Critical Religion Scholars’ Data Denial: Their Odd Efforts to Downplay Bias Against and Contributions of Christians

Abstract

Although Critical Privilege (CP) scholars, such as Edwards et al. (2023) acknowledge secular privilege, my ongoing intellectual conversation with them on these pages has not only reinforced my original concerns but it has also created new ones They do not understand the American uniqueness regarding faith-based and secular higher education when compared to the rest of the world, and the role that religious liberty plays in that uniqueness. They also continue to misrepresent my argument in important ways. Finally, I find them strangely stubborn about acknowledging the extent of secular privilege’s negative influence on Christians in pluralistic higher education.

Keywords:

• Christian privilege
• critical religious scholarship
• secular privilege

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

We have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Notes

1 Unfortunately, my fellow co-author from the last article, Jessica Martin, will not be able to join this response due to major health issues.

2 Edwards et al. are correct to note that those faculty identifying as “religiously unaffiliated” does not always mean they are “secular.” In fact, in my research, I have found those who identify as “none” sometimes will list a place of worship (although that place of worship may or may not be Christian). That being said, it is always a small number or percentage of the nones. In this regard, although I think they have a good point and further study is needed to clarify the exact nature of “religiously unaffiliated” group, I am doubtful that it would change the findings in any appreciable way.

3 At times, Edwards et al. have focused this argument upon broader unrelated issues such as January 6^th. Concerning my counter to their off-the-argument January 6^th reference, they argue, “We fear that this claim about who is more or less likely to be sympathetic to the January 6th insurrectionists is unsubstantiated and could easily inflame Islamophobic attitudes and violence, making it dangerous to repeat in any way, let alone in an academic journal” (p. 5). Of course, they are wrong that the claim is unsubstantiated. If they have doubts about Burge’s work, they could simply e-mail him (which I did). Burge said he took his analysis from this dataset: https://www.voterstudygroup.org/data/nationscape. If Edwards et al. (2023) doubt Burge so much, they should pursue the data trail themselves instead of making unsubstantiated claims about how such data will lead to “Islamophobic attitudes and violence” p. 5). One’s positionality does not give one the epistemological privilege to simply deny evidence that does not fit one’s preferred ideology and narrative or claim that sharing that data will lead to horrible consequences.