The New Religious Consciousness and the Secular University

Author(s): Robert N. Bellah

Source: Daedalus, Vol. 103, No. 4, American Higher Education: Toward an Uncertain Future,
Volume I (Fall, 1974), pp. 110-115
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024251
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ROBERT

N.

The New

Religious

BELLAH

Consciousness

and the Secular University

One way

of getting at the ethos of the secular university today is to characterize

its
in
central value as "cognitive
Parsons
the
Talcott
concept
rationality,"
developed
by
is
in
his recent work. Parsons is probably
that
this
the
central
value
saying,
right
is organized.
But I am not quite so happy about that
around which
the university
fact as Parsons tends to be. It is not, as I think will be evident, that I don't respect

but that I think there are other things in the world with which
be concerned as well. At its best, "cognitive
rationality" means
not
of
the
the
sheer intake of
acquisition
"disciplined
simply
knowing,"
knowledge,
is
not
what
has
the finished product. Disciplined
just
already been
knowing
learning
but learning to learn, the process of inquiry itself. This statement of the
discovered,
cognitive
rationality,
the university might

normative

the

commitment,

basic

value

system

of

the

secular

university,

obviously

has a link to traditional, philosophical,

and religious commitments
and to traditions
of the secular university.
of education
that stretch back far before the emergence
a kind of
The pursuit of truth for its own sake can become,
and has become,
in
notion
of
the
like
that
which
the
intellec
expresses
supreme rationality,
Spinoza
and religious forms, there is a
tual love of God. In its more traditional, philosophical,
itself, merges with nonrational ways of know
point at which rationality transcends
ing, and becomes one way of attaining the vision of divine truth, of ultimate reality.
in traditional ways of
is not made
Even when that particular chain of connections
reason
of
the
of
has been seen as in
about
the
quest
pursuit
thinking
knowledge,
and
volved in a complex of human activities that includes feeling, moral evaluation,
action
For

in

the

most

world.
of

what

the

secular

does,

university

however,

cognitive

rationality

or

things?how
disciplined
knowing does not go beyond a simple desire to understand
they operate, why they came to be, and what they may do next. But even in that
in the university.
form, cognitive
rationality exists precariously
relatively mundane
It exists

on

sufferance,

so

to

speak,

in

relation

to

pervasive

notion

in our

culture

is a
that, after all, knowing is not an end in itself. It is simply a means. Knowledge
of the world. The pervasive emphasis on the manipulative,
tool for the manipulation
has tended to make of the university a kind of uni
instrumental use of knowledge
later.
versal filling station where students tank up on knowledge
they will "need"
The idea of the university which Clark Kerr presented not many years ago, the so
to the numerous
needs of a diverse
"multiversity"
catering
knowledge
to
In
is
education
all
close
that
this
clientele,
university
image,
image.
perilously
in
is
that
and
there
becomes professional
direction,
par
education,
great pressure
of
education
in
universities.
ethos
this
The
behind
state
conception
ticularly perhaps
in the deep American
value of
in the culture.
It is rooted
is very general
a
at
moment
of
is
of
old ways
intense
the
because
and
resurgence
pragmatism
partly
in this matter
of thinking in the society, and partly because of a curious convergence
called

?10

111

THE NEW RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS

the Old Right and the New Left. Both of them tend to adopt an extremely
idea of education.
pragmatic, manipulative
is useless unless it is
The Old Right and the New Left agree that education
world."
The
related to rather immediate ends in "the real
implication is that the uni
is
outside the univer
somehow
world"
"real
that
the
versity is not the "real world,"
can
be justified only insofar as it is a means
sity, and that work within the university
is com
an
to this conception,
the university
to
end in the "real world." According
students with certain fixed impermeable
individualistic
goals.
posed of atomized,
is to help students attain their goals by com
The university's
only purpose
to them certain discrete skills and certain discrete bodies of fact about
municating
the external world which
they can then "use."
and archaic
in the great traditional societies as well as in primitive
Education
one
as
as
could imagine. Com
different from this picture
societies is by and large
between

is not missing
in more traditional modes of
is sometimes highly developed?but
education?a
respect for "disciplined
knowing"
is ini
it is never seen as the sole end of education. As Plato said, "All education
an
an
was
tiation." And Whitehead,
philosopher,
speaking for
though a modern
is religious." Education
of education when he said, "All education
cient conception
is initiation in the sense of initiation into reality with a capital "R." It
traditionally
involves heart, and soul, and body. Initiation is not just a process in which "secrets
is
in which
is a process
the individual
Initiation
of the tribe" are transmitted.
a
in
transformed and takes on a new status,
symbolized
change that is frequently
various parts of the world as being born anew. It is a radical process involving the

munication

of discrete

skills and facts

it differs sharply from the idea of

in relation to his whole environment;
whole.person
an equally
a closed, atomized
individual manipulating
closed, objective world.
was
a
new person ideally more
in
formation
of
the
involved
education
Traditionally,
in
than when he began, one more aware of the whole of existence,
perceptive
a
more
as
human
Such
education
its
and
dimension,
responsive
being.
tragic
cluding
skills but a discipline of body, of feeling, of imagination,
involved not only cognitive
as well as of mind.
in a morally and religiously transformed
Its aim was to eventuate
person.

in both China
for example,
the
In the Confucian
and Japan,
tradition
life, com
relationship with the teacher was one of the most central in a person's
including
parable to that with parents or the ruler. It was highly ceremonious,
In the traditional
schools of Japan, the way one sat
rigorous forms of discipline.
when

one

studied,

the

way

one

behaved

in

the

presence

of

one's

teacher

were

sub

a Japanese

teacher would simply ter

ject to strict rules. There are cases in which
a lesson when
his body carelessly,
minate
the student moved
saying, "Apparently
such an idea of education has
you are not interested in learning today." Obviously
its own formalism and emptiness, but the basic motive
its own mode of corruption,
serious. The student and teacher were
in such an event
is profoundly
involved
or facts, but in the transmis
not
transmission
in
of
the
simply
engulfed
knowledge
sion of the Way, of what reality in its fullest extent is all about. The traditional no
tion of "learning" or "study" (in Chinese hsueh, in Japanese gaku) had a richness of
a purely cognitive
concern.
It was frequently
said in
that transcended
implication
ever
that one could have "learning" without
the Confucian
tradition, for example,
a
at
ancient
of
the
read
book
all.
The
China,
sages
great mythical
great
having
tradition, Yao and Shun, of course,
figures that stand at the head of the Confucian
Tao. Their whole
had no books, yet they embodied
They embodied
"learning."

112

ROBERT

N.

BELLAH

lives were an expression of the right relationship between man and the cosmos, the
focus of all "study." Books, of course, became desperately
important in the Confu
cian tradition. Through particular books, the Tao could with great difficulty, yet in
the whole enterprise worthwhile.
part, be transmitted. That was what made
One feature of the Confucian
tradition characteristic
of all traditional religious
forms of education was a special attitude toward texts. Some degree of philological
in textual criticism long existed in China and Japan, but the basic in
sophistication
terest was the inner message
that the texts imparted, not philological
knowledge
about the texts. The fundamental
for the student was how to internalize,
problem
how to embody,
of the text. Many of these texts were poetic or highly
the message
In many
than silent
instances, ways of learning texts involved more
symbolic.
that were vir
special ritual motions
reading. They involved chanting, or sometimes
tually a dance form, so that one related to the tradition as a complete physical being
and not simply as a disembodied
intellect. In the first two books of the Laws, Plato
bases the ideal state on a mode of education which also has this encompassing,
common
in traditional forms of education.
totally human characteristic
a closed subject and an
education was not a relationship between
Traditionally
alien object, but the development
of a transformed person in relation to an organic
cosmos.
whole which
If that
included his society,
the natural world,
the whole
it will be apparent how sharp the contrast is with the
has any validity,
description
kind of education
secular university. Even though there
typical of the contemporary,
is perhaps no word used more often today than "experience,"
the experiential
is extraordinarily
in the kind of education
that we purvey.
dimension
weak
The wholeness
of culture that stood behind traditional modes of education began
to crack in the West at least by the seventeenth
century. Thus, one might
imagine
that the kind of education we know today dates back several centuries to the begin
ning of secular scientific culture in the West. That is not the case. A much more
survived far into the period of so-called
pattern of educational
experience
secular culture. Even the state university not so long ago found words like
at the heart of its enterprise. The denominational
college
religion and morality
in the
of higher education
century was the main mode
through the nineteenth
situation concerned with the whole human
United States and offered an educational
phony those words may sound to us, there
being, with building character. However
was a totality of moral concern that links those forms of education
to much more an
traditional

modern,

ones.

cient

The victory of cognitive

rationality as the central value in higher education had
its roots in the rise of the graduate
school in the late nineteenth
century, was ad
institutions
in the twentieth century,
vanced by the emergence
of mass-educational
and was not complete until after World War II. Only recently have the remnants of
a fuller conception
of education been finally washed out of the American university.
time that higher education was becoming
secularized and narrow in
of
of the population
far larger percentages
sought entrance. The combination
a
mass
not
strains
and
audience
education"
grave
produced
surprisingly
"alienating
in the decade of the sixties, strains that are by no means gone from the Ameri

At

the same

focus,

can

university.

in its brightest
Thus far, I have painted
the traditional
form of consciousness
a repressive authoritarianism,
and an
hue. The other side is a narrow dogmatism,
absolute
lack of openness. During
the seventeenth
century the growing empirical
consciousness
all established powers. In the name of rationality, it under
challenged

THE NEW RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS

113

in
assertion of social and religious
mined
every status quo, every doctrinaire
in
stitutions.
It helped
the immense release of those human energies
that David
of the modern
Landes has called "the unbound Prometheus"
age. The secular con
es
sciousness had a genuine
it challenged
element especially where
transcendent
of established
tablished tyrannies. In the religious field, it led to the undermining
It unmasked
authorities, both clerical and textual, and the rise of higher criticism.
all assertions about religious man, ending in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth
centuries

with Marx, and Nietzsche,

and Freud, the three great unmaskers of the
Homo
of
pretensions
religiosus. And that, too, was a liberation, a liberation that
into
of our present situation in a way that would have been
the possibilities
plays
to
masters
those
of suspicion themselves.
surprising
Modern
secularism, while
releasing human beings from one kind of tyranny,
a
more
often imposed
terrible tyranny, however?the
new,
tyranny of the pragmatic
of every day, of the givenness of immediate reality with all its constraints.
It
has resulted in the rise of the bureaucratic,
and manipulative
man,
technological,
who rejects all transcendence,
who has what Blake called "single vision." There is
in the single vision of modern
secular consciousness with
something deeply demonic
the vast range of human experience
that it tends to shut out.
From its beginning,
the modern
secular culture has faced critical opposition and,
from inside that cautioned:
"Beware! What kind of human
eventually, movements
I do not refer here to the sur
being will this liberating revolution finally produce?"
vival of more traditional forms of criticism, an important feature of all modernizing
societies and one that takes the form of peasant rebellions, religious movements,
and
world

revivals of various

sorts. I think of those questionings

that came not from those un
from the new culture, the remnants of an old world receiving its mortal
culture itself, from men like
blows, but from the children of the new enlightened
and Kierkegaard.
Pascal, Rousseau,
Fourier, and Marx as well as Schleiermacher
can
The rise of modern culture from the seventeenth
at
be
characterized
century
a simple level by the word "criticism,"
a criticism of everything
taken for granted in
the traditional world view, a total undermining
of what Paul Ricoeur has called
at
"primary na?vet?." Ricoeur also suggests a possibility only indistinctly perceived
of a second na?vet?, not through
the rejection of criticism,
but
present?that
that once again the symbols
through the full exposure to its fires. It is the possibility
may speak, and we may be able to live in their grasp.
This possibility,
this second na?vet?, I want to refer to by the notion of "new
It should be quite c^ear that this notion does not include
religious consciousness."
on
novel
the
everything
religious scene today. Much of what looks new on the sur
a more
or less
face?the
the Neo-Pentecostals?is
Jesus Movement,
probably
genuine expression of primary na?vet? or an effort to recapture a primary na?vet?
der attack

that has been

lost. In the Hare Krishna movement,
for example,
the absolute
on any serious criticism of the system from those who have
it
prohibition
accepted
as
characterized
appears to be an effort to regain that lost world of perfect wholeness
seems
primary na?vet?. Even a religion like Zen Buddhism, which
extraordinarily
not
to
which
does
commit
itself
in
sophisticated,
any particular symbols, and which
is
to
can
human
become
open
theory
radically
experience,
encap
completely
sulating, closing adherents off from exposure to anything outside a relatively narrow
range

of

Second
on hostility

experience.

na?vet? is hard to define, hard to get a handle on. Clearly it does not rest
to primary na?vet?. Indeed it often includes a great
nostalgia for primary

114
na?vet?,

ROBERT
but

also

new

periences

that

recognizes

religious

it

consciousness

N.

BELLAH

is no
has

The

possible.

longer

passed

through

criticism,

person
not

who

ex
it.

avoided

has gone to school with the masters of suspicion, he has subjected every one of
He knows the vulnerability
his childhood beliefs to the most radical undermining.
of
every text in every sacred tradition. Above all, and here is the crux of the difference
with primary na?vet?, he knows that every interpretation
of reality is finally only an
and not reality itself. And he cannot confuse his own words or the
interpretation,
words of some creed or doctrine with ultimate
reality. Second na?vet? could be
He

as the final fulfillment

in fairly traditional
words
of Biblical
itself. It is aware that
which accepts nothing as a substitute for the Divine
every religion is as much a defense against divine reality as it is a channel of transmis
sion of divine reality. And a great many religions a great deal of the time are more
characterized
ieonoclasm,

than

defenses

they

are

transmissions.

the person in this situation denies the ultimacy of any interpreta

Consequently,
tion. But he differs from the skeptic and the critical intellectual because he believes
that no inter
that purely religious symbols themselves have inexhaustible meaning,
pretation will ever fathom their depths. By opening oneself up to every possible mode
of interpretation,
it is possible
to be grasped by the symbols?as
Ricoeur
however,
ieonoclasm of the most radical sort, there may come
says, "to hear again." Through
not nihilism but a new way of grasping
Such de-mystification
religious meaning.
may lead to a new possibility of living in a mythical world, in the profound, not the
of that term. The person who has this new religious con
pejorative,
meaning
sciousness can give himself to the symbols, or symbols can grasp him, because he
does not place his interpretation above the symbols. Here is the crux of the issue of
if one makes
the interpretations more finally real
interpretations.
Only
changing
than the text itself is that problem posed. The person with new religious con
sciousness
takes the religious symbols as revelatory of Being, but always as in part
hidden.

He

is not

disturbed

by

changes

in

interpretation

and

wants

to

remain

open

to every possible new interpretation.

Finally, he can see that Buddhist or Hindu or
Navajo or Hopi symbols can be as revelatory as Christian or Jewish symbols. This
does not mean that he cannot take a stand and commit himself to certain symbols as
knowing all the while that one can never
being the most profound of his experience,
fully understand even those symbols which come out of "one's own tradition." But
to the radical experiential
there is a profound
dimension
of the entire
openness
religious heritage of mankind.
in this context is a normal aspect
Of importance
The transition
referred to as "youth fundamentalism."
is a very upsetting one, and intense commitment
of a
a relatively closed system provides an important way

of growing up which can be

to adulthood
from childhood
or
ideological sort to
religious

to
of moving
from childhood
Thus, rather than idolizing youth, I would say that chronological
age is
to what is new culturally and what is the long-run direction of cultural
I use the terms,
that young people do is not, in the way
Everything

adulthood.
not a key
change.
necessarily

new

religious

consciousness.

with the so-called

I do not intend to identify the new religious consciousness
and is
Second na?vet? begins much earlier than the counter-culture
counter-culture.
not co-terminous
has not
with it, though to some extent its popular dissemination
to the counter-culture.
Above all, it is a new way of being
been wholly unrelated
not
is
culture
and
within
modern
simple rejection of that culture. As a form
religious
in the
there is more
it is not clearly institutionalized,
of consciousness,
although

THE

churches than perhaps

tellect and the product
contemporary

NEW

is realized.
of modern
and

university,

even

RELIGIOUS

CONSCIOUSNESS

115

it is the child of the critical in

just because
culture at its best, its terrain, if it has any, is the

But

more

specifically,

in

some

places

at

least,

the

of Religion. Here
there is an institutional
that
support for precisely
Department
of seriousness and openness with respect to the whole of the human
combination
this mode of religious consciousness.
that characterizes
religious heritage
In one sense, this development
is encouraging
and in another rather upsetting.
After all, many people
settled: the
thought we finally had this whole question
secular

university

was

one

thing,

religion

and

all

that

nonsense

was

something

else.

if within
the heart of the secular university a new un
What on earth is happening
an understanding
of human beings is emerging,
that takes seriously the
derstanding
nonrational aspect? What do we do when such a perception
emerges
preconceptual,
in the midst of our rational enlightenment
Some may be tempted to
enterprise?
reach for their guns, so to speak, and to start talking about the separation of church
are at the
For one thing, these possibilities
and state. I frankly am not concerned.
a
moment
only incipient. We have
long way to go before their full implications will
be clear. But here at least is one small point where
the profound
schism in our
the schism between
the disembodied
intellect and our whole humanity,
culture,
the initiatory element of education
might possibly begin to be overcome, where
to be regained.
I certainly do not have any highly Utopian or es
might
begin
of Religion per se can do about it. The
chatological hopes as to what the Department
problems of the contemporary
university go very deep, to the whole structure and
In the long run, these problems will have to be solved at
ideology of the university.
a much more radical level. Yet, in the present cultural situation, a Department
of
in that process of change which could lead again
Religion may be a small beachhead
in a new way to a whole human being.