medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
To Margaret Kelly's post, I can only reply that, apart from the
point about a general absence of historical cultural literacy,
this does not accord with my own experience. In one instance
that demonstrates that especially clearly, I taught for two years
in the last decade in a course one part of which required
students to take an analytical approach to positions on various
ethical questions, and the greatest difficulty lay in getting all
but a very few to make the adjustment from a bald statement of
their own viewpoint, to engaging sufficiently with others even to
begin to construct an argument. This was particularly important
in the case of these students, as most aspired to be medical
professionals who would be required to deal practically with such
questions in the cases of individual patients whose views and
beliefs might be quite different from their own. (The students
in question were of a range of backgrounds and professed a range
of beliefs, including to my knowledge varieties of all three
branches of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, and
indigenous African ones; and almost certainly at least one other
from the Indian subcontinent.) At the same period, and in the
same (public) institution, it was not unusual for upper level
Greek students in the (small) Department of Classics to read the
NT in the language and translation segment of the course. It was
usual to ask if they had any objections to doing so; however,
this was due not to any hostility to Christianity or its
scriptures, but rather to the fact that the very diversity of the
student body made it impossible to know beforehand whether any
particular student might have a religious objection to the
reading of the text, or its use for teaching in the specific
context. (The non-religious students I knew, at least, had no
objection - for them, it was just another important historical
text among several they would read in ancient Greek.)
Terrence Lockyer
Johannesburg, South Africa
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