Huntington College News Release
Contact John W. Paff, Public Relations Director (260) 359-4048 or
359-0716
Hasker to write new book during sabbatical
HUNTINGTON, IN August 14, 1997--- Dr. William Hasker, distinguished professor of philosophy at Huntington College, will take sabbatical leave in 1997-98 to participate in the Pew Evangelical Scholars program.
Dr. Hasker was one of 16 academics chosen for the program from among 244 applicants. The Pew Evangelical Scholars program is designed to free recipients from the burdens of teaching and administrative work for a full academic year. They are expected to devote their time to their research and writing. Hasker will write a new book, The Emergent Self, refuting the idea that human consciousness is merely the result of chemical reactions in the brain.
"The Emergent Self will challenge the view of reductionistic materialism by arguing that the nature of human mental functioning cannot possibly be explained in terms of mechanistic physics," explains Hasker. "It will conclude by developing a theory of ‘emergent dualism’ which explains human consciousness better than materialism, but also accommodates the very scientific evidences that make materialism attractive to so many thinkers."
Dr. Hasker’s prior published works include Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 1994); The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (InterVarsity Press, 1994); Reasons and Religion Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 1991); God, Time, and Knowledge (Cornell University Press, 1989); and Metaphysics Constructing a Worldview (InterVarsity Press, 1983).
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Background and Description of the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program
(excerpted from Pew’s web site, http://www.nd.edu/~pesp/pew/PESPHistory.html)
For nearly two millennia, Western culture has been soaked in Christian thinking. Christianity, for its part, has from its very foundations encouraged advanced intellectual activity, instructing its adherents to worship God with mind as well as heart. Yet in the last one hundred years the connection between Western intellect and Christianity has come undone. Rigorous scholarly life has taken a decidedly secular turn. In America, mainstream Protestantism generally supported the secularization of the academy, while evangelical Protestants turned away from intellectual life to other callings. What intellectual life remained in the evangelical subculture was largely insulated from the ideas that were shaping American cultural life.
The separation was in large part due to the perception that Christianity was an obstacle to scholarly advance. Three recent trends, however, have caused many scholars to question whether the separation of Christianity and our society's intellectual life is still helpful. Increasing awareness of the subjectivity of all knowledge has stimulated efforts to increase the diversity of perspectives traded in the intellectual marketplace. Evangelicals, still possessing an acute sense that Christian assumptions are indeed different from others abroad in the academy, are intellectually well-situated to contribute a distinctively Christian voice. Heightened concerns over the modern fragmentation of knowledge have created a real need for scholars who ask large questions and make large connections, tasks that evangelical thinkers have always regarded as essential. Finally, more and more evangelicals, as individuals, are seeking to take up the work of high-level scholarship, which has created a small but significant pool of evangelical Christian scholars who have been trained at the best graduate schools in North America.
Nevertheless, while there is a growing body of evangelical scholars, structural obstacles lessen their ability to make a contribution to American intellectual interchange. There is a constant and powerful temptation to speak solely to audiences of other evangelicals. The granting agencies that sustain North American scholarship have been slow to recognize as legitimate scholarship studies that proceed from a religious viewpoint, especially from an evangelical Protestant viewpoint. And for those evangelicals employed at evangelical colleges and seminaries, low salaries and heavy teaching loads delay, and often close off, the possibility of completing significant scholarly works.
In 1990 The Pew Charitable Trusts made a nearly $2 million commitment to support two separate but closely related programs--The Pew Evangelical Scholars Program, a Trusts-initiated project that annually awarded three-year $100,000 grants to three accomplished senior scholars; and the Evangelical Scholarship Initiative, a re-granting program that annually awards six one-year, $30,000 Research Fellowships….
Every indication is that the scholarly quality of the projects that have been funded is absolutely sterling. James Turner, who evaluated the programs for The Trusts, judged that the programs were attracting and funding excellent project proposals, stronger than those funded by comparable programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities. As Professor Turner noted, it is still too early to judge the productivity of the scholars these programs have supported and the impact of their work; nevertheless the initial indications are encouraging. Nearly every consulting referee we have hired to evaluate proposals has, without solicitation, offered similar comments. A total of eighty-seven scholars have received grants under this program . These scholars work in a broad spectrum of disciplines: philosophy, history, English literature, sociology, political science, anthropology, theology, and biblical studies. The awards also cover a wide distribution of professional ranks, from independent scholars who are primary caregivers for small children to chairholding full professors at prestige <sic> universities.
An important ancillary goal of this program is to help build networks among evangelical scholars. These networks are intended to provide scholars with dialog partners as they seek to bring Christian perspectives to bear upon scholarly questions, as well as networks of mutual encouragement and support. Evangelical scholars at secular universities often feel isolated among their secular colleagues; scholars at Christian colleges and seminaries often feel isolated among their mostly teaching-oriented colleagues. Yearly summer seminars bring together current grant recipients, graduate student Fellows from the Pew Younger Scholars Program, and assorted other scholars, for a discussion of the work being done by that year's recipients.