This year is the 50th reunion of my graduating class at Harvard. It is for me a useful opportunity to begin a reflection on the role of the University today because it offers the chance to consider the extent of the social, political and theological changes that have taken place since we were invited to take our place with educated men (sic) (Radcliffe had a separate graduation ceremony in those days of joint- but not co - education). This quaint-sounding phrase takes it for granted that an arts degree is synonymous with education and offers no distinction between arts and science - indeed, the faculties were one. This assumption that “education” was the prerogative of these two faculties is in itself of a significance that has largely been neglected. It also led to some interesting sidelights, such as that which arose from the fact that our House (college) Master was a distinguished member of the School of Public Health and had an international reputation as a sanitary engineer. However, around the University it was muted that Dunster had a plumber as its head.
More seriously our class was a reflection of other practices that say important things about both society of the time and portray the constant struggle that the University has faced throughout the centuries to tread the path between dependence and independence of the society in which it is placed. Several examples offer an indication of the range of these issues. There was an unofficial quota on the number of Jewish students who would be admitted to any one class. There were, I believe, 5 Afro-Americans, no identifiable Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus and probably reflecting the immediate post-war state of the world - few students from other than North America. For what it’s worth, the Aga Khan was a member of the class of ‘60. (The current and very different composition of Harvard College has been documented by the Headmaster of Lowell House, Diane Eck in her book, The New Religious America. )
Objectively speaking, the accepted ethos of most of the country was Christian but not religious with the result that those for whom the visible practice of religious discipline was a major factor in their lives - viz. Orthodox jews and Roman Catholics were regarded as suspect members of the social-political community. (The first step in the Kennedy campaign for President were plotted by Larry O’Brien in an adjoining suite in the mayoralty election of 1950 in Cambridge, Mass.) It is crucial to remember that the U.S. in its constitution enshrines a deep suspicion of organized religion with the separation of church and state while at the same time maintaining a naive, uncritical understanding of its association with Christian ideas and values.
There was at the time, partly as the result of scholarly publication detailing the history of the ideals and institution of the university in western Europe, a discussion of the relationship between the Church and the University. This was built upon the fact that in Europe with the important exception of the Islamic community of scholars in Spain, the university was a creation of the church primarily in order to realize its needs for learned clergy and to develop a community of learning which was capable of understanding and organizing the relationship between knowledge in general and Christian theology and dogma. It was also an effort to control and channel the increasing awareness of the world which discoveries in science and mathematics had brought about, much of which coming from the Muslim world.
In 1636, Harvard was founded with one its main goals to provide an American version of these medieval goals, concentrating upon the turning out of learned clergy . In a it never had to seriously work out how religious practice might impinge upon social and political life and never quite got around to reconciling how a truly secular world view could fit into its de-religioned view of Christianity. Think for example about the past and current debate in the United States about the “theory” of evolution.
When we came to Montreal and McGill in 1961, much of the same debate about the relationship between the Church and the University was going on here using the same articles and texts There were some important similarities. McGill was still dominated by its Faculty of Arts and Science, had unofficial set of admissions standards and functioned in loco parentis in its relation to its undergraduate students. There was no American style separation between church and state but at the same time there was no tradition of denominational role within the university. An Anglican chaplaincy had just been organized and one of the great questions was how its work should be related to that of the Student Christian Movement which had maintained an ecumenical face to the Christian presence within the McGill since the 80's of the 19th century. What was common to both Harvard and McGill as well as most of the academic world with the possible exception of church run institutions was that none of them had the faintest idea as what to do with Religion - the living dynamic communities of persons who lived out this commitment in all aspects of their lives.
The Faculty of Religion was effectively a place where the major founding denominations could combine some of their academic needs and peripherally learn something about other religions. Wilfred Cantwell Smith with the founding of the Islamic Institute tried to change all that. But the Faith of Other Men really never caught on as something of vital interest and importance to the University. The fact that it might have an obligation to the practice of Religion which was probably more important than that it owed to commerce and industry had somehow been lost
The significant amounts of money that have been poured into our Universities by commercial and industrial interests is not in itself wrong, what is disheartening is the apparent un willingness or inability of the University to investigate and challenge the value claims that accompany their money. It is appalling that the notion of the Common Good has been reduced to the calculations of GNP particularly when so much of this product can be politely called pollution. While the academic study of religion and in Christian terms its theological understanding is the role of those directly involved in the University, the critical implications of this work have been overlooked in the willingness to provide training to religionists which can be compared to that offered to future engineers, accountants or farmers. So, within the University today views about human community, responsibility, nature and life are present which are not reconcilable. They are not the subject of much debate because these issues are essentially irrelevant to those who view of life is essentially self-fulfillment. Quite rightly the University as it relates to those who identify themselves as religious is skeptical of claims which sound as if they are attempts to engage in conversion or claim positions of power. But at another level, our religious communities are putting forward something far more profound.
The experience which they all share is one grounded in the acceptance of notion of responsibility that is grounded in the affirmation of the entwining of relationships that involve all life. The easy arrogance which has accompanied many Christian claims about the superiority of humans over against the rest of creation can also be seen as an awareness of the extraordinary nature of human potential for destruction. What is called religious faith is the acceptance that the stories which have been told about this power for good or evil are essential for life. In their recounting, we do not find that nothing has changed but that in the incredible changes which have taken place there is retained a constancy of the human condition that makes the repeating of this stories absolutely essential for the maintenance of life.
This is the kind of story that is represented in Feast of the Presentation. The story itself is a masterpiece of confusion. The writer, Luke, was a gentile who had little if any knowledge of Jewish practices and in the account he has put together combines two events which are completely unrelated for Jews in both time and space - The redemption of the first born male by the offering of a substitute as required in Exodus 13:13 and The purification of a woman after childbirth as in Leviticus 12:4 and includes Joseph in the latter rite. No matter really, because the story is really all about the meaning of a hymn which seems to have been circulating in the early church in much the same manner as the Magnificat and the Benedictus. To quote a commentator.
It lends itself to Luke’s interest in stressing the universalism of the Gospel. While Christ was still a babe in arms, a Jewish prophet foresaw his messianic salvation was intended for all mankind. The theme of an old man also anticipates the greatness of a divine child can also be documented in stories about Asita and the infant Buddha. Given a similar phenomenon in religion, men of different races, places and times tend to give it a similar explanation.
This tells me, that the necessity for globalization does not lie in the claims of those who foresee economic prosperity for themselves as implying an improved future for others but in the realization that it is the stories that people tell which enable them to share with each other that level of awareness upon which peace and justice can be built. Worshiping communities know that in the telling of stories they share with each other and potentially with others they do not know those inescapable mysteries which are essential for human life.
There is a double challenge present here. To the religious communities of the world - a commitment to explore and discover the depths about all life and particularly human life which they represent. To the universities - to recognize the historic responsibility which they have inherited to serve the common good in the face of the social, political, economic and moral challenges which they must acknowledge and evaluate. This has always been the raison d’etre for the Faculties of Arts and Science but in changing circumstances remains an inescapable duty of the institution. Under these conditions, the historic formula “under God” is not an order of dogma, but a sacred trust held by the University on behalf of all of us.
The Rev. Roger A. Balk, Ph.d.