I finished Ari Goldman's The Search for God at Harvard.
Did
Ari Goldman find God at Harvard Divinity School? At the end of the
book, he says that maybe he did. I'm not sure how, though. Goldman
learned a lot about comparative religion, and he says that he tried to
approach the subject in a manner other than passive and detached
observation, but, by writing about it, he somewhat was a passive
observer----on the outside looking in. Goldman also talked with people
at HDS who were on spiritual journeys, and he told fascinating stories
about where they ended up after HDS----stories that gave some hope to a
humanities student like myself that perhaps even I can find some line of
work, however difficult the searching process might be. One student,
who before was leery about regarding God as someone who pulled strings,
began to fall back on the notion that God might have a plan. And Ari
Goldman concluded that his own ministry was journalism rather than more
academic work in religious studies, or the clergy. Was this Ari Goldman's discovery of God at Harvard: reaffirming his own life's purpose?
In
my latest reading, there was one point where Ari Goldman felt that
Harvard Divinity School's academic treatment of the New Testament ran in
the opposite direction from what he wanted: to learn about what made
Christians tick. Consequently, Goldman took a class that was a joint
venture between the Episcopal Divinity School and Weston Jesuit School
of Theology. Goldman (a religious Jew) did not care for one professor's
supersessionist beliefs, but another professor for the class had a more
philo-Judaic approach. Goldman still enjoyed the class,
however, because of its passionate engagement with the text. Perhaps
this class had more spiritual content than the one at Harvard Divinity
School, which may have focused on such topics as authorship.
(Goldman says that he learned in the HDS one that Matthew was a Jewish
Gospel.)
In reading Goldman's discussion of his
interaction with New Testament studies, I was reminded of the situation
when I was at Harvard Divinity School. Some people took Karen King's
class at HDS, but others took Daniel Harrington's class at Weston
Jesuit. I did not take either, but my impression (based on what I have
heard) is that Karen King went into the diversity of early Christianity
and Gnosticism, whereas Harrington delved more into the theology and
spirituality within the New Testament. An African-American student
called Harrington's class a "shouting class", the sort of class where
you want to shout "Amen!" at the preacher. Contrary to what one might
think, there wasn't entirely a liberal-conservative divide in which
liberals took King's class and conservatives took Harrington's. There
were liberal HDS students who loved Harrington's class. And one
conservative Christian HDS student was drawn to Karen King's class
because she was looking for something different.
Goldman's
discussion about the future of Harvard Divinity School was intriguing.
He talked about Ronald Thiemann becoming dean of HDS and enacting
reforms, such as putting HDS on a better financial footing, filling
vacant posts, integrating HDS more into the broader Harvard community,
and encouraging Christian spirituality at HDS by bringing Krister
Stendahl back to the campus. Goldman said that mainline Protestantism
was on the rise while evangelicalism was on the decline, with the
religious scandals of the late 1980's and the end of Moral Majority, and
Goldman forecasted that this would help HDS. As someone who attended
HDS in 1999-2002, what can I say about this? When I arrived at Harvard,
Thiemann was no longer the dean. But there were a lot of
classes to take that were taught by excellent faculty, more people at
Harvard seemed to know about the Div School and even took classes there,
and there was more Christian spirituality on the campus. While there
were a lot of mainline Protestants at HDS, there was also a growing
number of evangelicals when I was there----and they had their own group,
plus there were evangelicals who were teaching classes at HDS.
In
terms of my overall impression of Goldman's book, I think that he
should have focused more on how he found God at Harvard, since that's
what the book was supposed to be about. But he spent a lot of space
talking about his family, his background in Orthodox Judaism, and his
career as a journalist, much of which took place before he went to
Harvard. There's nothing wrong with this----I, as one who used
to keep the seventh-day Sabbath----could identify with his story about
how he sought to reconcile Sabbath observance with having a career.
Moreover, it's important to remember that Goldman came to Harvard with a
back-story, as does everyone who attends Harvard or goes anywhere. But
I think that he could have done a better job in terms of integrating
his back-story into his story about searching for God at Harvard. I
also believe that he should have gone into more detail about whether or
not he found God at Harvard.