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Something Seems To Be Going OnMay 06, 2007 Fifth Sunday of Easter On college campuses across our nation, professors of religion, sociology, and chaplains report that interest in religious practice on campus has dramatically increased over the course of the last decade. For instance, Peter Gomes, Professor of Religious Studies and University Chaplain at Harvard University for 37 years, “remembers when religious people on campus felt under siege. To be seen as religious often meant being dismissed as not very bright.” Today, he says, “‘There is probably more active religious life now than there has been in 100 years.’” [1] He’s not alone in his observations. From east coast to west, from the northern border to the southern, students at otherwise secular colleges and universities are more interested in matters of the spirit and active religious disciplines than at any time in most everyone’s memory. Those who have been paying attention to this phenomenon offer a variety of reasons, including what they refer to as a 9/11 effect, increased awareness of religion in geo-politics as well as international economics, and a result of uncertainty over the current war. The chaplain at Lehigh University has thought about it like this: “My theory is that the baby boomers decided they weren’t going to impose their religious life on their children the way their parents imposed it on them. The idea was to let them come to it themselves. And then they get to campus and things happen; someone dies, a suicide occurs. Real issues arise for them, and they sometimes feel that they don’t have resources to deal with them. And they turn to religion and courses in religion.” [2] The dispassion of The Times reporter didn’t allow for analysis; I guess he let the story stand for itself, allowing the reader to arrive at the simple observation that, clearly, religion still very much matters, notwithstanding the relentless secularization of our culture, especially our educational culture. Even at Harvard and Berkeley, questions of spirit and meaning, life and death, fear and love, cannot be contained in the science labs – they spill out into the ancient and, dare we say, fully human means of religious questioning, expression and devotion. This development does not surprise me like it might some others. Experience coupled with intuition reveals that one of the distinguishing characteristics of the human species is our innate religiosity. Humans are the religious animals. We can’t escape it even if we have wanted to, and surely plenty have wanted to escape it over the last century. Evidently it may wander off for a while, but never leaves the vicinity completely. It seems to wait for opportune moments to give a knock at the door. Of course, those of us who believe in the sacred ordering of things – in God, in other words – don’t find this remarkable. I suppose if one were a strict atheist, this news might stick in the craw. I mean, after all the painstaking insistence over the last century that God was, say, as in Freud’s view, a crutch, or an end projection of our fear and ennui, a mere illusion to provide comfort for an otherwise rather stark and lonely existence, this must seem an impossible development. How could smart, alert, young people in so many numbers be driven into the ranks of mendicants and religious seekers of every stripe, especially on campuses that are at least indifferent about religion, and at most, evangelically opposed to it? Of course, there’s religion and then there’s religion. All religions are not equal. It’s tempting to want to think this in our tolerant society, but as we all know, tolerance, while an important virtue, is also a bit mushy. Because tolerance is fine until one runs up against something one really should not tolerate, say, in an extreme case, the abuse of others, the murder of innocents, and the like. If religion were to advocate that, we should not tolerate it. Even tolerance has its boundaries. You know this to be true for yourselves. There’s a great competition within our culture for our fundamental allegiance. And, being the creatures who evidently must worship at some altar, we can’t help ourselves giving our devotion to something or someone. If not to something sacred, then, perhaps to something quite material, or perhaps to something closer to home, say, ourselves for instance – our needs, wants, desires and appetites. But then, what seems to be happening on campuses is this discovery, this pull to something that is outside the self, something larger, holier, nobler, something that offers direction and purpose, hope and faith. And I well remember from my own experience that those years of transition into adulthood are fraught with destabilizing questions. Or maybe better said, questions that arise as a result of destabilizing conditions. One must answer to oneself, after all, about how one’s life will be lived, choosing fundamental commitments and first principles in a context of overwhelming cultural complexity. The recent horror at Virginia Tech lifts these concerns into high relief. We can imagine that many students on campus that horrible day will be left with a lifetime of questions. Alert students on other campuses will have their own lives rocked in the wake. Even the least reflective person winds up living a personalized code of ethics based upon what he or she values most of all. For instance, if one values him or herself most of all, well, then, the outcomes will be overwhelmed with selfish desire. This is pretty basic stuff, but if you want to know what you really value, look to the activity of your lives, the quality of your relationships, and how you spend your time and money. Consider your essential orientation to all that is. Of course, destabilizing conditions can crop up at other times of life. In fact, that’s a rock-solid guarantee. So if we don’t address the questions these conditions prompt early on (well, sometimes, even if we do) chances are pretty good we’ll have to address them later. In part, this accounts for how persons wander into a place like this. A lot has been made of late of how the boomer generation is aging. I noticed this morning on my way here that today’s New York Times Magazine is devoted to this very subject. [3] Though I have no early and compelling statistics to back this up, I would put good money on the prediction that many will check in with religious establishments before they hit 70. That’s directly related to what the college chaplains are reporting on the other side of life. Well, whether 23 or 62, if these questioners happen to have wandered into Christ Church today, and if they were alert to what was being read and sung, if they could pierce the ritual and the getups of the clergy, they would have heard a pretty clear statement concerning our central organizing principal. It came from the lips of Jesus as a certain chronicler named John reported it. Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” [4] Earlier, Jesus inferred that it was this love that gave him glory. This love was the means by which God is glorified in him. Because we’re humans, limited by the range of our senses, we made an image of that glorified one in a field of golden mosaics up there. At best it’s a poor representation, beautiful though it may be. For the truth is, the real glory is found in the love between Jesus and God, Jesus and his friends, and then, also, very importantly, in the love he commands them to share among themselves and with the rest of the world. That’s where the real glory lies – it’s in the love. When Christians are at their best they look up there and are reminded that their first work, their truest work, is the work of love. That’s the heart of the faith we proclaim. That’s what we spend the better part of our time on in here and what we encourage the questioners to spend the better part of their time on out there: on the love. What we discover as we begin to engage this way of organizing our lives is that love is certainly not primarily a feeling, but an orientation to ourselves, to others, to the world. It’s an orientation that re-stabilizes our position in changing circumstances. It’s an orientation that prompts a certain sort of activity; as Peter discovered as reported in Acts, it prompts a certain hospitality, a certain compassion and mercy, a certain courage and fidelity. This orientation puts the ground beneath our feet and the air in our lungs. As we’ll discover in a few minutes, it’s also our food and drink. We come to understand it is the very life-force. “‘All I hear from everybody is yes, there is growing interest in religion and spirituality and an openness…,’ said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. ‘Everybody who is talking about it says something seems to be going on.’” [5] I should say so....
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