The review of Marsden's two books under your caption, "Can Universities Tolerate Religion?" (Bookshelf, November) speaks directly to issues of crucial significance for teaching and research. All too often, open discussion of the intellectual implications of religious commitment does indeed seem to be perceived as being "in bad taste." Tolerance for views of all persuasions seems not to extend to religious (or at least not to Christian) beliefs.

Clearly, in some Canadian universities, such beliefs have in the past been used in an exclusionary manner, and thus caution is understandable. But it would be hard to find evidence of such exclusion today. In fact, the pendulum has swung decisively, in one generation, from a sometimes vague, but taken for granted, religious motivation for and background to scholarship, to an assumption that the very idea is eccentric or mistaken or worse, that religious commitment might play a role in academic discourse.

This means, of course, that in many newer Canadian universities, the pendulum has only ever been visible in one place. Your reviewer is right; for all of us "concerned with the nature of the university," it is high time for a "reappraisal of the role of religious belief in scholarship."

David Lyon
Head, Sociology, Queen's University


My appreciation for Keith Cassidy's thoughtful review (Bookshelf, November) of George Marsden's work! The questions raised at the end of the review get at the very heart of the loss of meaningful debate on the university campus. Please thank him for not taking the predictably "correct" view, and instead recognizing the role which religious belief can play in opening up scholarly discourse. In his review he has helped reappraise an assumed secularization, which is already losing its credibility outside the university.

Marguerite Van Die
History/Theology, Queen's University