GUEST COMMENTARY

Why be religious at Harvard? This is not a facetious question because it's not at all clear how the many religious commitments we each bring to our work here fit into the pedagogies of this university. It's not clear how keeping the faith is even feasible for members of some traditions for whom Harvard has provided no adequate facilities. And the risks of sincere encounter between systems of meaning and value that have so often exploded in violence can seem too high--who wants to replay the age-old patterns of sectarian discord in a Yard rooming group or a sleepy section or a new romance?

But there are good reasons to be religious here--reasons that are good for the mind as well as the spirit, and good for the community as well as for the communities.

Before I came to Harvard I taught at an independent school in New York City. The parents in that school, like many in other places, included many "interfaith couples"--people who had, in effect, crossed sectarian lines (often risking the censure of their families and religious communities) to make their commitments to each other. They were highly intelligent, sensitive people, superbly capable of juggling ambitious careers and complex family lives. But, almost to a couple, they quickly found themselves managing their spiritual differences by factoring religion out of the family equation altogether.

Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies Diana L. Eck makes a now-famous remark to the effect that, if you know only one language, basically you don't know any language at all: since you can't imagine that your own cunning little world has a boundary, the idea of stepping beyond it seems nonsensical, and so you can't begin to fathom the existence of other worlds. Her apt application of this metaphor to the experience of religion, though, finds a more comfortable home in our minds than in our collective stomach lining. No one would dispute the value of our all being in this place together in order that our knowledge should be shaped by the knowledge of others, our disciplines and our language changed forever by the discovery of disciplines and languages beyond the boundaries of our own. But how many of us are ready to say that part of why we're at Harvard is to let our faith be shaped by the dramatically different faith of others?

This weekend as the directors of the Harvard Alumni Association gather in Cambridge, their chosen focus will be the religious lives of the University. No doubt they'll find presentations by faculty, students, chaplains and administrators interesting--perhaps reassuring, perhaps troubling, perhaps merely curious. In generations past such assemblies might have come to blows under the influence of such a topic. This weekend's musings are almost certain to be calm, though perhaps a little uncomfortable under the surface. Maybe we're more civil now--or more multi-culturally curious. Or maybe we're just more spiritually apathetic. One of the easiest ways to make the intellectual and communal commitments to each other that being here together entails seems to be to simply factor out religion.

The choice to not let religion matter among us, but only to each of us alone (if at all) or only between those of us who speak identical languages of faith is a tragic, and unnecessary, choice.

That the religious lives of this community are vibrant and varied is obvious and encouraging. There are more than two dozen chaplaincies in the United Ministry--and several handfuls of other recognized religious groups. Attendance at various rites and services seems to be on the rise; and Professor Eck's is one of the more popular entry-level courses offered. My personal favorite religious discussion of the year to date was the well-attended collaborative effort of Hillel and the Catholic Students Association: "GUILT: Nobody Does It Better." Best of all, the creation of the Undergraduate Interfaith Forum has promised us, at last, a meaningful arena for courageous, compassionate, civil conversation across the sectarian lines that have kept us so carefully apart from each other for so long.

Why be religious at Harvard? I believe that all experience is charged with mystery--that the universe itself is charged with mystery, and that as a consequence we are partners in a relationship with mystery. Like all relationships, this one can be ignored or neglected; it is also possible to deny that it exists altogether. But once acknowledged, this relationship requires things of us. Because we are human, it requires that we probe to the limits of our comprehension, and then push those limits outward with all our strength and diligence, in continuing to seek understanding of the mysteries of the universe. At this point the education of the intellect and the education of the spirit are virtually indistinguishable. And it requires also that we probe within, for the meanings of our own existence and their requirements of us. At this point the education of the intellect and the education of the conscience are virtually indistinguishable. Relationship with mystery is at the core of the meaning of a university.

Because there are so many venerable forms of relationship with mystery, our collaborative citizenship on this planet is moving asymptotically toward a state of being remarkably resembling an interfaith marriage.

Such relationships are an oddity to some, anathema to others. But among the partnerships I've observed, the ones that work best are distinguished by the forthright, transparent, unapologetic ways in which partners live out their respective traditions and commitments.

Likewise, building community which spreads across the lines of creed that used to function as our most impermeable cultural boundaries requires a willingness to live our beliefs together--not to put them aside, or to sequester them from each other. The month of December, for instance, which bristles with various meanings and observances for our respective religious traditions, is a richer time at Harvard, now, not a poorer one, because our beliefs and rituals have met each other here candidly, sometimes uneasily, not without tension, but in their respective integrities.

Indeed, the discovery of respective integrities is one of the most noble projects of higher education. It's to the impoverishment of each of us as faithful individuals, and all of us as citizens of the human community, that we neglect it in the realm of the spirit. And it's work we can only do together.

Rev. Spalding, a Presbyterian campus minister and chaplain to the Undergraduate Ecumenical Forum, has been a member of the United Ministry at Harvard since 1990.