is affirmed by the doctrine of church-state separation. Witness, for example, the doctrinal statement of Luther Rice Bible Seminary, an institution accredited by TRACS which holds, in relevant part:

Other schools, while not including a church-state separation tenet in their doctrinal statement per se, nonetheless include the position in their literature. Landmark Baptist College, a separate Baptist school holding Associate statue in TRACS, includes a notice in their brochures stating, "NOTICE: The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees us the freedom to practice our faith in daily living."<9<

One of the problems inherent in such statements is akin to the old expression, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." We cannot choose to selectively obey laws or court precedents (though most Christians would agree that laws may be disobeyed when they blatantly conflict with the Word of God). The mandate of law is clear: in light of the precedents cited in this chapter, TRACS should not be recognized by the Department of Education. To submit otherwise and still presume to support the concept of church-state separation is a compromise that results in a lukewarm commitment to both the law and to traditional Christian principles of church-state separation.

NOTES

1. U.S. Constitution, Amend. I (1791).
2. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
3. Ibid. at 612-613.
4. Lee v. Weisman, 112 S.Ct. 2649 (1992).
5. Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 15-16 (1947).
6. Larkin v. Grendel's Den, 459 U.S. 116, 123 (1982).
7. For an example of how the doctrine works at the higher education level, see Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind, 106 S.Ct. 748 (1986).
8. Luther Rice Seminary, 1991-92 Catalog, p. 10.
9. Landmark Baptist College, general brochure, n.d.

 

Re: TRACS (for Bill)