It was a “Ben Franklin-inspired” protest.
A group of parents at Julie A. Duncan ’09’s all-girls Catholic school in Kentucky pushed for a ban on several English books containing objectionable material like child abuse and pre-marital sex. The books included “Red Tent,” “Flowers for Algernon,” and “House on Mango Street,” or “normal books that people read all the time,” as Duncan described them. “They wrote a 20-page questionnaire, and they took a bunch of quotes out of context, plopped them down, and said ‘would you want your kids reading this smut?’”
Under parental pressure, the bishop demanded that the school shelve the books. The school’s nuns refused, arguing that it was their academic right to teach the modern canons regardless of the content. In response, the bishop threatened to remove the school from the Catholic diocese—an act that would freeze the school’s funding.
“So I wrote an editorial, under a pseudonym. I insisted that there was one more book that needed to be added to the list. ‘Please read these quotes which I have taken out of context and placed here.’ And they were all quotes taken from the Bible,” Duncan says. “It was decided that if the bishop got a hold of it, it would have been a problem. I had to burn copies of the school newspaper in the basement incinerator.”
Today, the books are still banned at Duncan’s high school.
Now a self-proclaimed atheist in a more secular environment, Duncan says she is pleased to have people besides her agnostic father with whom to discuss her views on religion.
Harvard has long been portrayed—even caricatured—as a bastion for secularism, if not hostility toward faith. But for students struggling to define their personal religious beliefs, the questions of how Harvard affects students’ soul searches, and how students’ religious struggles in turn impact Harvard, are anything but settled.
AN INSTITUTION OF ITS OWN
When Duncan arrived at Harvard, a brochure with the words “Holy Shit!” caught her eye at the Freshman Activities Fair. The brochure, produced by the Harvard Secular Society, is indicative of the group’s creative, and highly impressive, outreach efforts.
“One of the previous leaders in the organization looked up all the incoming freshmen who described themselves as atheist under religious views on Facebook and let them know about the Secular Society,” says the Secular Society’s vice president, Andrew G. Maher ’11, of the group’s aggressive recruitment tactics.
Maher, whose mother is a secular Jew and whose father is a lapsed Catholic, grew up openly atheist, but without any antagonism from classmates at his New Hampshire high school.
But not all members of Harvard’s Secular Society come from such accepting backgrounds. Hailing from Fayetteville, Ark., Lewis M. Ward ’11, treasurer of the Secular Society, describes his parents as theistic but nonreligious, and himself as a humanist.
“It was not uncommon for me and my non-Christian friends in high school to be told frequently we were going to hell,” Ward says. At Harvard, on the other hand, Ward says the most pronounced illustration of the school’s religious environment came when he first heard Memorial Church’s bells during his freshman year.
“I like how around here religion is less in your face than it is in the South,” he says.
HUMANISM AT HARVARD
Past the white-paneled walls and the scarlet carpet of Memorial Church, a door—layered with posters reading “Letting Go of God” and “Government without God”—leads to a neutral-toned, windowless office.
Positioned at the very foundation of spirituality at Harvard, this office houses the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, the umbrella organization of the undergraduate Secular Society. Sitting in the stark-but-hospitable office, Gregory H. Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard, attempts to define humanism.
“Humanism is a progressive life stance without supernaturalism that affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment—” Epstein stops abruptly. There is brief, awkward silence. He reminds me that he goes through various interpretations of humanism daily, and that he wants to ensure he relays the official definition. Epstein hastily pulls up the Chaplaincy’s Web site and verbally affixes “aspiring to humanity’s greater good” to his truncated definition.
“In short, being good without God,” Epstein coolly concludes.
Founded in 1974, the original role of the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard was to provide a non-supernatural counselor for students that were not religious. Epstein seeks to recreate the community atmosphere that many students cherish in their churches and synagogues at home without the stringent religious beliefs. For example, the Humanist Chaplaincy aids in Secular Society events aimed at reproducing the spiritual climate, such as the Society’s annual holiday party.
“We have an office here that is dedicated to creating a long term, home-away-from-home for humanists and like-minded people,” Epstein says. “That’s how I would explain the strong degree of activity. We’re doing a little bit more than having a club that gets together to bash religion.”
Efforts at expansion through sincerity have been effective. At Epstein’s first Secular Society meeting as Assistant Humanist Chaplain of Harvard in 2004, there were four members. But at the New Humanism conference last year, over 1,100 people attended, half of whom were students. The Society also hosted an event with Humanist punk rock star Greg Graffin last April with over 600 attendees.
Reflecting on the organization’s recent successes with outreach efforts to secular students and alumni, Epstein insists he is not trying to proselytize students.
“I’m not trying to win over souls here or convert the masses. I don’t walk around campus thinking ‘how can we get these guys to become humanists,” Epstein says. Instead, he explains the society’s burgeoning membership by pointing to nationwide trends.
“Around the country, one in five are nonreligious,” Epstein says. “What’s going on? We see the global conflicts with religion in the news and areas where religious fundamentalists are behaving badly. People are much more aware of science and of what the nature of the world is.”
Despite the insistence that conversion does not figure into the Humanist equation, Duncan recalls feeling uncomfortable during the 2007 New Humanism conference when participants were asked to recite a poem together; an exercise Duncan says conjured up a feeling of organized religion. She is no longer active in the Secular Society.
CREED IN THE CLASSROOM
This national trend of new forms of secularization has been manifest on the Harvard campus beyond the Secular Society’s growth. Many students from religious backgrounds that struggle with their faith do not turn to the Humanist Chaplaincy and Secular Society; instead, academic studies have formed a primary lens through which people deal with their religious beliefs.
Andrew E. F. Gordon ’09 was raised Catholic, and attended a high school in Philadelphia run by the Jesuits, an order of Catholic priests. Despite his strong Catholic upbringing, Gordon has had issues with the dogma since an early age.
“Throughout middle school and high school, I rejected Catholic doctrine on a rational level, but I embraced the religion and the attitude of its believers because I felt the doctrine was just a superficial aspect of the actual faith,” Gordon says.
His beliefs were further called into question when he arrived at Harvard. A social studies concentrator currently writing his thesis on others' conversions to Nihilism (the belief that we exist without a larger meaning), Gordon’s studies of sociological theory and philosophers like William James have influenced his own convictions. “I don’t have any definite thoughts about whether heaven or a traditionally conceived God exist,” Gordon says. “I believe any attempt to answer such mysterious questions are ultimately just projects of human emotion.” But despite his increasingly secular beliefs, Gordon still tries to go to Catholic Mass once a week.
Gordon points to the impressions left by faculty as a way that Harvard has shaped his secularization. “As far as I know, Harvard promotes ideological pluralism as a rule,” Gordon says. “Only certain types of thinkers will pursue faculty positions at an institution ruled by secular and pluralistic ideals. These thinkers largely shape the perspectives of Harvard students.”
However, this ideological pluralism does not necessarily catalyze a loss of faith for students. Raised by an agnostic father and Catholic mother, Katherine C. Wilson ’10 attended Catholic school in Colorado for her entire life. Faced with more diverse opportunities when she arrived at Harvard, Wilson did not feel pressure to drop religion. Instead, in her first semester on campus, she attended both a Buddhist retreat and Christian Fellowship. After joining the Interfaith Council, she attended a Bahá’í Fireside and was hooked.
“The basic premise of the faith is progressive revelation. This religion is kind of like a book, where different chapters are revealed at different times in different social circumstances,” Wilson explains. In her freshman year search, she had become fascinated with Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, but never completely lost her ties to Christianity. The Bahá’í faith offered an underlying thread that connected the benefits of all these religions.
Wilson points to the vast diversity and inquisitive nature of Harvard’s student body as influencing her change in beliefs. “College can lead to a lot of questions and opening up of possibilities. Faith is among those,” she says. “If everything is changing around me, maybe I should consider changing my beliefs.” As a joint concentrator in religion and history of science, Wilson studies religious texts frequently but she has also come to many of her faith decisions based on reading done on her own time.
Faith at Harvard, then, is not merely a personal experience—it can also be an academic one. Natasha M. Platt ’10, for example, feels that declaring her concentration in religion and specifically studying the philosophy of religion grants her more freedom than many of Harvard’s concentrations.
“Harvard teaches us to separate things and juxtapose. Religion was the way I could study things holistically,” says Platt. “I could really study the nature of the human soul.” Platt, who describes her upbringing as completely nonreligious, has been touched by the Buddhist texts she reads and proclaims herself to be “spiritual.”
STUDYING RELIGION?
At a secular institution, many question the purpose and relevance of studying the subject matter; indeed, religion as an academic field at Harvard has recently hit a road bump.
But even with this questioned relevance, 94 percent of Harvard’s incoming students state that they discuss religion either “occasionally” or “frequently,” and 71 percent of students report that they go to religious services. Citing these statistics, the Task Force on General Education initially included the category “Reason and Faith” in the Gen Ed program.
Alison J. Simmons, co-chair of the Task Force on General Education, explains her rationale for explicitly including religion in the new curriculum. “It was actually motivated by an interview with Madeleine Albright, who said the one thing she regrets as Secretary of State is that she didn’t take religion seriously enough in international relations and diplomacy,” says Simmons, a professor in the philosophy department.
According to Simmons, the category was by no means meant to indoctrinate students, but rather to instruct students to think about religion through the lens of reason.
But many found the “Reason and Faith” requirement difficult to swallow. Harvard faculty such as Stephen Pinker announced their vehement objection to the category, bringing media attention and the subsequent removal of the category from the Gen Ed.
The negative response baffled Simmons. “People thought we wanted to teach kids religion. We wanted to help kids stand outside of their religious traditions and think more reflectively about religion,” she says.
“The people who were most opposed are precisely the type of people who should have been on board. If you do think there’s a battle to be had, to ignore religion is to lose the battle,” she adds.
But the “Reason and Faith” requirement met resistance even from faculty members on the Committee on the Study of Religion. Diana L. Eck, chair of the committee, was hesitant about the way the category was formulated despite its inclusion of religion. She points out that the current structure of Gen Ed represents religion in multiple categories, such as Aesthetic and Interpretative Understanding and Societies of the World.
“What I took from that discussion was certainly not the faculty rejecting reason and faith, but the faculty recognizing that that was a strange way, or not the best way, to include religion in the Gen Ed curriculum,” Eck says. “The interpretation outside Harvard was ‘Oh, Harvard faculty rejects reason and faith,’ but it wasn’t like that in the discussions.”
Jason W. Stevens, an English professor, teaches a course entitled “Religion and American Film.” Stevens, who was raised Pentacostal and became a Humanist during his days at Haverford College, says he does not seek to secularize his students but instead to ensure that they think critically about religion.
“I’ve had students at the end of my course come to me and say that they’ve decided that they’re agnostics, and I was proud of them,” Stevens says. “Some of them have come to me at the end of my courses and said that they’ve evaluated their beliefs and feel strongly about them.” One former student informed the professor that he had become an ordained Presbyterian minister. Stevens stresses that he only hopes that his students think deeply about their convictions.
STAYIN’ ALIVE, STAYIN’ ALIVE
In an environment that can seem hostile to religion, certain student groups see themselves as playing a vital role in maintaining the faith of students.
“I would characterize my academic experience as thoughtful and questioning—it hasn’t been easy,” says Daniel J. Schulte ’09 of the Catholic Students Association. “I grew up in an area more conducive to Catholic beliefs.”
Schulte found many of his best friends in CSA and has stayed active by playing the piano at the students’ mass, conducting the choir, leading a small Bible discussion group, and attending numerous retreats. He is now applying to become a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order, writing up applications that require a 15-page spiritual biography.
Simon P. Orozco ’09, Schulte’s roommate and another member of CSA, is looking to join the Dominicans, a Catholic order of priests. At times, he found certain people on campus antagonistic towards religion, but he credits the bond of CSA’s community for helping keep his faith strong.
“With other Catholics on campus, I had a refuge if I was feeling overwhelmed by whatever pressure I was dealing with,” Orozco says.
The organization has seen growth similar to that of the secular student groups. This fall, Katherine J. Calle ’10, CSA’s vice president for outreach, witnessed 117 new registrants for the group, mostly freshmen. Currently, CSA has 396 students registered as members. Calle describes CSA as one of the largest student groups on campus, if not the largest. Yet she admits that the matriculation numbers can be deceptive, and that there are not 117 freshmen at every event. However, the variety of reasons for joining speaks to the group’s large membership. While for the most part freshmen tend to be attracted to groups like the CSA for social reasons, upperclassmen oftentimes find themselves drawn to such clubs because of an interest in exploring their faith.
“Upperclassmen are looking for the spiritual element, and that’s our target. How to give them the opportunity to tap back into that faith and explore it in ways they want to,” says Calle. “Many people try giving it a break, but many people will come back saying ‘I need it in my life.’”
Certainly, the CSA is not the only religious group in a largely secular community. Eck emphasizes the increase in religious diversity on campus from 1990, the year she began the Pluralism Project, which examines the diversification of American religious communities. As a member of the Interfaith Council, she has witnessed the growth of the Harvard Islamic Society and the creation of Dharma, Harvard’s Hindu student organization, the Harvard Buddhist Association, the Bahá’í Association, and other religious student groups.
“As a House Master, I get a sort of window into the vibrancy of religion at Harvard,” Eck says. “I see things like Diwali. I see the issues that come up during Ramadan. I see the students that have Chanukah lighting in the JCR.”
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?
For students, their individual experiences and struggles with secularization is not limited to their time at Harvard. Schulte, for instance, asserts that he is not entirely sure of his vocation to the priesthood. The first two years of training to become a Jesuit priest are a time of discernment. “I’ll be praying and trying to see where God needs me,” he says.
And religion as an academic issue is a concern yet to be resolved. Eck hopes to see the Committee on the Study of Religion transformed into an actual department within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. And if Professor Simmons has her way, Reason and Faith will not be long forgotten in forthcoming years.
“When there’s a review of the Gen-Ed program down the road, I would love to see the question of that category come back up,” Simmons says.
For now, though, religion remains a matter of mostly personal reflection. “I do wonder a lot, when I get older and have kids of my own, I may take them to Catholic Church because I really appreciated that influence growing up,” says Duncan. “I’m torn.”
CORRECTION
Due to an editing error, the original version of the Dec. 4 magazine article "Losing My Religion" incorrectly stated that Andrew E. F. Gordon '09 is writing his thesis on his personal transformation to nihilism. In fact, Gordon's thesis focuses on others' conversions to nihilism.
