“One More Thing”: Clarifying the Evidence Around Christian Privilege in Higher Education

Abstract

EducationLast year, Glanzer (2022) published an article in this journal asserting that discourse in the field of higher education that names Christian privilege as a concern is fundamentally flawed, simplistic, and unfairly disparaging in its portrayal of Christianity, and that it ignores the phenomenon of secular privilege.We, as the scholars whose work and ideas he directly critiques in his article, responded by detailing the history, theory, and contemporary politics that inform our analysis of religion and higher education and explaining how and why we understand secular privilege as a phenomenon that, in many spaces, serves to reinforce Christian privilege and hegemony (Small et al., 2022).Then, Glanzer and Martin (2023) responded by reiterating that our articulation of Christian privilege and hegemony is unnecessarily divisive and suggesting that our discussion of the relationship between secular privilege and Christian hegemony is not sufficiently supported by evidence.This essay is our next, and final, response in this series.We focus on an analysis of the data (both empirical and not) that Glanzer and Martin (2023) point to as evidence of a pervasive secular privilege that specifically disadvantages Christians and a discussion of some recent large-scale studies on support for diverse religious identities and practices in higher education.We then summarize our interpretation of the foundational differences in perspective and priority at the root of this academic discourse.Our hope is that this discussion-all four papers taken together-can highlight areas of tension that exist in our field at present and point to areas for further research and ideas in need of additional exploration as our field proceeds.To start, we feel compelled to state that we strongly considered not writing this piece at all.Defending ourselves-our intellect, our understanding of the issues, our intent, our lived experiences-is emotionally draining.The majority of the authors from our original group identify as religious minorities (and hold other marginalized identities as well).The burden on minoritized individuals to constantly explain their perspectives and lived experiences is one not shared by those holding majoritized identities.We also see our participation in the continued back-and-forth as a distraction from the work that we would rather be doing, which is to build communities, programs, curricula, institutions, systems, and societies that celebrate, value, and seek to learn from a wide range of religio-cultural traditions.Toni Morrison (1975) discussed this in relation to racism:The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction.It keeps you from doing your work.It keeps you explaining over and over again your reason for being.[Somebody] says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do.Somebody says that your head isn't shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is.Somebody says that you have no art, so you dredge that up.Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up.None of that is necessary.There will always be one more thing.