In the Beginning

"I remember walking in my backyard when I was three and thinking about God. Looking at the green grass and the moss on a stone--that's all I can remember, but somehow it was very proto-spiritual." Twentieth-century Harvard produces few Calvinist theologians, but this morning it will graduate one Charles Dana Klingensmith '82.

Beckley (pop 20.492) sits in the southern coal-mining region of West Virginia, "not exactly desolate, but certainly way out in nowhere." Klingensmith's family has lived in the Mountain State since the 1840s, but they're not hillbillies--Charles is the third generation to earn a Harvard degree, and his father is a thoracic surgeon. Not snobs, either, though--the Klingensmith home may have been an "oasts of civility," but its younger members were taught "a deep appreciation for the people who lived around us and for fellow West Virginians."

There is coal money in Beckley now, but it's "inequitably distributed...The people who are poor are poor." Klingensmith says. "It's all government-funded poverty, and it comes largely from just shiftlessness. At least the poor in New England keep their property tidy: they don't in West Virginia. There's garbage strewn all over." And the people who are rich, mainly mine operators and speculators, "do not wear their money well." One summer Klingensmith worked on a construction crew building big private homes. Minutes after the plumbing was installed in one, the rumor spread that the toilet seat was made of gold. "They wear diamond rings next to their leisure suits, which are maybe purple or nice green."

In between there's a solid working class, and a few families like the Klingensmiths. "We learned to think critically, we were trained to read a lot: we didn't watch TV" And in a state described on its "Welcome to West Virginia" border signs as "The Closest P'ace to Heaven," a state where a town of 3000 might boast a dozen churches. Klingensmith learned about God, in the backyard with the moss and the grass, and in a relatively liberal Methodist congregation.

The Call--to God and Harvard

On May 23, 1977--Klingensmith's junior year at Woodrow Wilson H.S.--a preacher from England arrived at the United Methodist Temple, and began to preach "marvelous fiery sermons," drawing big crowds on three consecutive nights. Each evening, while the sweat cooled on his brow, the minister held question-and-answer sessions with the congregation. "I would go and just sit," Klingensmith remembers. "As I was walking out of church one night the preacher accosted me, and told me he was God's messenger to me and that I was going to be a minister. I said, 'Well, what if I don't want to?' and he said, 'I'm sorry. He will get you and you should plan your life accordingly. The next night, Klingensmith was getting a drink of water: again the preacher approached, and, pointing to his white clerical collar, said "'Remember what this means...It means you will be a slave of Christ.'"

"That's as convenient a point as any to say that I actively began to think about becoming a minister, and it soon became a very appealing idea," the straight-backed, short-haired senior says. "I was not drawn to the ministry for any reasons of pity for my fellow man, or any sense of social justice...It's the kind of story that doesn't happen much anymore."

Proof exists, in the admissions office file marked Klingensmith, of his longstanding plan to become, a preacher. "I wanted to be a minister before I came here, but I had also always been interested in pure academic studies. I came to Harvard specifically because I wanted to study Reformation history." He might have gone to Dartmouth, except that "Harvard had tutorials," and, "having grown up wearing Harvard sweatshirts. I thought this would be the place."

A Year in the Yard

"After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." So begins an early (1643) manifesto of Harvard's aims; in those days, it was a rare graduate indeed who did not take to the pulpit once his sheepskin was secured.

In this era, despite a national religious revival. Harvard does not do much at all about the problems of the illiterate ministry. "A lot of the people who want to become a minister know that before they go to college," Klingensmith says, and "frequently, and unfortunately, religious young people are not critically minded. They're not concerned with studying things properly and being introduced to challenging ways of looking at things that could impair their own religion." And so, they steer clear of Cambridge.

For Klingensmith, who says he arrived in Wigglesworth a "wishy-washy liberal Methodist," Harvard has meant substantial shifts in his religion. At first, eager for friends who were "both religious and could articulate exactly what it was they thought about religion," he "started associating with 'religious' people." With some exceptions, though, "most of them didn't really have things well thought out, and they were not tolerant of non-evangelical Christianity. And I've never considered myself an evangelical."

That in itself is something of a story, for if West Virginia is not the buckle of the Bible Belt, it's not far from it. But evangelicalism--or, more precisely, fundamentalism--has never much appealed to Klingensmith. "My Methodist church was liberal in its beliefs, and was often attacked for it; fundamentalists are a very bigotted bunch. My father's religion is generally undogmatic, and tends toward ethical, not theological matters," he explains. "The fundamentalist God seems to be an American: if he's not white, then he's a very nice Black man. An idiot. For all their claims to profound Biblicism, I think they neglect God in all his great majesty and sovereignty, and in his right to judge. They short-change God's glory and by doing that they short-change his grace."

And so Klingensmith began to reexamine his faith, attending first the local Methodist Church and, then Harvard's Memorial Church where he eventually became head usher. The Rev. Peter Gomes' preaching, he says, is "outstanding and very helpful," but "I got involved there because I wanted to worship with my fellow undergraduates...I don't like the denominational spirit in general, and this was a good chance to escape it for four years." As well, it was a chance to watch friends who "go to church once a year, coming in unwashed, unshaven, with the sand still in the corners of their eyes." For someone who believes "the whole point of a church is to be inclusive," that was refreshing.