As a seminary-trained Christian who is also an educator, I find this story quite troubling.
A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.
“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.
What, exactly, did Bitterman say?
Bitterman, who taught part time at Southwestern and Omaha’s Metropolitan Community College, said he uses the Old Testament in his western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic standpoint.Bitterman’s Tuesday course was telecast to students in Osceola over the Iowa Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he said, thought the lesson was “denigrating their religion.”
“I put the Hebrew religion on the same plane as any other religion. Their god wasn’t given any more credibility than any other god,” Bitterman said. “I told them it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there.”
Bitterman said called the story of Adam and Eve a “fairy tale” in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.
“I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the 8th century.”
Now his words are harsh, impolitic, and maybe even mildly offensive -- but that does not mean they are wrong or that they should lead to discipline against him -- especially because they are, in my opinion, more or less correct.
The Genesis account of the creation cannot and should not be taken literally in light of the fossil record. It is best understood as an allegorical tale that communicates the essential truth that everything was created by God, and that our free will leads us to disobey God and to sever/strain our relationship with him. The story of Adam and Eve and the snake is therefore a myth -- but it is also true at its core.
And for those of you who object that the Bible is the revealed word of God (a contention which i whole-heartedly affirm), I offer this for your consideration -- if I can write an allegory, don't you suppose that the omnipotent God we both worship is able to do the same?
But regardless of whether we agree or disagree, and regardless of whether either of us agrees with Bitterman, there remains the question of academic freedom. There is a great body of academic literature which agrees with his position, and to fire him for citing it and teaching about it is not only wrong, but positively anti-intellectual.
It strikes me that Southwest Community College needs to offer a more public explanation of this personnel decision -- and that Bitterman should explicitly authorize them to do so. And if the comments on genesis have anything to do with the firing, Bitterman should be immediately reinstated.
And on a personnel note, I have more than a passing interest in such controversies. I've actually had a parent call my school and demand their child be removed from my class over a similar issue -- the inclusion of evolution in my World History class. Silencing truth in the name of religious sensitivity is simply wrong, whether the perpetrators of Christian, Muslim, or atheist.
A different viewpoint at Stop the ACLU
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