Can we really let students skip drama classes on religious grounds? It's time liberals fought back
Not so long ago, I spent a term teaching at a university in California. I turned up, heavy with jet lag, on the day British universities call the freshers' fair. But while here such events are all about the chance to join Beer Soc or Queer Soc or Rugby Soc, things looked rather different on the carefully watered lawns of Californian academe. There, the majority of groups vying for the freshman's attention were Christian and other faith-based groups. It was a timely warning that I was in a country very different from my own.
I soon forgot the warning. The students I taught were all liberal in their attitudes, and as far as I could see none of them had any strongly held religious convictions. The theatre department encouraged the study of theatre from a basis of identity politics: the rainbow world of diverse sexualities, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
Later in the term, a production of my play Citizenship - a play that contains a rather innocent kiss between two boys - was performed by the drama department. The performance was assigned to a large group of theatre students to attend and report on. "I won't be coming to your show," one young man told me in a matter-of-fact way. "Oh, why's that?" I said. He smiled at me, placidly: "I can't," he said. "I'm a Christian."
I was seeing the consequences of the culture wars that have played themselves out across American society for the past 20 years. The social conservatives, closely aligned to the churches, have fought - and in some places defeated - a perceived liberal bias in the media, arts and the entertainment industry. And liberals, who had come to see their own values as simply common sense and the inevitable result of human progress, have realised that those values have to be fought for.
A truce has been reached in some areas of US society, whereby the liberals can have their culture so long as anyone - such as the student I met - could opt out on the grounds of conscience or religious belief.
It's a truce I am uneasy with. In signing up for the theatre course, that young man was opting for a course of work set by a professor. Surely the professor should have the courage of conviction to say that the young man has to attend all the performances assigned to him, not just those that accord with his own views. If you graduate from university believing exactly what you believed in your freshman week, then hasn't very little in the way of real education occurred?
It's easy to see these as peculiarly American problems, but it seems to me that they are becoming our problems, too.Just three weeks ago I met a woman who has been directing a production of my play Mother Clapp's Molly House with final-year students at a British university. It's a less innocent play than Citizenship, and contains not just gay kissing but a great deal of enthusiastic sodomy. "It all went very well," she said. "But unfortunately our lead boy had to pull out at the last minute. His mum is a Christian and she found a copy of the script, so he had to withdraw."
I recognised in this the same placid acceptance I had experienced in California - an acceptance that the values of education and culture, and the authority of the teacher, must come second to religious conscience and parental authority. Liberals, so used to tolerating all beliefs and cultures, haven't got the strength to defend the values of a liberal institution. And, let's be honest, most of our institutions are liberal. University drama departments are liberal institutions. We teach liberal values. The BBC is a liberal organisation, promoting the values of a liberal establishment. This much Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, got right. But it's time we stopped apologising or pretending this isn't so.
A friend who teaches in a British university drama department tells me that a young woman has asked not to attend certain classes because they would require her to touch male students. Nothing sexual. Nothing intimate. Just touch. But her religion won't let her, and so she has been allowed to opt out of those classes. Surely the university should declare itself a liberal organisation, and insist that those joining it must abide by its liberal values? Culture wars, so long avoided in the UK, are brewing. Liberals are going to have to fight hard. There should be no opt-outs when it comes to culture. We believe in our values.
I soon forgot the warning. The students I taught were all liberal in their attitudes, and as far as I could see none of them had any strongly held religious convictions. The theatre department encouraged the study of theatre from a basis of identity politics: the rainbow world of diverse sexualities, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
Later in the term, a production of my play Citizenship - a play that contains a rather innocent kiss between two boys - was performed by the drama department. The performance was assigned to a large group of theatre students to attend and report on. "I won't be coming to your show," one young man told me in a matter-of-fact way. "Oh, why's that?" I said. He smiled at me, placidly: "I can't," he said. "I'm a Christian."
I was seeing the consequences of the culture wars that have played themselves out across American society for the past 20 years. The social conservatives, closely aligned to the churches, have fought - and in some places defeated - a perceived liberal bias in the media, arts and the entertainment industry. And liberals, who had come to see their own values as simply common sense and the inevitable result of human progress, have realised that those values have to be fought for.
A truce has been reached in some areas of US society, whereby the liberals can have their culture so long as anyone - such as the student I met - could opt out on the grounds of conscience or religious belief.
It's a truce I am uneasy with. In signing up for the theatre course, that young man was opting for a course of work set by a professor. Surely the professor should have the courage of conviction to say that the young man has to attend all the performances assigned to him, not just those that accord with his own views. If you graduate from university believing exactly what you believed in your freshman week, then hasn't very little in the way of real education occurred?
It's easy to see these as peculiarly American problems, but it seems to me that they are becoming our problems, too.Just three weeks ago I met a woman who has been directing a production of my play Mother Clapp's Molly House with final-year students at a British university. It's a less innocent play than Citizenship, and contains not just gay kissing but a great deal of enthusiastic sodomy. "It all went very well," she said. "But unfortunately our lead boy had to pull out at the last minute. His mum is a Christian and she found a copy of the script, so he had to withdraw."
I recognised in this the same placid acceptance I had experienced in California - an acceptance that the values of education and culture, and the authority of the teacher, must come second to religious conscience and parental authority. Liberals, so used to tolerating all beliefs and cultures, haven't got the strength to defend the values of a liberal institution. And, let's be honest, most of our institutions are liberal. University drama departments are liberal institutions. We teach liberal values. The BBC is a liberal organisation, promoting the values of a liberal establishment. This much Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, got right. But it's time we stopped apologising or pretending this isn't so.
A friend who teaches in a British university drama department tells me that a young woman has asked not to attend certain classes because they would require her to touch male students. Nothing sexual. Nothing intimate. Just touch. But her religion won't let her, and so she has been allowed to opt out of those classes. Surely the university should declare itself a liberal organisation, and insist that those joining it must abide by its liberal values? Culture wars, so long avoided in the UK, are brewing. Liberals are going to have to fight hard. There should be no opt-outs when it comes to culture. We believe in our values.
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