David McAfee
Opinion Columnist
Separation of Church and State is something that is often taken for granted in the United States of America. We assume that professors of public universities won’t teach dogma and that we won’t be discriminated against based on our beliefs- or lack thereof. Sometimes, however, we assume wrong.
In a public, state-funded university we would hope and expect to see a complete separation between the scholarly endeavors of studying religion as a human phenomenon and the preaching of a specific religion as a reality. This, as you might know, is the difference between a Religious Studies department at a secular university and a Theology department at a Christian college or school of divinity. As a secular individual and scholar of Religious Studies, this distinction is particularly crucial in my studies. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Religious Studies department exists in a legal, secular manner. It is in this department which I have studied various religious mythologies and their effects on mankind for the past four years and have earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Religious Studies with an emphasis in Christianity and Mediterranean traditions. Until recently, I have not experienced any discrimination or proselytization on behalf of the professors in the classroom.
It was only a few months ago that, upon preparing to submit my application for the Graduate Department of Religious Studies at UCSB, I was met with the harshest of discriminatory treatment because of my work as an activist for secularism. I arranged to meet with the head chair of the Religious Studies Graduate Department of UCSB who is also a professor of Religious Studies and Catholic Studies. Little did I know at the time, her scholarly background primarily focuses in theology- and not in Religious Studies. Ann Taves received her Ph.D. from The Divinity School, The University of Chicago, in December 1983[1] and her M.A. from The Divinity School, The University of Chicago, in June 1979.Taves has also worked as, among other things, the acting Dean at Claremont School of Theology in the Fall of 1996 and various professorships at Claremont School of Theology.
But now, Ann Taves is the Virgil Cordano Chair of Catholic Studies Department[2] within the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a chair of the Religious Studies program charged, in part, with reviewing applications
for potential Graduate Students. I arranged a meeting with Taves in order to ensure that I could submit my completed application in a timely manner- and that I had met all of the requirements for admission, including the recommended GPA requirements, Letter(s) of Intent, and scholarly accomplishments- all of which, by all accounts, my application satisfied. I walked into Professor Taves’s office and greeted her politely. I let her know my intentions to apply for the M.A. /Ph.D. Graduate Program and cited for her my various publications including features in American Atheist Magazine, Canadian Freethinker Magazine, and my own self-published book entitled “Disproving Christianity: Refuting the World’s Most Followed Religion”. Taves instantly turned to her computer- looked up my name- and took only one minute to browse my bookselling page on Amazon.com before saying “I need to word this carefully… you wouldn’t fit in with our department’s milieu because you are an atheist activist with an axe to grind.” When I heard these words, I was absolutely astonished. I told her that I was blown away by her remarks and that she was judging my book- and my work- by its proverbial cover, without doing any further research into the merits of my claims or the philosophical and biblical basis for my condemnation of biblical literalism. She went on to describe my work (which she still has not read) as “unsophisticated” and not up to the standards of the Graduate Department of Religious Studies. I defended my work and informed her that diversity in beliefs should be sought after- not condemned- within any department- especially one focused on the studies of various religions.
Just last month, I received my official rejection letter from the Department of Religious Studies (which had no specific details regarding the application) and Taves continued to deny her obvious biases and suggested that she didn’t recommend me for the program because of my grades in two classes that I had taken with her years earlier; a ‘B+’ and a ‘C+’. But no amount of back peddling will change the fact that Professor Taves, a former Professor and Dean at Claremont Theological School, insisted that I wouldn’t be considered as a potential Graduate Student because I am “an atheist activist with an axe to grind.”
For more information about David McAfee, check out his blog at www.davidgmcafee.com
i graduated this year from UCSB with a double major in religious studies (jewish, islamic, and near eastern religious traditions) and middle eastern studies. most of my essays were about how the abrahamic religions are lame, to put it mildly. i did not apply to UCSBs grad school for religious studies because i was a little tired of it, but i did apply to the claremont school of theology for their interreligious studies MA and i got in. i was also told by professors like hecht and tutino that my writing was grad level already, and that i should think abou applying to U chicagos or harvard divinity. throughout my time i got the impression that the UCSB religious studies dept was a lot more satisfied if i wrote about the positive aspects of religion, but it was even more rewarding then getting an A on a thesis doing just the opposite. perhaps you just needed to find the right professors?
– no grudge here
i graduated this year from UCSB with a double major in religious studies (jewish, islamic, and near eastern religious traditions) and middle eastern studies. most of my essays were about how the abrahamic religions are lame, to put it mildly. i did not apply to UCSBs grad school for religious studies because i was a little tired of it, but i did apply to the claremont school of theology for their interreligious studies MA and i got in. i was also told by professors like hecht and tutino that my writing was grad level already, and that i should think abou applying to U chicagos or harvard divinity. throughout my time i got the impression that the UCSB religious studies dept was a lot more satisfied if i wrote about the positive aspects of religion, but it was even more rewarding then getting an A on a thesis doing just the opposite. perhaps you just need to find the right professors?
– no grudge here
A scholar shouldn’t have a pre-determined agenda the way you make yours out to be. The academic study of religion takes the study of religion as an object of knowledge seriously. Dr. Taves understands this and I have no doubt she would be willing to accept any serious scholar who merited the opportunity to to advanced study in religion, irrespective of the person’s personal faith or lack-there-of. Claremont is a very liberal school in the world of religion, certainly not a place that you would find the type professor that you are making out Dr. Taves to be. Clearly, you had poor scores in her courses. If that isn’t a red flag I don’t know what is. You may want to do a little bit more research on academic religious studies at the University of Chicago as well. In many respects this is where the academic study of religion really developed in America under Mircea Eliade. If is very obvious from your short posting above that you are not qualified to do advanced study in the discipline because you seem so unaware of the discipline as such, and its limits. Perhaps you may want to better understand the relationship between the academic study of religion and theology so that your criticism is more rooted in an historical understanding. You seem much more interested in activism than scholarship. Just what we need, more activists.
File a complaint against her, the department, the school, and anyone who gets in the way! Complain to everyone and anyone who will read it or listen to it!