From an issue of Student Life this fall:
Is there a place for religion at Washington University? Not officially, because the Charter prohibits supporting any particular religion. Some would say not at all, most assuredly. Yet, how account for the growing number of religious groups over the last decade or the extraordinary growth of groups like the Catholic Student Center over those same years. The CSC alone has grown from about 45 registered students 18 years ago to about 800 now. And retreats have gone from about 22 that year to up to 300 now. And Mass attendance has necessitated 3 expansions of our Chapel, which includes students of all faiths and none on any given Sunday. Indeed, religion at WU is on the rise, and is frequently an object of reflection and study and debate.
Is it a search for identity when so many students experience themselves (especially in the classroom) as a minority and find their faith responded to by peer and faculty alike with hostility or indifference. A survey release 2 years ago—titled ‘How Religious Are America’s College and University professors?’—concluded that classroom attitudes are by-and-large anti-religious. Professors, while they believed in at least the possibility of God’s existence, were more than twice as likely to be skeptics or atheists as the general population. At the same time, this administration has been quite supportive of our presence for students.
Is it a student’s desire to belong or perhaps a search for meaning to their choices and to their lives? While the University does a remarkable job at educating and caring for students, campus ministries can provide what the University cannot.
Perhaps it has to do with the need we all have for guidance, for coaching, in the often complicated and painful world of relationships, arguably the most important “school” at WU. We at the CSC define our work at WU to be at the service of helping all students become more capable of giving and receiving love. That is for us the essence of God, the essence of life itself. Amo, ergo sum. (I love, therefore I exist.)
Campus ministry can be a place to go with your broken and blessed lives, to believe in something bigger than a me-centered life—something worth your young life, some horizon against which every day can be lived out and where your own personal story and the Great Story can connect and lead to transformation. A place to help us remember we are not alone. And a place to honor the desire many feel to worship, to give thanks, to pray.
From my perch across Forsyth for the last 18 years, being religious at WU can be a source of great consternation and great creativity, and it gives me great hope for the future of religion in the world. The latter because it is religious illiteracy that hurts people and can be dangerous to the common good. Ignorance imperils our public life. Campus ministries at WU work hard to encourage greater understanding of one another. Honest and sometimes difficult exchange about our religious traditions can bring us ever more deeply into the experience of being human together at this time and in this place. We seek to model the dialogue that will always lead to the truth, the truth I trust will set us free.
If religious groups are to succeed at WU, it will be because they respect ALL students as they are, of any faith or none. No proselytizing here, no coercion here, our covenant commits. It will be because it is open and engaging and willing to be challenged and inclusive and calls us beyond ourselves and our own agendas.
Is the practice of faith a value-add then, during these years? Clearly, yes. Because it will challenge us to be less selfish, because it will lead us to be a better citizen of the world, it will encourage us to step back and ask the Big Questions like ‘what am I going to do with my life?’ and ‘how can I contribute?’ and ‘what is my personal and our civic morality?’ and questions like ‘what is the relationship between wealth and success and happiness?’ Studies confirm that students who engage religious rituals every week studied longer and reported higher grade point averages, and had greater satisfaction with the institution than their peers. It can undoubtedly invigorate our education. Honest and sometimes difficult exchange about our religious traditions can bring us ever more deeply into the experience of being human together at this time and in this place.
Religion at WU is an experience worth exploring. Many have.
Professors also tend to read and think much more than the general population. Perhaps, that is the reason why they are twice as likely as the general population to be skeptics and atheists.
ReplyDeleteFather Braun suggests that it is the lack of understanding of eachothers' religions that causes harm while a greater understanding of the same will lead to greater harmony. This, I would suggest, is a dubious claim. For instance, a Catholic who sees a devout Muslim, without knowing much about Islam, might admire his piety and devotion to God but then, after reading the Koran and discovering that Islam explicitly regards belief in the Trinity as a monstrous heresy that must be eradicated, might very well rethink that admiration and come to be wary of devout Muslims. So, here we have a case where ignorance of another's faith is the basis of respect whereas an understanding of the same leads to suspicion, distrust, and, thus, disharmony. Here is another example: There are many people who understand the Catholic Teaching regarding homosexuality quite well but disagree with it quite vehemently. Moreover, they understand that the Church opposes the legalization of gay "marriage" and has made it very clear that she will use her resources to defeat attempts to accomplish such legalization. It is very hard to see how understanding here has led to greater harmony for this understanding has indeed made a great many people very angry at the Catholic Church.
ReplyDeleteFr. Gary Braun likes to point out that university professors are twice as likely as those in the general population to be skeptics and atheists. This is probably because professors are also far more likely to read and think. It's embarrassing that a director of a center named after John Henry Newman would resort to statistics and not argument to battle doubt and godlessness.
ReplyDeleteFather Braun suggests that it is the lack of understanding of eachothers' religions that causes harm while a greater understanding of the same will lead to greater harmony. This, I would suggest, is a dubious claim. For instance, a Catholic who sees a devout Muslim, without knowing much about Islam, might admire his piety and devotion to God but then, after reading the Koran and discovering that Islam explicitly regards belief in the Trinity as a monstrous heresy that must be eradicated, might very well rethink that admiration and come to be wary of devout Muslims. So, here we have a case where ignorance of another's faith is the basis of respect whereas an understanding of the same leads to suspicion, distrust, and, thus, disharmony. Here is another example: There are many people who understand the Catholic Teaching regarding homosexuality quite well but disagree with it quite vehemently. Moreover, they understand that the Church opposes the legalization of gay "marriage" and has made it very clear that she will use her resources to defeat attempts to accomplish such legalization. It is very hard to see how understanding here has led to greater harmony for this understanding has indeed made a great many people very angry at the Catholic Church.
ReplyDeleteSome would argue that the practice of faith makes one a worse citizen of the world for the following reasons. Faith entails a belief in the after life, which is supposed to be the ultimate in happiness, eternal bliss. Well, life in this world when compared to eternal bliss in the next looks awful in the eyes of the faithful. So, the argument goes, the faithful will not care very much about life in this world because it is so awful and transitory and, instead, concentrate upon the eternal bliss promised in the after life. How can they, then, be good citizens of this world when they can't wait to leave it for a better world? According to this argument, they really can't. Because of their belief in a better world after death, the faithful can at best be merely people who just bide their time, waiting for the transitory glory of this world to pass into oblivion, and at worst suicides. This hardly makes for good citizenship of this world.
ReplyDeleteIt is sometimes argued that faith in God is necessary to be a moral person and, so, faith is necessary for better citizenship because a person who is not moral can hardly be a good citizen. Implicit in this claim is almost invariably the assumption that people won't be moral unless there is some eternal punishment to fear such as everlasting damnation. Some people would observe that this presumes the human being to be no better than a dog which will behave only if threatened. Thus, faith in God, far from exalting the worth of the human being, makes him into a brute. This is not the only problem with the idea that God is necessary for morality. Another very thorny problem is this: Are actions moral because God says they are, or does God deem actions moral because they are? If the latter, then there is a morality that exists apart from God, and this means that God is not necessary for morality. If the former, then morality is whatever God says it is. If He says that it is right to commit genocide against the Amelekhites, as He is supposed to have done in I Samuel 15, then genocide is moral. If God says that murder is wrong, as He is supposed to say elsewhere in Holy Writ, then murder is immoral. Thus, morality becomes dependent on God's whim. Sometimes murder is not permitted, other times mass slaughter is not only allowed but mandatory. But it is difficult to see how a morality that is based on wildly contradictory divine dictates is any kind of morality at all. It seems instead to be merely a surrender to an irrational tyrant. And how is surrender to tyranny good citizenship?
Apparently the understanding of the Church Teaching regarding homosexual acts has led to a rather ugly incident. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/12/kenneth-howell-fired_n_643270.html
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