Hare Krishna Cultural Journal Update: Academia and ISKCON's

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Hare Krishna Cultural Journal Update: Academia and ISKCON's Secularization

 

March 30, 2005

 

 

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http://siddhanta.com/archives/culture/000240.html

 

 

 

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Over at the [1]Volokh Conspiracy, in response to this bit of

demographic information from a Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz

 

The most left-leaning departments are English literature,

philosophy, political science and religious studies, where at least

80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than 5

percent call themselves conservative, the study says.

 

Law professor Todd Zywicki [2]asks:

Is anyone else surprised that Religious studies is self-reported as

one of the most liberal departments? I would have thought if

conservatives were present anywhere, it would be in religious

studies.

 

Not us. Not by a long shot. In fact, because university religious

studies departments are so liberal, and because so many religious

groups (the Hare Krishnas included now, I guess) send their top people

to get trained there, it is a likely explanation for why so many

religious institutions have been busy making themselves into all those

things which have become shibboleths for "liberalism".

 

ISKCON is now riding the same wave of liberalism which has taken many

a Christian denomination from obscurity to establishment but in the

most self-defeating way. Like many other respectable, mainline

denominations in western Christendom, the Hare Krishna movement has

had its woeful share of child abuse scandals along with its attendant

anti-traditionalist reforms, has had a flamboyant feminist revolution,

has an emerging scriptural revisionist movement, and now has a very

active gay liberation movement--replete with growing public support

from some of ISKCON's higher-ups. As ISKCON has hastened to follow in

the secular footsteps of its liberal, Christian, institutional

counterparts, ISKCON now has a very real likelihood of undergoing

internal conflicts like those of the Anglican Church, which is now in

the throes of an historic schism on account of internal efforts to

destigmatize homosexual behavior.

 

In Protestant Christendom, this unraveling of Christianity happened

through mainline denominations trying to accommodate the mores of

secular society. With regard to religion in America, Clifford Orwin

explains how mainline Protestant denominations became mainline and how

they consequently experienced varying degrees of secularization.

 

Since the late nineteenth century and the emergence of the Social

Gospel, the typical response of the mainline churches to the

challenge of secularism has been to capitulate to it. Every one of

these churches has been advancing (or retreating) from Christian

orthodoxy down the road of secular progressivism. They have not

done so without hesitation or confusion, which have sometimes

brought them to the brink of schism. Nonetheless, within each of

these churches, certainly at the national level, progressivism has

eventually prevailed across the board.

 

(Clifford Orwin. "The Unraveling of Christianity in America."

Spring 2004. The Public Interest, Number 155. page 22 - 23)

 

Although a way of life and its corresponding way of thinking is

tightly coupled, this fact is not always obvious. It is unlikely the

earlier fathers of these denominations, who embraced the Social

Gospel, understood the consequences of accommodating with the secular

way of life. Their thinking was that men, not God, were the chief

actors in the social sphere. If in the affairs of men God had a role

at all, it was through men, not among them or with them. With other

and presumably better things to do, God left the affairs of men to

men. They believed that the social and the spiritual spheres, though

both important, were fundamentally separate. Adjustments in one sphere

were not expected to create maladjustment in the other. But behind a

way of life there is necessarily a way of thinking that legitimates it

as something moral, or good, and allows the evil, or bad ways to be

recognized for what they are. In essence, the Social Gospel was

secular ideology sugar-coated with good intentions. Thus, in order to

become accomplished in the tenets of the Social Gospel, the top

religious men had to become well versed in its underlying secular

creed. George Marsden notes this victory of the secular over the

ecclesiastical within the Church:

 

During the 1960s a number of well-funded studies examined what

church-relatedness meant for a college.25 As David Riesman and

Christopher Jencks commented in 1968, "Organizations like the

National Council of Churches as well as individual denominations

are constantly commissioning investigations aimed at defining a

unique mission for those colleges which remain Protestant, but the

very idea that such questions require research is a tribute to the

triumph of academic over clerical values." They concluded "Very few

Protestant colleges admit that the substance of what they teach is

influenced by ideological considerations." 26 By the end of the

1960s, mainline Protestantism's own studies were saying little more

than that their colleges should learn from the universities.27

 

(George M. Marsden. The Soul of the American University, From

Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. Oxford

University Press, New York, 1994. Page 416)

 

Since the university now holds the keys to higher understanding--even

for overtly religious organizations--it is the views and doctrines

that are taught in the secular divinity schools and religious studies

departments that eventually become established doctrine for religious

institutions that send their top people to the universities.

 

Apart from business and the military, contemporary American elites

in categories such as the media, labor, religion, law and

bureaucracy were almost twice to more than three times as liberal

as the public as a whole, according to a 1980s survey. Another

survey similarly found that on moral issues elites are

"consistently more liberal" than rank-and-file Americans.14

Governmental, nonprofit and communications elites in particular are

overwhelmingly liberal in their outlooks. So also are academics.

The radical students of the 1960s have become tenured professors,

particularly in elite institutions. As Stanley Rothman observes,

"Social science faculties at elite universities are overwhelmingly

liberal and cosmopolitan or on the Left. Almost any form of civic

loyalty or patriotism is considered reactionary."15 Liberalism

tends to go with irreligiosity as well. In a 1969 study by Lipset

and Ladd, at least 71 percent of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant

academics who identified themselves as liberal also identified

themselves as being "basically opposed to religion."

 

(Samuel Huntington. "Dead Souls" The National Interest, Number 75,

Spring 2004. Page 12.)

 

In trying to better understand the future of ISKCON's tryst with

academia, we should keep these questions in mind:

* How secular are university religious studies departments? Very.

* How secular can religious institutions become when they send their

top people to get trained at universities? Very.

* Can ISKCON compromise itself to the same extent as those of

mainline Protestant denominations like the Anglican Church? Yes.

 

While it is a categorical fact that anything, including a university

education, can be used to serve Krishna, it is also a categorical fact

that association with faithless persons and hearing from them can

destroy one's faith--janah sangah. The popularity and influence of

secular education among ISKCON's members, especially among its elites,

could explain in part the emergence and support for feminism within

ISKCON, the growing advocacy of scriptural revisionism by some of

ISKCON's more senior members, and the advent of a gay-rights movement

that has growing support among ISKCON's top leadership. These events

are not possibilities, they are historic facts of ISKCON. Within other

religious institutions, these same facts have stood as milestones that

have marked the paths of progressive secularization--paths which

eventually and at some point irrevocably lead to a kind of

agnosticism. It is no longer an unthinkable proposition that due the

influence of university education, ISKCON could now be meandering down

these same paths and heading toward permanent insignificance.

 

References

1. http://volokh.com/

2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_03_27-2005_04_02.shtml#1112111400

 

 

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[Guest guest]

In a message dated 3/31/2005 12:50:42 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,

info (AT) siddhanta (DOT) com writes:

 

Hare Krishna Cultural Journal Update: Academia and ISKCON's Secularization

 

 

 

Who are the authors of _info (AT) siddhanta (DOT) com_ (info (AT) siddhanta (DOT) com) and

the "Hare Krishna Cultural Journal"? Please.

yhs

Ranjit das

[Guest guest]

>

> In a message dated 3/31/2005 12:50:42 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,

> info (AT) siddhanta (DOT) com writes:

>

> Hare Krishna Cultural Journal Update: Academia and ISKCON's

> Secularization

>

>

>

> Who are the authors of _info (AT) siddhanta (DOT) com_ (info (AT) siddhanta (DOT) com)

> and the "Hare Krishna Cultural Journal"? Please.

> yhs

> Ranjit das

 

Krishna Kirti Prabhu (HDG), an American devotee who joined ISKCON at Ireland

back during 1987, runs HKCJ, which is a "blog". Which you must know is a

popular, new, "internet genre".

 

He resides at Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he conducts preaching programs

in his home, on Sundays and festival days.

 

There are a variety of devotees who have written "guest blogs" there,

including myself and another godbrother, Paradhyeya Prabhu, who was here in

India for many years. He was TP of Madras back in 1981 and later on at

Surat in the late 80s. Now he resides at Sacremento, Cal., in the USA.

 

das,

 

Basu Ghosh Das