It is peculiar how the most outspoken activists against “intolerance,” “bigotry” and “prejudice” can so virulently condemn these attitudes in some cases and so adamantly support them in others.
By Prof. Richard A. Baer, Jr.
Over the past ten years an increasing number of Cornell students have shared with me their belief that they were being discriminated against in various classes and university activities because they were Christians. My own observations support their claims, and in subsequent issues of The Cornell American I plan to write about religious discrimination at Cornell. Such discrimination, I believe, is widespread and not only harms individual students and faculty; it also distorts the marketplace of ideas at the university.
But first I want to address the more basic issue of religionist language. Specifically, I should like to focus on one particular term—”sectarian”— and especially on the way in which the term is used to describe religious people, ideas, and institutions.
That “sectarian” is hardly a flattering term, is evident from even a cursory look at any standard dictionary. Among its more common synonyms are “bigoted,” “narrow-minded,” “heretical,” “parochial,” and “dogmatic.” Christians have used the word to describe Pharisees, atheists, and other Christians; Unitarians to put down Presbyterians and Roman Catholics; political liberals and conservatives to insult each other.
Given this range of meanings with their consistently pejorative connotations, it is disturbing to note that the formula “religious = sectarian” is widely found in contemporary usage. Even the U.S. Supreme Court does not hesitate to call religious schools and colleges “sectarian”; it uses the term to describe the motivating beliefs and ideas that inform the basic worldview of these institutions. Whether it is The New York Times or The Cornell Daily Sun, CBS evening news or pronouncements of the American Civil Liberties Union, one does not have to search hard to find the equation “religious = sectarian.” In current discussions of educational choice, for instance “sectarian” is regularly used to describe school children, employees, teachers, and administrators of religious organizations. Indeed, the formula “religious = sectarian” enjoys such wide acceptance today that its occurrence seems quite unremarkable to most Americans. But when we reflect on the mean pedigree of the term “sectarian,’ such usage seems troublesome, to say the least.
“Sectarian” is caste language, a phrase that has been used throughout much of American history to keep religious “untouchables” in their proper place. Just as ruling elites have used racial and sexual epithets to put down blacks and women, so they have used “sectarian” to exclude and marginalize those individuals and groups whose religious beliefs and practices did not correspond to their own visions of what was appropriate in the cultural marketplace.
No fair-minded person would argue that society could deal justly with blacks and other minorities if we had not decisively rejected terms like “boy,” “hymie,” or “Polack.” But the use of “sectarian” as a synonym for “religious” remains largely unchallenged.
“Sectarian” always implies a contrasting mainstream, a right way of thinking, an acceptable position. Because of this, the formulas, “religious = sectarian” and “secular = nonsectarian” are particularly problematic when used by government and its agents. For if the First Amendment means anything at all, it means that government is acting improperly when it implies that secular morality and worldviews are legitimate in a way that religious morality and worldviews are not.
The use of the term “sectarian’ as a synonym for “religious” may in part explain the charged atmosphere surrounding Supreme Court rulings on abortion and the display of religious symbols by government—an atmosphere in which religious Americans felt compelled to argue that the mere fact that a law coincided with religious beliefs did not by itself undermine its constitutionality!
Curiously, and ironically, the equation “religious = sectarian” is not even empirically accurate. All the best polls show that Americans are incurably religious—not just a few Americans on the fringes of society, but a majority. Close to 90 percent claim to believe in God or some kind of divine reality, and roughly 40 percent attend religious services nearly every week.
How can we deal fairly with questions of religion and public life, including the role of religion in the university, so long as we continue to describe religious Americans as “sectarians”? I would like to propose that the formula “religious = sectarian” be abandoned altogether except when its usage is unavoidable, for instance, when quoting earlier legislation or court cases or when referring to statements or judgements of parties before the courts.
It will not do to argue that “sectarian” has become a technical legal and constitutional term with its own restricted meaning and that people intend no harm when they use it. Both points may be true, but they are nonetheless irrelevant. What is important is that there simply is no way the term “sectarian” can be used as a synonym for “religious”—whatever one’s intentions—without prejudicial effect. As one who understands my life, including my professional work in environmental ethics, mainly in terms of my commitment to God, I feel insulted and demeaned by being labeled a “sectarian.” The term makes me feel like an intellectual outsider in the university.
How do we account for the current usage of “sectarian,’ and why have religious people not protested this discrimination earlier? Actually, the founding father that many of us most clearly associate with freedom of religion and conscience—Thomas Jefferson—must share part of the blame. Particularly in his private correspondence, Jefferson typically referred to orthodox, Trinitarian Christians—those who believe in the deity of Christ and the classical doctrines of salvation—as “sects” or “sectarians.” He held that their beliefs were based on dogma, superstition, and revelation.
By contrast, Jefferson considered his own Unitarian and Enlightenment convictions about morality and religions to be universal and “nonsectarian.” They were grounded, he believed, in reason and common sense, were compatible with science, and deserved to become the basis of public morality and politics.
But neither Jefferson nor the orthodox Christians of his day considered “sectarian” to be a synonym for religious, or thought that “nonsectarian” meant “nonreligious.” Rather Jefferson, used “sectarian” to refer to the wrong kind of religion.
What in effect has happened over the past 150 years is that the bias of Jefferson against certain religious people and beliefs (mainly traditional Christians) has been extended to religious people in general. Jefferson might be excused for his discriminatory use of the term “sectarian,” for he honestly—even if mistakenly—believed that his own Unitarian religious convictions were of a different and more rational order than those of the orthodox Christians of his time. But such discrimination has no moral or political justification today.
Indeed, the use of the equation “religious = sectarian” in public debate on education, child care, abortion, and other key issues gives an unfair advantage to those who believe that religion has no part in the public life of the nation. By being permitted to control a key term in the debate, their arguments may prevail less because of the cogency of their reasoning than the privileged position of their terminology.
What might we hope for at Cornell? I propose that faculty, students, and administrators stop discriminating against Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other traditionally religious people by labeling them “sectarians.” Such language is both insulting and hurtful, particularly when coupled with the practice of describing secular people and institutions as “nonsectarian.”
My argument is not one of semantics. If labeling religious Americans “sectarians” were just a matter of poor taste, bad manners, or, in the case of our courts, a kind of judicial cussing, it might be tolerable. But it is far more than that. Close analysis of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, for instance, clearly demonstrates that when “sectarian” is used as a synonym for “religious” the context is frequently negatively charged, just as the Court’s use of the term “nonsectarian” in conjunction with the term “secular” typically occurs in neutral or positive contexts.
True, Cornell was founded as a “nonsectarian” university, but the intended meaning of the term was not “nonreligious” but rather “nondenominational.” Thus university administrators were not being Inconsistent when they referred to Cornell as “nonsectarian” but also as “Christian.” But today when religious Cornellians are labeled “sectarians” they are, in effect, being told: “You don’t quite belong here. The real business of this university is secular and ‘nonsectarian.’ We will tolerate you if you do your thing in private—at home or in church or synagogue. But don’t pretend that you and your beliefs are really part of the serious business of the university. We will allow you to sit in the back of the bus; indeed be happy that we let you on the bus at all. But just remember that if you want to be fully part of the intellectual life of this institution you must think and speak in a secular mode. Cornell is no place for sectarians!”
This portrayal may seem exaggerated. Thus in a subsequent piece I shall show in detail how Cornell permits discrimination against religion and religious persons in the College of Human Ecology and in other parts of the university. I will point to widespread censorship by omission at Cornell: certain kinds of ideas and ways of thinking are simply not welcome in the university’s marketplace of ideas—or at the very least, the university makes little serious effort to redress the one-sided way in which many students are being indoctrinated in secular ideologies.
Religion at Cornell is tolerable as an essentially private matter between God and the individual believer. But the real agenda of the university is secular, scientific, and nonsectarian. It concerns itself with knowledge, not with faith; with the rational, not with religious dogma. We may describe and analyze religion as we might the beliefs of some South Sea Island tribal culture, but to argue for particular solutions to current social problems on the basis of one’s religious beliefs is somehow to breach Jefferson’s “wall of separation between Church and State.” Religion may be described and evaluated—but to pretend that religiously based views on how we treat the environment or how we should deal with controversial issues like family, child nurture, abortion, or euthanasia are just as legitimate in the university’s marketplace of ideas as secular views is to quickly find out what it means to be treated like an outsider.
Religion, according to the ethos of the dominant paradigm, is essentially private and becomes an embarrassment if interjected in public affairs. The secular, even when it addresses questions of personal and social morality or ultimate metaphysical concerns, is public; it is the appropriate currency of politics and education. But such a distinction I shall argue in a subsequent piece has little to commend it either philosophically or politically.
I propose then that as a first step in reevaluating the place of religion at Cornell we abandon the term “sectarian” when talking about religious people, ideas, and institutions. When you hear Cornell faculty, students, or administrators employing the term as a synonym for “religious” politely but firmly remind them that they are using an epithet just as objectionable as those we have rightly rejected when talking about women, blacks, or ethnic minorities. Write letters of protest to The Cornell Daily Sun and to the editors of university publications whenever you see religious Americans stereotyped with the bigoted term “sectarian.”
It will be interesting to see just how liberal Cornell is. In the matter of racial, gender, and ethnic stereotyping the University has done a great deal to discourage the use of discriminatory language. Will faculty, students, and administration follow through consistently in this case? Or is it only the rights of certain preferred groups that deserve protection?
Let those who believe that how we use the term “sectarian” is a trivial matter remember that oppressors are not in a good position to evaluate how oppressed people feel as the recipients of bigotry and discrimination. It is my hope that rejecting the formula “religious = sectarian” may prove to be the first step towards ending pernicious discrimination against persons and ideas at Cornell. But even if such practical gain is not assured, the formula “religious = sectarian” should be abandoned in any case, for it is demeaning and fundamentally unjust.
Dr. Richard A. Baer, Jr., is a professor in Natural Resources and teaches the very popular course, Religion, Ethics and the Environment.
The Cornell American, January 1993, pp. 5, 14.