Liberal Education and Liberal Religion

The similarities in “methodology” or approach between liberal education and liberal religion lure some to mistake one for the other. Thus, it is not uncommon for those in various traditions within liberal religion – as in my own Unitarian Universalism, for instance – to think it inconceivable that one could lift up liberal education and hold a “conservative” or “orthodox“ faith. But, the purview of faith and of education do not pertain to the same field of human nature and conduct. Ironically, I am finding it is not unusual in the academic world to wonder how one could be enmeshed in liberal education and be religious at all. The wonder is how they could be compatible let alone complimentary.

These observations merely lift up the uneasy relationship between faith and learning, the spiritual and the educational, in the world of the liberal. There is not that same ambivalence or confusion within scholasticism – liberal education’s rival – because the relationship between faith and learning is clear in terms of accountability. Scholasticism views learning and education as a servant of faith in that matters of faith shape what subjects are of interest and how they are to be pursued. Philosophy and science are the handmaidens of Truth, and Truth the yield of religion. Identify the interests of religion and the life of faith, and one will have found the direction any educational endeavor need take.

But the relationship between faith and learning within liberalism is different.

Every fact learned and theory pursued serves faith in building confidence and trust in existence by routing error, in the case of science; or exposing hubris, in the case of the humanities. The liberal, whether in education or religion, is always on the lookout for idolatry; that is, our ever-present tendency to latch on to some idea, concept, faith, or doctrine as if it were worthy of absolute faith, and is the final and complete word! It is as prevalent in education as it is in religion, this urge to orthodoxy. All things of this world, including religion and education and the products of each, are finite and limited and not worthy objects of ultimate allegiance. Liberal faith offers a confidence that only those within the scope and influence of the spiritual hold: that the Ultimate, God, will never be captured by our thoughts and concepts and interpretations. God is elusive to the ways of human knowing and believing. Every idea contains human self-interest. Yet, there is faith. Liberal religion carries along an assurance, unverifiable by means of education, that existence, for all its calamity, will be resolved at last. And, that it is God’s domain to resolve what needs be resolved.

Yet, both liberal education and liberal religion lift up one quality consistent to both: liberalis, freedom, broadmindedness, generosity, and tolerance. Education is valuable in proportion to its liberating affect upon the mind. Faith is valuable in proportion to freeing the mind and heart to live more generously with regard to one’s fellow human beings, and more broadly with regard to the way all existence and all living things have been created in Love. Whatever is the resolution that is the domain of the Ultimate, freedom is its aim.

Learning as a Spiritual Practice

I teach at a University an Introduction to Liberal Education course, which is primarily a philosophy and hermeneutics course. It is a study of what kind of education is liberal, and what a liberally educated interpretive perspective is. We begin the semester with an overview of Critical Thinking and what it involves, and several sessions looking at what liberal means. Etymologically, the word “liberal” comes from the Latin, liberalis, meaning free, broadminded, and generous. When applied to the act of learning it is the freeing of the mind from error and superstition; instilling a broadmindedness towards one’s experience and the experience of others; and approaching relationships with a generosity that conceives of the purpose of human connection as a connection with an Other in such a manner as to understand, as best as is possible, their experience and the way it forms meaning to them. Critical Thinking is a component in this process in that it involves one in understanding one’s own assumptions, point of view, and context such that, being rooted in that, one can be liberated towards a “new being” arrived at by connecting with that Other.

Of course studying it requires one to employ the techniques and language of analysis to understand it. But, simply put, it is to know thyself as the prelude to “transcending the self” in creative connection whereby you learn something new, something you didn’t know a moment before. Thus, the self “expands,” becoming freer, more broadminded, more generous in the helpings of knowledge – intellectual and emotional – of self, others, and world. One grows. But, it is growth with a particular aim and direction. It is not towards the past, though understanding the past is a substantial part of it. It is towards the open future. It is not towards an identity derived from or located in yesterday, though knowledge of what and who one was before is crucial. It is towards the “new being” life can transform us towards. It is not towards certainty, but possibility, though often knowledge of certain things eliminates other competing things, as the products of science often show.

There is not anything necessarily spiritual about this, but the hermeneutic can be spiritual. As one of the originators of my particular field, Religious Studies, once observed: “[Religion assumes] the forces which govern the world [are] conscious and personal, [not] unconscious and impersonal.” (J.G. Frazer) Or, to say it another way, existence, the world, the universe is designed in such a manner that the learning of a new thing about it can yield a liberating feel within human being, and we can feel more free, conceive of the next moment in a more broadminded way, and the sentiments unleashed by generosity can move us to altruistic aims that transcend self-interest and self-preservation. That is part of my spiritual reading, my spiritual interpretation. We are fitted to the Sphere, and it to Us. And there is an agreement we are born into, a Covenant of Being as it were, that as we find and build this place as our home, we find and build the Self and Others.