U of Sheffield backs down

The official word:

University of Sheffield Statement on the Department of Biblical Studies

The University of Sheffield has today confirmed its position with regard to the future of the Department of Biblical Studies. In the light of concerns regarding inadequate consultation, as well as feedback from staff and students, the Department of Biblical Studies is no longer under review and a proposal that it should be reconfigured as a Postgraduate Centre has been withdrawn.

Instead the University has asked the Faculty of Arts and Humanities to consider, as a matter of urgency, a short, medium and longer term plan for the Department. With regard to the undergraduate intake for 2010, the University can confirm that it will recruit students for this year onto single and dual honours degrees in Biblical Studies. The Faculty of Arts and Humanities are working with colleagues to ensure that these students are appropriately supported, including through the recruitment of additional staff.

Looking to the future, the University recognises the outstanding reputation of the Department of Biblical Studies in Sheffield for scholarship and a superb student experience, and has confidence that all concerned will work together to enhance this for future students.

Professor Mike Braddick

Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities

On behalf of the students, Ben Hinks puts it well:

The Biblical Studies Department is essentially back from the dead, well... it spent a few days in the belly of the Uni at least, and it did feel like we had gone down to Sheol at points too!

We are really pleased! Thank you everyone for your support, action and prayers. We have saved the Univeristy an embarassing and awful decision, which would not have done its reputation good in the long run.

Long live Biblical Studies!

Ben Hinks (on behalf of the current students) 

There are those who desire that the Bible not be a subject of study in state schools and the universities. The about-face of the U of Sheffield, is, objectively speaking, a defeat for hard-line secularists.

For believers, the approach to biblical scholarship for which the Sheffield program is famous offers a unique testing grounds. There is no reason to fear such a test. A faith worth having from an intellectual point of view will be refined by heuristic doubt and self-examination seven times over. In my opinion, it can and will pass any of the tests the Sheffield program might apply to it. 

Comments

[Jim]

you cite- without reference. did you receive all this information directly from ben, or did you cut and paste it from the sheffield students page?

if you did the latter, isn't it your ethical duty to cite your source? and if you don't, isn't it plagiarism?

in other words- when you find things elsewhere, feel you no moral compunction to say so? or do you simply refuse to honor those from whom you borrow?

i mean i realize there are bibliobloggers out there who pretend they've stumbled upon something unaided. but surely you're not one of them are you?

i ask because it seems to me that if academics are unhappy when students pilfer from the web, don't they themselves have an obligation not to?

[Simon Holloway]

For my part, I was also put out by the thought of Sheffield closing their undergraduate Biblical Studies department, but the rhetoric that has issued forth from the student body has made me rethink that.

Again and again (which is to say, on blogs like yours and on the Facebook group), I see references to praying and having prayed for the welfare of their department. If Sheffield has converted their Biblical Studies department into a seminary, then perhaps shutting it down is not so bad an idea.

When somebody on behalf of the student body (Ben Hicks or Ben Hinks? I'm assuming they are the same person) refers to the universally objective power of mumbling to oneself as an act that saved his department, it's not only a "defeat for hard-line secularists", it's a defeat for everybody with at least half a brain.

[JohnFH]

Hi Jim,

I received the official word in an email to me personally. It appeared on the Facebook site set up by students at about the same time. Simultaneously, a comment to the same effect was posted to two different threads on this blog.

It is a public announcement made by an official of the University, sourced as such above, which everybody and their grandmother is passing around. The remarks of Ben Hinks are also correctly attributed. Thou dost protest too much. What's the problem? Did I beat you to the punch?

[JohnFH]

Simon,

It's Ben Hinks. Now corrected.

Two things here. A person is free to pray and invite others to pray as she or he so chooses, on a facebook site or a blog which is theirs. And you are free to deride those who do, and speak of prayer as mumbo jumbo. Right? Isn't that a fundamental right, the right of free speech?

For the rest, you've conflated two different things. One thing is that some people prayed for the continuance of the program. Another thing is that the program is reportedly back on track. There is not necessarily any connection between the two things, as I imagine you would be the first to admit.

In short, whether anyone prayed or not for the continuance of the program is irrelevant to my claim that its continuance is a defeat for hardline secularists. There are secularists who suggest that it has yet to be demonstrated that the study of the Bible is justifiable at the university level. In that case, it would make sense not to fund its study until it has been demonstrated. There are still other hardline secularists who consider the Bible to be an instrument of oppression and/or an opiate of the masses, and who discourage the use of resources to study it and teach about it. I remain convinced that the renewed launch of the Biblical Studies at U of Sheffield is a defeat for those of like mindset. If the logic of my claim is still opaque to you, please say so.

[Simon Holloway]

John,

I have just written a new post, attempting to justify my acerbity. I agree with what you say above, but would your opinion be the same if the department of which we spoke was English Literature? Or if it were a representative of the medical faculty who thanked believers for their prayers? The truth is that this stereotype - that Biblical Studies is related to faith - is so deeply ingrained that Biblical scholars, themselves, tend to expect it.

I've no problem with believers - nor with the "orthoprax" in my own community. I simply have a problem with the automatic identification of my field with a belief in its literal truth. Do Tolkien scholars believe in Middle-Earth? Why do people assume that Biblical scholars are less impartial?

Ben Hinks should know better. In a time like this, proving their academic merit is of greater value than praising the Lord. Religiosity belongs at home and in houses of worship. People who wish to pepper their talk with matters of faith should try to remember when they're speaking for others as well.

[JohnFH]

Simon,

Bring the acerbity on. Let us believers know that you want prayer to be confined to the closet, and not trumpeted from the street corners. A rabbi from Nazareth is reported to have said something similar.

On the other hand, he also prayed in public on rare occasions, the most famous prayer of which was uttered, according to the Gospel of Luke I believe, from the cross, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Neither do his followers, one might add.

Okay, that was stream of consciousness. My problem is that I'm fine with whatever you say on these sort of matters. Aren't we talking about aesthetic judgments? I already know you have better taste than me.

I approach the question of prayer and the context of prayer from a standpoint of empathy, not aesthetics. Aesthetics aside, and the need to show oneself to be a rational learned person aside, I say, let them, let us, pray.

Even that deist Albert Einstein counseled prayer. How did he put it? There is a nous-sphere which connects all our minds; exertion to agree on something, like world peace, is a positive thing.

Something to that effect. Okay, maybe it wasn't his most brilliant statement, but not all statements have to be brilliant. Sympathetic statements also have a place.

[JohnFH]

Oh, I almost forgot. A negative statement about Shakespeare by a recovering fundamentalist, Hector Avalos, once about tipped me over. Go here:

http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/09/did-hector-av-1.html

Yes, I am appalled when the classics of English are dismissed, no less than the classics of Jewish (and Christian) tradition.

[Simon Holloway]

No, John - I don't think that this is purely aesthetic. I think that somebody who claims to speak for a community of people should be a little more mindful of what they say. The assumption that the majority of undergraduate students in the Biblical Studies department at Sheffield University are religious is, I believe, an unfair assumption - even if it happens to be true. It's based on the assumption that Biblical Studies is a religious discipline, and it plays into the hands of the so-called "secularists" who want to shut it down.

The best way to convince secularists that Biblical Studies has a place on the campus is to demonstrate that it's actually not a faith-based discipline at all. We need a new Wissenschaft des Judentums, it seems: the last one was too long ago for those of us with myopic retrospection.

[steph]

Simon has clearly misread Hinks' email. He didn't credit God with saving the department. And it's self righteous idiocy to expect believing members of the department or any university department, not to pray or be grateful to those who do. Also prayer is not exclusive to religions of the Bible

[JohnFH]

Simon,

You're right; it's not just about aesthetics. It's about the limits of acceptable religious expression in public. It's about how much religious expression is appropriate in mixed company. Religionists are notoriously divided on these issues, and so are secularists. For example, is it permitted to wear religious symbols in the schools? Is it permitted to wear anti-religious symbols; if so, which ones. How about the use of the Bible (or the Quran) for taking an oath? The whole phenomenon of civil religion? These sort of issues are going to be up for negotiation for the forseeable future. It's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned, that you articulately defend a "less public religion is better" position without being anti-religious.

Beyond that, scholarship of both believers and non-believers needs to be evaluated on the basis of the usual scientific criteria without regard to value judgments about truth-claims contained in the Bible. But it is standard practice for a medievalist, a classicist, and so on to mix in value judgments about the contents of what they study with mere determinations of facts. It would be awfully boring if they didn't. I'm all in favor of scholarship a la Geiger, Graetzl, etc., but I feel the need to supplement that with the scholarship of, say, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Heschel.

Steph,

Fair enough. I remember that you were hopeful from the start about the program being reinstated. Your hopes have been vindicated. When hope becomes reality, it is a beautiful thing.