Responses

Correct, but only barely: Donald Wiebe on religion at the University of

PETER RICHARDSON

1. Introduction

Donald Wiebe (1995) has written a compelling account of "Graduate Stud- ies in Religion at the " - at least it would be if it were both correct and fair. Although it is generally correct, it is not fair in its as- sessment, nor does it provide discerning readers with enough information, despite its citation of a variety of relevant documents, to allow them to form independent judgments. This rejoinder, then, forms a contrary evaluation on the basis of more and different evidence: the study of religion at Toronto is alive and well.1 Wiebe and I have debated these issues for years. While I have a slightly longer familiarity with the Department and Centre2 than he, I have not been an administrator in either Department or Centre - Wiebe was Associ- ate Director of the Centre for two years.3 I have laboured in the trenches, so I am not privy to insider information that he might have.4 As a member

1. I am indebtedto Donald Wiebefor readingand commentingon a draft of this rejoinderto his article.I have also been assistedby the helpfulcomments of severalfaculty members (es- peciallyBruce Alton and Jane McAuliffe),students (especially William Arnal) and the Cen- tre's administrativeassistant, Lesley Lewis. The informationin this articleis limitedto materi- als in my filesor in the publicdomain. Some recent figures are different. 2. I use "Centre"to refer to the Graduate Centre for the Studyof Religionor its earlier mani- festation I; use "Department"for the undergraduateDepartment for the Study of Religion and its earlierform. 3. During the period 1990-1992,when Wiebe served as Associate Director alongsideNeil McMullin,then Director,the Centre was extremelywell administeredwith good esprit de corps amongthe students For the same reasonsthat made it attractiveto students,the Cen- tre wasviewed suspiciously during that periodby senioruniversity administrators. 4. For twelveyears I was Principalof UniversityCollege, the "godlesscollege" to whichWiebe refers;my originalappointment to the university(1974) was throughHumanities at Scarbor- ough College,one of the two suburbancolleges. I was cross-appointedto the Department and the Centre in 1977. 234 of the Faculty - now Dean! - of Divinity of Trinity College,5 Wiebe must be thanked for his extraordinary concern for the well-being of religion at the University of Toronto. It is rare that someone whose appointment is in the- ology is so genuinely and persistently concerned with the study of religion. There are three main points in his critique: (1) the undergraduate Depart- ment still is determined by its character from the period before 1975 when its members taught "religious knowledge" within the church-related "Federated Universities";6 (2) the graduate Centre is dominated by a theological and Christian agenda imported, in part, from TST; (3) when the undergraduate Department and graduate Centre were amalgamated in 1992, the Centre "hand[ed] over control of its program to the department" (Wiebe 1995: 357). MTSR 7/4 (1995) evaluated religious studies in North America by look- ing at departments that were in trouble; most either were being closed or threatened with closure (in Canada, Toronto was considered along with Lethbridge and Alberta;7 in the USA, University of Pennsylvania, Univer- sity of California at Santa Cruz, and Arizona State). Four of the other five faced similar problems, one having already been closed and the other four, as Gary Lease says, "under siege" (Lease 1995: 301). Though the University of Toronto should not have been included in this issue, it would have been a salutary case study in a differently focussed issue, for its background and

5. TrinityCollege is one of the three old "FederatedUniversities" that had both a Religious Knowledgeprogram in the Facultyof Arts and Scienceand a Facultyof Divinity.Thus Trinity College (the high Anglicancollege) was one of the three collegesat the universityfrom whichthe originalmembers of the departmentwere drawn.Wiebe's appointment came after that arrangement,and so was only to divinity.The two other "FederatedUniversities" are St. Michael'sCollege (a BasilianCatholic college) and VictoriaUniversity (originally a Method- ist, now UnitedChurch, University). 6. All three FederatedUniversities (or FederatedColleges) have Arts and Scienceprograms di- rectlyrelated to the Universityof Toronto,which was provided for in a formalAct of Federa- tion in 1887;since the Universityof Torontowas a secularuniversity, however, and forbidden to teachtheology -or indeedreligion at all - until the periodunder discussion,the divinityor theologyfaculties of TrinityCollege, Victoria University (Emmanuel College) and the Uni- versityof St. Michael'sCollege (St. Basil's) were not formallya part of the Universityof Toronto.Instead, beginning in the 1960s,these three theologicalfaculties were linkedtogether in the TorontoSchool of Theology(henceforth TST), along with Wycliffe College (low-church Anglican),Knox College(Presbyterian), (Jesuit) and St. Augustine'sCollege (Diocesan),with McMasterDivinity School (Baptist) as a remoteassociate member, 40 miles away. 7. The CanadianCorporation for Studiesin Religionspawned a seriesof volumeson "the state of the art" in the field of religiousstudies in the variousregions in Canada,covering Québec, ,Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan,and BritishColumbia (the studyon the Mari- times has not yet appeared);I knowof no similarset of regionalstudies for the USA.These are all publishedby WilfridLaurier UniversityPress in Waterloo,Ontario. (For a recent re- viewof thesevolumes see Welch1996).