100 most dangerous academics
Isn’t it interesting that, as far as I can tell, there are no theologians on David Horowitz’s list of the 100 most dangerous academics? Help me out because I’m not familiar with all of these people. The people whose work I know who are on this list, people like Todd Gitlin, Robert McChesney, and bell hooks, are all people whose work I’ve admired. There are also very few religious schools on the list. Let me repeat: what does that mean? Aren’t theologians supposed to be on the cutting edge of confronting a culture? Shouldn’t our attempts to live out our witness, our confession of faith, our prophetic imagination, bear some kind of fruit by making us dangerous to the status quo?
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1 Comment
Jane R commented on 21 February 2006:Mary, I think the list reveals the secular bias of the writer rather than the lack of dangerous theologians! You know that many academics ignore us as "serious"... That said, there ARE theologians on that list. Marc Ellis (Jewish liberation theologian), Michael Eric Dyson (who is a cultural critic, yes, but also a pastor and theologian), Amina McCloud (Muslim religious thinker), John Esposito, who used to direct the center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and is a scholar of Islam (I know, not a Christian theologian, but as I noted above, the list says more about the list-maker than about who's out there -- as always, I say, consider the source; everyone's got a hermeneutic...), Yvonne Haddad, another great scholar of Islam.
Send him a letter! Or better yet, start a list here of your favorite "dangerous theologians" -- or write an op-ed about this...
Peace,
Jane