Keeping Faith

“Are you religious?” Christians like me often feel uncomfortable when asked this question, especially when it happens at Harvard. Perhaps they’re nervous that if they answer yes, the questioner will immediately think of them as a naïve, sexually repressed, narrow-minded Bible-thumper.

At Harvard it’s considered cooler—and more intellectual—to read Nietzsche than C.S. Lewis, to engage in intellectual discourse grounded in secular thought rather than the religious dimension. Of course, it is incredibly valuable for a religious person, who may not understand how someone can be an atheist, to read great secular thinkers to understand the alternative point of view. And Harvard students get this exposure through the current Core, which requires every student to read secular moral thinkers. But, likewise, atheists who don’t understand how someone can be religious should be required to take a class about religion.

The logic behind the Reason and Faith requirement proposed by The Preliminary Report of the Task Force on General Education is thus similar to that behind studying a foreign culture or language; it will allow students to dialogue with a religion’s believers and understand the diversity and depth of religious beliefs. What does “jihad” really mean? What views on sexual morality do different faiths hold? What is nirvana, and why do Buddhist monks meditate for days on end? These are all common questions that classes in this field could address.

Even without a Reason and Faith requirement, students can study how different religions answer these questions through courses in the Religion Department or at the Divinity School. But requiring that all students take a course about religion sends a clear message: Harvard does not look down upon the millions of people in this country and around the world who entertain the idea that there may be a God. In fact, such a requirement would show that Harvard requires its graduates to respect religion and acknowledge that religious people can be very intellectual. Requiring religion classes will broaden—not suppress—the scope of students’ intellectual experiences.

And religion is clearly on students’ minds. The preliminary general education report says that 94 percent of Harvard’s incoming students talk about religion frequently or occasionally, and 71 percent say they attend religious services. And with 26 different religions represented on campus in the United Ministry at Harvard alone, wouldn’t it be better to inform students’ discussions with historical and social context?

Crucially, religion is in its essence different from many aspects of culture because it is based on the unperceivable and improvable. Wars have been motivated by all kinds of forces, but those fought for religious purposes are particularly long-lasting. The ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine is not solely about history and two nations’ desire for land; the conflict continues because it involves a clash of belief systems above all else. Understanding how humans are motivated by forces beyond the physical world is a very separate study than merely looking at cultural and historical influences. The difference is in the seen versus the unseen, the rational versus the definitively irrational. The difference is between Reason and Faith.

Of course, critics can argue that religion should be studied under the rubric of “Cultural Traditions and Cultural Change.” But, given the salience of religions—in contemporary discourse and historically—it is vital for every student to take at least one course that grapples with the subject. If religion is not placed in its own category, religious courses will be too easily bypassed by students skeptical of their worth. If Harvard’s objective is to inform its students about faith, an aspect of cultural tradition that is unique from all others, it must require that students take classes focused on the intersection between religion and society.

It would be a shame for Harvard to nix the Reason and Faith requirement proposal because of qualms about appearing to be a parochial school, or an institution promoting only certain belief systems. The report specifically says that the classes under the requirement would not be prescriptive—these classes would be nothing like indoctrination—and would give students a wide range of religions to choose to study. The idea is not to turn all Harvard students into Protestants again, but rather to make students more aware of humanity’s universal tendency to develop faith systems. Harvard should not exclude a religious field in the general education curriculum for fear of not including every religion or of being perceived in the media as promoting certain religious doctrines. Such logic keeps everyone in the dark.



Katherine M. Gray ’08, a Crimson news editor, is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Lowell House.