"Either your whole life is Christian and you submit it to God, or none of your life is Christian and you refuse to submit it to Him," Hansen says. He describes life as a gradual process of "taking out 'Do Not Enter' signs that stand between Him and you."

Social justice is one area where Hansen feels particularly called--and where he wishes more Christians felt the same.

"You have the American Christian problem of not being involved in social justice movements. In the United States, Christianity and social justice tend to keep little company together. In other countries this isn't so. In America in other time periods, this wasn't so. And you have a very, very clear biblical command to defend the poor..."

In FAST, Hansen has coordinated student involvement in a Dorchester tutoring program, work in local homeless shelters, and restoration of inner-city churches and other buildings used for community outreach.

According to Hansen's views, the group is aptly named. He believes that faith and service are truly inseparable. As a result of that conviction, he is sometimes critical of the "religious right"--Christians who support policies that Hansen believes hurt the poor.

"The command to do just and to defend the rights of the poor is repeated so often in the Bible, it is a continual wonder to me how the religious right manages to ignore it," says Hansen.

If a label is necessary, Hansen would rather be known as a leader of the "religious left," believers who may be conservative theologically, but who don't embrace the agenda of the American right. Hansen is quick to affirm the faith of, say, members of the Christian Coalition, but he rejects their political viewpoint as contrary to his understanding of what the Old and New Testaments teach.

From memory, he recites a lengthy passage from the 58th chapter of Isaiah, which has served as a rallying cry for FAST: "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"

While he recognizes that conservatives may be trying to meet the needs of the poor in other ways, he still questions their position, pointing not only to their actions but also to their words.

"The biblical injunction to do justice for the poor is so absent from the rhetoric of the religious right," Hansen says. "Very rarely will they volunteer the rhetoric of compassion to support their programs. Instead, they offer the rhetoric of a broken system."

The subject of law and social justice is dear to Hansen's heart: his Hoopes-winning social studies thesis was on the evolution of Massachusetts child welfare law from 1635 to 1935, with application to the current welfare debate.

He's so Nice!

But as serious as he may be about his faith, somber contemplation is not what comes to mind when most people think of Hansen. Instead, there is one word that occurs to nearly everyone: Nice. Drew is nice. Incredibly nice. Perhaps the nicest person at Harvard. It's his dominant characteristic.

As one roommate told me just after Hansen won the Rhodes: "It restores my faith in these things. He really deserves it. He's just so nice."

From Sewell Chan '98, a member of Hansen's FUP group this year and a Crimson editor: "Oh! I love Drew Hansen! He's so nice!"