I usually don’t write on personal topics that affect me, but experiencing this recent incident, I felt compelled. First, some background is in order.
I entered seminary with strong conservative-fundamentalist leanings. After eight years and taking some time off in between those years, I eventually graduated a different kind of Christian, one whose sensitivities and breathless need to defend the doctrines of the Church had taken on new meaning. I remember one pivotal conversation in a classroom where I said I was surprised that I had stuck around at this institution since there was such a gulf between the community of my faith and the classroom. At the time, I was as assured of the Bible’s infallibility and inspiration as I was left-handed. Another woman responded that if she had been in such a seminary where conservative-fundamentalist principles were taught, such as the Bible being the absolute, infallible Word of God, she most certainly would have left. Such encounters continued to shape my views.
My first class was in the summer of 1999 and was called “The History of the Devil.” Sounded like a great title, but I was horrified when my professor showed point for point how the concept of the devil changed over a period of time, how from one book to another the Satan becomes just good ole Satan, as he summarized that the concept of a supernatural adversary to Jesus was dubious at best. I had many more experiences like this, even among the more conservative core of professors, who maintained in their faith-life the doctrines of the church despite teaching about the inharmonious reality of the gospels. As each one of my foundational beliefs cracked under the weight of new scholarly information, I eventually found myself surviving my own faith within the strictures of a more progressive version of Christianity… all thanks to my seminary. It was certainly a kind of liberty. But for anyone who has made this jump from one extreme, the journey there is an anxious rebirth full of uncertainty, doubt, indecision, and this was partially the reason why I left seminary for a number of years.
Eventually, I received my degree in Theology, did my thesis on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and moved on to interfaith dialogues over the summer of my last year in seminary.
So I was shocked this week by the reaction I received to an alumni news post I submitted. In the past, I had submitted at least three or four, and each had been accepted without any problems. However, in this last attempt, I submitted information about a presentation I made which included the title of the paper I presented at the mid-Atlantic regional meeting for the American Academy of Religions. When my newsbyte did not appear this week in the newsletter, I questioned the administrator. The response I received was cryptic and terse: “Sometimes things make it in and sometimes they don’t.”
This concerned me as I found the response intentionally misleading. So I began thinking about possible causes for exclusion. Of the two possibilities I could surmise, the first, space requirements, could not have been an issue simply because the newsletter comes out in an electronic format where no such restrictions (within reason) need exist. The other possibility then became more likely. My paper was titled “Homosexual Union as Responsible Marriage in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” And just like that I realized that despite the progressive nature of my seminary, despite the fact that professors within their ranks teach on pluralism, consider other, less stringent paths to salvation, reject divine inspiration, deconstruct the devil, or show inconsistencies in scripture, the one issue that seemed more damnable than all others is the same that popular culture reflects in its own ongoing warfare: the sin of homosexuality!
Along with abortion, homosexuality makes up the unholy dyad of all sin in today’s Church. Despite the Pope’s continued deflection of its importance as opposed to larger issues, the Catholic Church (and my Alma mater seminary is funded by the Church) remains far behind its leader or at least fearful because of the pace with which society transforms. The Catholic Church has proven historically to be very careful in its attempts to connect with society, usually until the pressure to conform is just too great.
But even more disconcerting is the fact that my submission told the administrator (or whoever was responsible for making the decision) nothing about the paper’s content. Neither did it suggest that this was my own position. As a researcher looking at theologians of interest, we don’t expect that we are actually adopting the positions are subjects did. Another possibility is simply one of political survival. Not everyone giving their money to an institution is likely to know what goes on there i.e., until they are tipped off. You can take the case of Dr. Christopher Rollston, scholar of Ancient Near East studies, and an alumnus of Johns Hopkins University, who was let go from Emmanuel Christian Seminary after writing an op-ed piece in the Huffington Post. The administration later was forced to admit that pressures from benefactors who were threatening to pull their funding that made his continued employment an issue. Rollston, however, landed on his feet, and took up a position at a prestigious institution.
In my own backyard, it was a case a few months ago at Notre Dame Prep, an all-girls Catholic high school that reminded me of my present situation. In this case, a young lady submitted a marriage announcement to the school’s alumni newsletter that was denied. The reason? Only later it was found out, and after media pressure, that the rejection of the announcement had to do with the Church’s position on homosexuality. And they were not going to allow a same-sex marriage announcement to be cast with heterosexual ones for fear that it would look like they supported it. My wife actually attended this high school for four years. Behind the gilded gates of NDP, my wife recalled that, oddly enough, they learned more about world religions than Christianity and that the school had strong liberal leanings, including the employment of an openly lesbian teacher! In fact, Sarah Rupert-Sullivan, the alumna in question here, said in an article in the Baltimore Sun that she attended the school because her parents thought it was a “forward-thinking school.” And indeed it is! At least the experience of some of its alumnae attest to this! But keeping up public appearances is often a different animal than the day-to-day reality at a school, and so I found myself in the exact same place.
In the time I was there, my seminary did not build up the faith upon which I was standing. It caused me to rethink it entirely. But when I moved too far afield, crossed an invisible line perhaps, it demonstrated to me that there are boundaries it was not willing to cross with me. It should make us all wonder what the psychological consequences of any education is when a school fills our heads with “radical” possibilities only to reel us back in at the expense of those ideas clashing with practical realities and commitments. Higher educational institutions at all levels are often guilt of this: They fill our heads with loads of disconnected information and then assume the student is responsible enough to give it shape or find a place of equilibrium. This is not to say that going off in this or that direction is inherently wrong or that extremes are wrong, but rather that there is a real lack of nurture in places of learning. Sure there are reasons for this i.e., too many students, an overworked staff, too many commitments, or multiple jobs. But having been at a small-enrollment seminary this certain was not the case. In the end, the student is left to make sense of his world, and most of the time alone. The classroom itself is not always an appropriate medium where one’s belief structure should be wrung out in the academic rigor of the classroom. Worlds collide and students may feel embarrassed to touch on such problems with other classmates or professors. The hollowness of this reality may be amplified in an interdenominational setting where fear of offending one another causes people to shut down. I had a few students during my time approach me with such problems, not knowing how deeply I struggled with them as well.
I still love my seminary. I had great professors and learned a lot. I had invaluable opportunities that have made possible more opportunities. So this is in no way an opportunistic attempt to bad mouth one of the best seminaries around.
And I cannot say for sure that this decision not to publish my scholarly news had to do with one individual administrator deciding and censoring content or if consultation was involved. Perhaps there is the question of why I am not taking this directly to the administration. In the past, I had a similar incident where at my former church a pastor’s administrator told us to vote down a referendum that would make same sex marriage legal in Maryland. I wrote a long and thoughtful email to my pastor and his administrator, both of whom met my email with silence. Within a community of faith where we are meant to build up one another, there was a very real sense that neither of these men knew how to handle the issue or deal with a person who had done his homework and was requiring a responsible answer for their position. In fact, my position at the time was simply to ask them if they could image a better way to confront the issue since drawing lines in the sand seemed to only create a deleterious effect and simply cement what the homosexual community already knows about most evangelicals, namely that we don’t like them, they are different than us, so that such an action would only prove what they already knew. I figured “why not surprise them with love”? And then decide how we will love them. Their silence was their answer. And it was a shame how unimaginative this church showed itself. Sometimes going directly to a group is a conversation starter and sometimes it is not. Sometimes public consumption helps the issue to take on a life of its own.
But what I do not accept was that the omission of my alumni newsbyte was accidental (a point already conceded in the response). What I prize is honesty, even when it is brutal. Honesty never seemed a problem in the classroom in seminary. The same brutal honesty came across many times as pillars of my faith were turned into ash, and so when it comes to incidents outside the shelter of the classroom, the old perception that academic Christians and faith-committed Christians occupy two different worlds redounds, even in the body of the same person! Honesty is difficult. Perhaps if it was said to me “we are simply not ready” at this point, that might have been enough honesty. And sometimes a little honesty with ourselves and others is all that is needed.
