free variable

I had a good time in college: I learned to love art music composed before Beethoven¹, spent a lot of quality time talking about interesting ideas, and met some of my best friends (including, most importantly, my lovely wife). However, since I graduated, my undergrad institution has apparently been evaluating tenure, policy, and strategic decisions based on only one metric: “Will this infuriate Will Benton ‘00?” A list of my grievances would be too long for users on dial-up connections — although I must note that 89.3 FM now broadcasts execrable “adult contemporary” fare instead of the best classical music programming in the country — but I can’t let this goofy press release slide. Here’s a representative quote:

[St. Olaf Choir conductor Anton] Armstrong disagrees with the religious experts and scholars who say that the civil and international unrest plaguing the world today signals an abandonment by God.

Who are these “religious experts and scholars?” (Has St. Olaf given them tenure?) And how on earth did St. Olaf’s “experts and scholars” manage to completely miss the last two millennia of Christian intellectual history — in which other “religious experts and scholars” came up with numerous explanations for the problem of evil that, overwhelmingly, did not involve abandonment by God?

Of course, it seems most likely that the writer of this release didn’t actually consult any “religious experts and scholars,” and made up a transition paragraph that seemed plausible. However, if this is true — that this transition seemed plausible — then we have a much more troubling question. St. Olaf purports to provide an “education committed to the liberal arts [and] rooted in the Christian Gospel.” How is it then, that a college employee — who, in writing this release, served as a mouthpiece for the college — is apparently so ignorant of both the liberal arts and the Christian gospel?

¹ I had previously regarded Beethoven as “acceptable” only because a clear evolutionary line could be drawn from his work to that of Mahler. Ah, how three semesters of music history conspire to open one’s eyes!