Amazingly, it was a philosopher, Charles Hermes, who said this about certain moral standards included in Christian colleges’ statements of faith:
“to avoid offending those Christians who love their neighbors, and who leave the judging for God, I will hereafter refer to statements like these as statements of discrimination instead of statements of faith.”
[Link: First Things » Blog Archive » Where Do They Stand?]
As a paid professional thinker, Hermes ought to be embarrassed. I’m going to save myself some time and quote from a blog entry I wrote some time ago:
There was a time in history when the word “discrimination” had a clear reference, because there was only one serious question on the table: racial discrimination. Yet even then it was a shorthand term: “discrimination” was short for “racial discrimination,” which in careful analysis really meant “discrimination on the basis of irrelevant factors.”
We discriminate in many things all day long, every day. I’m writing the first draft of this entry on an airplane. Apparently someone with a name like mine has a checkered history, so I’m one of those lucky travelers who has to go through a special clearance procedure before I can board, to make sure I’m not that questionable person. If I really were that person, I would be denied boarding. That’s discrimination.
I’m quite sure the crew on the flight deck has special training and skills to fly this aircraft. I wouldn’t want anybody else up there. That’s discrimination.
The U.S. Constitution has had discrimination written into it from the beginning…. Our country will not allow a naturalized citizen to become President, or non-citizens to vote, and many more things. That’s discrimination.
A few decades ago it was not necessary to speak the full phrase (“discrimination on the basis of irrelevant factors”) to be understood correctly. But in the course of time the shorthand form (just “discrimination”) has lost its meaning.
What makes racial discrimination so evil has never been just that it prevented certain people from taking certain jobs, living in some communities, riding in the front of the bus. It’s that the reason for that exclusion was utterly irrelevant to such persons’ worthiness or qualifications. We all know now what we should have always known: that African-Americans carry no racial handicap to effectiveness in any job except, perhaps, for playing George Washington in the movies. (Note: to cast a white man–a man, no less!–in that role is discrimination, but it’s on the basis of relevant factors. Who complains about that? [Who would object if we insisted on a Black man to play George Washington Carver?]) We also know that aversion to mixed housing and community is not based in any real differences between persons, but only on prejudice.
Discrimination on the basis of relevant character and behavior, on the other hand, has always been supported by every community. (Not convinced? Do we allow every man to run a day care, without a background check?)
The homosexual experience and agenda and agenda are surely complex, and I would not deny that gays experience some completely undeserved pain. If there is to be discrimination against homosexuals, it ought to be in areas where it is relevant.
God’s word makes clear that there are relevant areas for such discrimination. Jesus spoke of marriage as between a man and a woman. The Bible strongly condemns sexual immorality, including the heterosexual kind. There will always be immorality, of course–the question is, will we give it our approval?
When Christian schools ask their faculty to sign statements of faith, they are most definitely, unblushingly, unapologetically discriminating. Why on earth shouldn’t they?
But this discrimination does not mean the document is not at the same time a statement of faith, does it? Suppose the language regarding sexual orientation were removed. Suppose some school (not that anyone would actually do this) removed everything except, “I believe there is one God.” By requiring faculty members to sign it, the school would discriminate against every atheist, agnostic, polytheist, and etc. out there—but it would still be a statement of faith, would it not? “Discrimination” and “faith” are not opposed. To believe something is not to believe its contrary; it is to discriminate against its opposite.
What’s most remarkable about this is how unremarkable it is, how utterly obvious. To discriminate on the basis of relevant factors is a perfectly ordinary and acceptable thing for an organization to do. And yet it’s being decorated, by someone who should know better, with a politically useful but otherwise (in this context) irrelevant label. Is this evidence of good philosophical thinking? Or is it yet another instance of mindless, emotion-laden sloganeering?
Professor Hermes, Professor of Philosophy Hermes, is campaigning with all the logical rigor of a Bud Light commercial. It’s no wonder the rest of the country is so confused.
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