Is Intellectualism Arrogant?
One of the talks that surprised me a bit from Matter ‘09 was actually the final conversation on Romans 12 between Cassie Falke and Bill Mallonee. They both explored the voice of the artist – Bill through his story and music and Cassie through a paper on interacting with art as a textual critic. In her paper (or at least what I remember of it) she asserted that in textual criticism one must act in humility towards authors, choosing to love both the author and the audience. She said she had problems with art that was ugly because it didn’t originate with an attitude of respect for the viewer. Similarly she said she dislikes art that is so complex that the average person can’t “get it.” As she put it, if you have to already know stuff in order to understand a work of art then that isn’t appreciation it is merely an affirmation of arrogance – showing off how much you already know. For her all interaction should be done out of humility.
But some of us were uncomfortable with the assertion that to apply one’s intellect or to call others to use their intellect is arrogant. Perhaps, as an academic she intended to only refer to the extremes of art and literature, but in the church world where anti-intellectualism is the norm I find her position dangerous. The treasured mantra in churches these days is that the Bible is easy enough for a child to comprehend. While there may be a level in which that statement is true, the way it is used is generally to avoid or ridicule any learned approach to theology or biblical studies. Instead we get Bible translations written at 6th grade levels and “Bible studies” that are nothing more than copy a verse to fill-in-the-blank. People get to pretend they actually are “studying” something when all they are doing is regurgitating words without understanding their meanings in context. In fact this anti-intellectualism has become itself a source of pride, as anyone who tries to push deeper is mocked.
So I have an issue with saying that the need to be intellectually asute in order to understand something is arrogance. In my mind it is simply a means of getting at the complexities of the world. I don’t believe, for example, that if a person enjoys the show Lost they do so because they enjoy being arrogant. Yes, to get the show one has to be well read (or at least really good at google searches), but that just makes the show more interesting. I’ve heard people make fun of it and those of us who watch it because it is so complex, and to be thoughtful is in their world something to mock. But I don’t think the solution is so dumb everything down so that no one has to know much of anything as they engage the world around them. I want the news, or my TV shows, or my faith to make me think – to make me push beyond myself and go on that journey of discovery. I want the ah-ha moments when I see how elements of ancient Roman philosophy influence the writing of the epistles, or how ancient Egyptian culture helps Lost makes sense. Not so I can feel smug about my intellect, but because it shows me the beautiful interconnectedness of the world. It is about acknowledging the bigger world we live in, and that all of our stories have roots in each other’s stories. And it is about admitting that our response to the fact that God is big shouldn’t be to mock those that want to explore that complexity. To me it is more humble to admit that there is always more to learn – more ways to deepen the intellect – than to settle believing that one has it figured out enough to stop bothering.
But maybe that’s just arrogant of me…
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
Thank you, Julie.
Pet peave.
Great post.
I couldn’t agree with you more, especially about Bible studies. How interesting is it to have an adult Bible study lesson where wall we do is fill in the blank as if we’re in grade school? It makes me seethe. We need to be talking and sounding out our ideas, that’s where true growth happens in the soul.
Great post – what is ‘Lost’ all about anyway?
If we lack in understanding, it is usually a reflection of our environment. Fortunately, we can change all that.
Hmmmm. I’m torn. On one hand, I agree with you (especially in regard to the impression that her attitude is dangerous). On the other, I do rather wish that intellectual complexity wasn’t quite measure of pride and (yes) arrogance that it often does become.
Surely there’s got to be a middle way. A way to encourage nuance and complexity while actually INVITING people to learn more, rather than shoving them away if they don’t “get it” already.
Thanks Julie — Although I’m not a real fan of abstract art, you put your finger on a major issue within the Christian community — and that is the prevalence of anti-intellectualism. The mind is something that should not be neglected, it is after all a gift of God!
And, regarding the bible studies — what about those sermon outlines that ask us to do pretty much the same thing?
Yeah … I tried teaching Bible studies so that they’d be more than fill in the blank, but after the first couple of weeks, people stopped coming. So I gave up teaching and going all together. I figured there was something wrong with me and I do my own studies whenever I feel the need.
Now I’m teaching my kids … how to be both intellectually curious and honest … and why that’s a good thing.
I don’t watch Lost … but only because I didn’t catch the first season, so I’d … you know … be lost.
I wonder how much it is true that “anti-intellectualism” is across the board in American Christianity. The Catholic Church, the largest Christian body, is certainly not. I’m not sure Lutherans, Episcopalians, and (definitely not!) Presbyterians could be accused of this. I’m sure it exists to some extent, but these are all hierarchical structures that to one extent or the other expect their leaders to be well-educated.
The problem seems to be with the independents and low-church protestants. Of course, this is one of the many negative side-effects of a broken Christendom. But still, I’m not sure they are so much “anti” as “alternatively” intellectual. I spent a good amount of time growing up as a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, and it was not that they were against education, they were just against education at certain institutions and against certain views. I can still give you a highly intellectual – if silly – argument about why evolution is silly. This may be non-mainstream, but it is not exactly “anti” intellectual. As one of my seminary professors said, even for our brothers and sisters that despise seminary education, informal education is still education.
I share your concerns, though, but I’m not sure what the solution would be. People will always be suspiciouis of what they are not familiar with – this includes higher education and “intellectualism.”
Julie said: “Similarly she said she dislikes art that is so complex that the average person can’t “get it.” As she put it, if you have to already know stuff in order to understand a work of art then that isn’t appreciation it is merely an affirmation of arrogance – showing off how much you already know.”
Mark said: “Surely there’s got to be a middle way. A way to encourage nuance and complexity while actually INVITING people to learn more, rather than shoving them away if they don’t “get it” already.”
Okay, I’m going to somewhat contradict myself here. On the one hand, I agree with Mark. I want the barriers to entering the knowledge of life’s complexity to be low, because I’m lazy and impatient in some ways. If I’m going to climb Mount Everest, I want an indigenous guide, and I don’t want to have to climb a sheer rock face just to get to the beginning of the trail. Life is complex, and we can’t change that. Understanding life’s complexity is difficult, and that can’t completely be avoided. But *communicating* life’s complexity can be done helpfully or unhelpfully, and that’s where I think Falke’s comment comes in. If you’re communicating so that you can only be understood by those who know as much as you do and who speak your language, you’re in danger of becoming elitist. If you’re satisfied with forming an insular club of intellectuals that ignores or scorns outsiders, that’s a problem.
On the other hand, elitism is really only a danger, not an inevitability. The problem for the outsider is that the artist’s attitude can *look* arrogant and elitist even when it’s not. Should I really expect every work by every artist to be easy to understand? I don’t expect the same from articles in academic journals. The education system is in place to teach people a field of study from the basics on up, and that saves scholars a lot of work when they’re writing articles and books to advance the knowledge in their field. They don’t have to start from the beginning each time and explain everything to the average person. Why should artists be forced to communicate their advanced ideas in ways a new viewer can understand? Academics and artists should be allowed to speak to people who are already at their level. The difference is, though, that average people aren’t expected to be able to pick up an academic journal and understand what it says, whereas there is some vague expectation that they should be able to understand any particular work of art. Maybe art pieces should be labeled “beginning,” “intermediate,” and “advanced” with some prerequisites listed for understanding them.
on campus up here all the talk has been about gnosticism lately, the most serious charge being one of elitism.
So while I agree with what’s being said here I also wonder if it might be a reaction towards the prevalence of anti-intellectualism in some circles?
Some circles I maintain live in a lot of talk abotu heady ideas. So it should be expected that likewise I react too – except the opposite way.
No, not all Christians are anti-intellectual. But among evangelicals at least there’s still plenty of it. Even at my alma mater Wheaton College, a very academically rigorous school, there was a strong vein of folks who would continually dichotomize “head” vs. “heart” and denigrate the former as a hindrance to “true spirituality”.
Beyond this, I know many conservative Christians who view academics and learning with suspicion since it often leads to “liberalism”. In their view it’s better to remain ignorant and “faithful”, than to think through one’s beliefs and risk having them change at all.
Just speaking from my own experiences… YMMV.
I agree with Andy in #8 when he says “On the other hand, elitism is really only a danger [of intellectualism], not an inevitability.”
I would add a corollary, referring this time to a simpler, childlike approach to their faith: “anti-intellectualism is only a danger [of a simpler approach], not an inevitability.”
We should all seek to have an engaged mind AND a warm heart, within the context of our personality and giftings. But those with a particular personality and bent, be it toward simplicity or toward complexity, toward the highbrow or the populist, should be respectful of the approach and experiences of the others. I think there’s room for art and literature and worship that is demanding intellectually without it being elitist, just as I think there’s also value in art, literature, etc. that is simpler and more readily accessible.
Bad things start to happen when we fail to recognize, acknowledge and guard against the danger inherent in our own preferred mode, and focus primarily on how bad the dangers are of the mode that doesn’t attract us. More grace is needed in both directions.
I think it’s important to note that all things that involve intellectualism can be enjoyed in various layers. I think some people are so insecure that they can’t get to the deeper levels that they write things that are complex off altogether, rather than enjoying the layers that are accessible to them.
I rather love the feeling when I understand a reference or a new layer that I would not have formerly comprehended. I am a teacher, so I really love seeing students when this happens.
It’s just like going back in your late twenties and reading a book you read in high school and loved. You still love it, but you understand it so much more deeply once you’ve gained years of experience and education.
I think if people would give things more of a chance and understand to the degree they can at the time, anti-intellectualism wouldn’t be a problem because we would all be as intellectual as we each can on our own levels and take a moderate amount of pride in testing our limits.
Can you tell I teach special ed?
To comment on what Mike said, I get told on a regular basis by church friends and family that I “think too hard and should just accept things,” and while I know this can be a downfall for me (I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!) I value that in myself. As part of the body of Christ, some people have to be gifted with great unrelenting faith and others have to be gifted with curiosity and analytical skills. Some lucky people get both! We balance each other out as long as we respect each other. It’s the latter part that is so difficult, since being “right” is as important for the intellectual as it is for the anti-intellectual.
This is an interesting & compelling conversation that we need to have in the church. Although, it may have sounded like Cassie Falke said that we should not be academic in our approach, I think the meat of her discussion centered on empathy as viewer to art & lack of arrogance as artists/intellectuals. Arrogance in some respects is necessary to keep compelling work forward, but in our approach to others we should ALWAYS walk humbly. Some denominations do this well & others allow us to easily disengage our brains from religion/theology.
The final plenary session, which Ms. Clawson refers to, ended with a very interesting discussion and passionate exchange of concerns and viewpoints. At the time I wasn’t able to but I wanted to add to the discussion that we as artists should realize that people are very intimidated by artists. This seems to be the case for the general public as well as many in the Christian church. And I’m not certain as to why that is. Has the faulty Renaissance notion of the artist as genus becomes so embedded in the public mind and have we, as artists, helped promote this stereotype?
Practically speaking, in developing commissioned artwork and design, I’ve found it helpful to cultivate a spirit of humility by trying to listen very carefully to others. Listening seems to garner respect and trust, which has resulted at times in more imaginative work.
I’m not sure if I buy the implication of several folks here that there are some people who are just innately intellectual, and others who are not. It might just be a personality thing, but, on the other hand, I think a lot of people are a lot smarter than we or they think they are. My evidence is the huge number of people I encounter all the time who appear to be “dumb jocks”, but who also have an astounding capacity to retain and understand mountains of arcane facts and details about all their favorite sports teams, rankings, statistics, players, etc. If they are capable of handling all that, why not more significant issues too? Personally I think it’s more a matter of apathy than of ability.
Hi Julie,
I apologize if my anti-Kantianism came across as anti-intellectualism. That certainly was not my intention. I wouldn’t be compfortable with a dichotomy that has humility equated with stupidity (or apathy) and arrogance equated with intelligence.
I thought I might clarify a couple of things for the sake of advancing the lively conversation that was begun at Matter 09. First, I did admit to not liking ugly art. It’s a personal bias, not a dogma. I only mention it because I recognize it might slant my position. My position, actually, and one of the points I had hoped to make at the conference, was that we should be cautious about separating form from content as Kant would have us to do. That means that if art glorifies morally repugnant activity, we as Christian critics need to take that (content) into account – even if the form of the art itself is excellent. That also means that art whose forms are so informed by specialized textual knowledge that those don’t have access to that knowledge cannot access the content poses problems for Christian critics. We are instructed to be humble – not thoughtless, humble. For me that implies that if we enjoy a work of art because we enjoy “getting” the ways that it interacts with previous works of art in the genre, that’s fine, but we shouldn’t get puffed up about it. We are instructed to esteem ourselves in accordance with our faith, which hopefully, if we’re wrestling witht he first commandment involves our minds as well as our hearts and souls.
Secondly,I’m not dismissing abstract art here. I used Kandinksy illustrations throughout the presentation, and I live in a house full of challenging original art. But a point should be made here about the kind of challenge that art offers to us. Ideally art (whether it is composed by a Christian or a secular artist) will challenge a Christian viewer spiritually and intellectually. (Another point I made in the talk is that those two are not separate.) That’s how we grow. It won’t simply exercise our formal knowledge of the artwork’s genre.
Hope that’s helpful in some way. Keep up the thoughtful posts.
All best,
Cassie
Julie, I fully agree. God gave us our minds, after all. I would think he intended us to use them!
So I should apologize for ducking out of this conversation for a few days – I was at a church retreat (and the recovering/catching-up from the retreat). I love the conversation that’s going on here, and there is no way that I can comment on everything that I want to comment on.
PastorMack – You are right the anti-intellectualism isn’t across the board in Christianity. But even in the evangelical circles where learning pseudo-science is intellectual activity, that isn’t even universally accepted. I recall being seen as elite and improper for attending the apologetics classes instead of the more emotional worship sessions or women’s bible studies. My friends called me a nerd, and the 5-7 of us doing the intellectual stuff were by far the minority (and I was always the only girl in those classes as well).
Andy – great points. We shouldn’t have to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator. Sometimes we have to be who we are and be okay with that.
David – fascinating question about people being intimidated by artists. I wonder though – has there ever been a time when artists were completely understand and accepted by mainstream society, or have they always stood apart in some sense?
Cassie – Thank you so much for responding here and for getting this conversation going in the first place. I think because I am not in the world of literary criticism, I didn’t automatically get your distinction that some people always separate form and content in art. I understand the need to do so at times, but I also naturally just assume that a full engagement of a text or work of art will have to involve an assessment of its content as well as its form. Perhaps I am just too pragmatic, but I see art as always doing something – be that conveying information or prompting a response – not just existing as an object that can be scientifically observed. In engaging art we cannot help but be a part of its function (whatever that may be), no matter how hard we would like to simply stand above it and critique its form. So that said, I believe we will always engage on some level the morality of a piece of art even if we simply are trying to engage the form. So sometime we need the ugly art to act as a mirror of who we are and to critique our very selves. It can be a glorification, or a condemnation, but will always be holistically engaged.
And I agree we should strive for humility in our intellectual pursuits. But when does love of knowledge and curiosity cross the line into pride. If I connect one piece of art to another and I feel the thrill of discovery – is that pride or joy? I think it is a fine line, and I am most concerned with the implications of the caution itself. It is too easy for others to accuse a person of pride when that person is simply finding joy in who God created them to be. Even if one isn’t elitist, they can easily be accused of being so and be forced to abandon who they are in order to dumb things down. Its reach the point where as Bill said, all our church art is propaganda. We have people heaping praise on Thomas Kinkade because they can easily understand him, and condemning anything more complicated as elitist. So while I understand for critique (especially in the academic world), I think it would be more helpful to call the church to be more intellectual than to caution people not to be prideful in intelligence.
Mike (16), that’s a good challenging point. I go back and forth on how much I think intellectual habits of thought are taught or learned, vs. how much is a matter of personality and genetics. I don’t think it’s an either-or. I agree the capacity to wrestle with complex questions and important issues is in some degree present in everyone and can be developed. But I also think temperament and personality often play a role in how much a given person pursues intellectual ways of thinking once exposed to them (or sometimes, with very little exposure at all).
Relatedly, we can also think in terms of people who have the temperament of the specialist, vs. those with the temperament of the generalist. The specialist wants to analyze, break down, and see the details. The generalist wants to get to the point, hear the final take-away, cut to the chase and see something start happening, and is usually impatient with or bored by the specialist within 30 seconds of his beginning to talk. It’s not a clear cut either-or as we all may have some tendencies in both directions depending on the topic. But most people do tend toward one of those more than the other. I also think someone can have *either* of those temperaments and be an intellectual. But the specialist’s temperament is more likely to lead more people to wrestle with complexity more often, IMO, and it seems to me that more intellectuals (and maybe artists?) are specialists by temperament (hence the ever-more-atomized specialization of PhD work, for example).
Memorizing arcane sports facts is actually not an intellectual activity, IMO. No more so than memorizing a ton of names, dates and places and the multiplication table. I guess it takes some degree of raw intelligence to memorize that much sheer data, but that doesn’t mean someone is thinking “intellectually” about the topic. The better sports-related analogy would be the sports fan who really wants to understand the X’s and O’s behind what she’s watching – to be able to appreciate the complex game of chess with move followed by countermove going on between the respective coaches at a level that most fans are oblivious to – vs. the fan who just wants to sit and watch the game and yell for her team to win with no deeper understanding of what’s going on beyond the very basics she was taught in grade school PE and is perfectly happy with that.