Perhaps you saw that New York Times headline the other day that proclaimed: “The New Chief Chaplain at Harvard? An Atheist.”
That led, during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) to a logical question: Is it really surprising, and newsworthy, that the office for chaplains at today’s Harvard is led by an atheist/humanist rabbi?
For me, this was a totally valid story. However, I do wish that the Times had followed through and fleshed out the two big themes mentioned in this feature.
You can see one of those themes in the sub-headline: “The elevation of Greg Epstein, author of ‘Good Without God,’ reflects a broader trend of young people who increasingly identify as spiritual but religiously nonaffiliated.”
Ah, another story about the young “religiously unaffiliated” folks who have received so much ink in recent years, following in the footsteps of the “spiritual, but not religious” and “Sheilaism” trendsetters of previous decades. But how many of the “nones” are actually atheists or agnostics? Hold that thought.
The other big idea here is that Epstein was a popular choice among the Harvard chaplains, in part because of his abilities to build bridges between a wide variety of religious brands — including evangelical Protestants and Christian liberals. Hold that thought, as well.
I found myself, while reading the Times piece, wondering: What is the dominant religious worldview at postmodern Harvard? I am sure that there are more than a few atheists and agnostics there. But people I know with ties to the campus tell me that a kind of “woke” liberal faith is the norm, which actually fits with the school’s roots in mainline Protestant New England. Also, there are more than a few evangelicals in the mix (look up “The Veritas Forum”).
I was reminded of the debates almost a decade ago at Vanderbilt University, as campus leaders tried to push evangelical Protestant student ministries off campus because of tensions over You Know What.
