It may seem strange that the Pope Center, an organization usually described as conservative, gave its highest award this year to a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill who says that he is a “’capital-L liberal’ in just about every way.”
Indeed, speaking at the December 4 awards dinner, Bart Ehrman, first-prize winner of the Pope Center’s Spirit of Inquiry Award, seemed somewhat puzzled at having won. But he went on to say that the “spirit of inquiry is precisely what I try to cultivate in my students.”
Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor in the department of religious studies, teaches a course in the New Testament. He received the prize along with two other UNC-Chapel Hill professors, Larry Goldberg, lecturer in the department of English and comparative literature, and Mark Crescenzi, associate professor of political science. All were praised for instilling respect for knowledge and inquiry and for inspiring class discussion and driving their students to greater achievement.
Jenna Ashley Robinson, the Pope Center’s campus outreach coordinator and director of the awards, named the award the “Spirit of Inquiry” to express what the Pope Center believes that college courses should do—reflect a spirit of open-minded exploration within the guidelines of a particular discipline.
In his after-dinner remarks, Ehrman said that his job is “to instill a sense of curiosity,” and “to get students to think,” while also teaching them about the content of the New Testament and the environment in which it was written.
He also said that he takes a “critical approach” to the New Testament.
For some people, that statement might be a bit scary. The academy is rife with people who promote “critical thinking,” but, as a recent Pope Center article by Stephen Zelnick of Temple University said, critical thinking has been transformed into “thinking that is critical of American values and institutions.” To many professors, the goal of critical thinking is “to recruit the next generation of students into an oppositional force to carry out the struggle for social justice.”
That would seem to be a ripe opportunity for a professor like Ehrman. Not only is he self-described as a strong liberal, but in a New York Times best-seller he has written about his evolution from a born-again Christian to an agnostic, largely due to his analysis of the Bible. He might be expected to use “critical thinking” to shake up his students’ beliefs and introduce his own preferences.
Yet one of the students who nominated Ehrman for the Pope Center award commented that he keeps his “personal views private. . . . Atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and evangelical Christians alike could appreciate this man.”
As Ehrman described his course to the attendees at the awards dinner, it combines content about the New Testament and early Christianity with analytical inquiry into the nature and history of the books of the Bible. Among other things, he expects his students to compare the three synoptic Gospels, one with another, to understand their differences, similarities, and origins; to analyze the changes that Paul brought to Christianity; and to consider the writings in light of Christians’ relationship to the Roman Empire and to traditional Judaism.
He noted that many students in North Carolina come to his class with a strong commitment to the Bible as the inspired word of God—yet few have read the entire Bible. Many of these devout students flunk his first-day “pop quiz,” containing questions such as how many books there are in the New Testament (27) and what language the New Testament was originally written in (Greek).
Ehrman also said that some students take his course thinking that their familiarity with Christianity will make it easier than other courses, such as one on Aristotle, that would fulfill the same requirement. They quickly learn otherwise.
The two other professors who received the Spirit of Inquiry awards share with Ehrman enthusiasm for helping their students learn to analyze and also a respect for their students’ perspectives. (And their courses are academically rigorous, a criterion of the award.)
Larry Goldberg teaches a course in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. The student who nominated Goldberg wrote that he “inspired student-led discussions and remained unbiased when sharing his own views.” The student went on to say: “I cannot emphasize enough how brilliant and engaging this guy is. You will never regret a moment spent in his class.” Backing up that assessment was an attendee at the dinner who took courses from him nearly a decade ago. “He was absolutely the best professor I ever had in my life.”
Mark Crescenzi, who teaches a course in national defense and security in the political science department, was also lauded for his openness to differing viewpoints as well as his knowledge of his subject. The student who nominated him wrote: “When a student expressed an opinion in class, he would ask if anyone else had a dissenting opinion and encourage them to defend it. If nobody disagreed with the first student, he would play devil’s advocate himself….”
Clearly, the Spirit of Inquiry award was given to these professors because they are teaching students how to think, not what to think. The award was first proposed by John Baden, a political economist in Bozeman, Montana, who also is known for getting his students to think. The Broyhill Family Foundation and an anonymous donor supported the project. Five judges made the final selection of winners. They are: John Allison, chairman and chief executive officer of BB&T; Edgar Broyhill, president and managing director of the Broyhill Group in Winston-Salem; George Leef, director of research for the Pope Center; James Martin, former North Carolina governor; and Anne Neal, president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
The Pope Center plans to continue this award in 2009. We encourage students throughout North Carolina to think about their best courses—the rigorous classes that spur them to think—and get ready to nominate the professors who teach them.