Reflections from Faculty, Students and Alumni

To sing, or study? Research, or rejoice? For many, the GTU is a unique “living environment” where faith and scholarship intersect. Yet faculty, students, and alumni understand the relationship in different ways, reflecting the consortium’s range of religious, cultural, and academic perspectives.

One of the central questions is how to talk responsibly about faith in a pluralistic world. How can a community provide a safe space to discuss faith commitments and concerns, without excluding the voices of others? For doctoral student Frances Hioki, the key is not taking faith for granted in conversation. At more secular institutions, she says, people do not talk about religion readily. Their reticence, in her view, is appropriate to their context. “At the GTU, it is different,” she says. “The ecumenical atmosphere makes it possible to talk about these issues. It is liberating.”

And then there is the academy. Does a faith commitment challenge or support critical scholarship? To be critical, believes GTU professor Judith Berling, is to be open to the idea that “what you think is settled will be unsettled.” The ecumenical, interfaith, and interdisciplinary environment of the GTU provides a space for this kind of questioning. As they engage multiple perspectives, students are challenged to consider and expand their own worldviews. While initially disorienting, such experiences can lead to new spiritual and scholarly insights.

Dan Issing, a Catholic priest whose doctoral work focuses on the religious identity of Catholic colleges and universities, believes that the GTU's commitment to pluralism has been the real advantage to his study at the GTU. “At the GTU,” he said, “I have learned Catholic ethics in 'relationship;' that is, not in and of itself or as meaningful just for Catholics, but in dialogue with Protestant and secular ethicists. At the GTU, you can't just close up in your own religious belief system.”

Some argue that theological studies aren’t scholarly enough. But as ABSW professor Tim Tseng points out, religious perspective enhances academic inquiry. “Religion can be a lens that sheds insight into other areas,” he says, pointing to his field of Asian-American studies, where many social historians focus on economics, race, and gender but ignore religion. “Historians must write about it.”

Finally, there is the issue of practice. Faith can be a lived experience anchored in community. Yet nurturing one’s spirituality in the midst of rigorous academic work is not easy. “It’s a problem in doing religious scholarship in general,” says Natalie Fisk, who studies Buddhism. “Spirituality gets snuffed out when everything becomes academic. It is easy to forget that a tree is still a miracle.”

Some GTU alumni and students have found that serving as pastoral leaders allows them to deepen their faith commitments alongside their scholarship. Ron Burris (Ph.D. ’02) teaches at Notre Dame de Namur University and also serves as senior pastor at Temple Baptist Church in Richmond, California. For him, faith and scholarship are intimately connected. A “minister wherever he goes,” he feels that his ministry and his study of history mutually enhance one another. Learning about the history of religious traditions, he says, has “deepened my desire to be ecumenical and respectful.”

For others, teaching provides wholeness. “It’s been where the integration happens for me,” says doctoral student and instructor Jennifer Davidson. “The seminary students are there in direct response to their faith and calling. I am inspired by them,” she says.

Negotiating faith and scholarship will always, in the words of theologian Howard Thurman, provide members of the GTU with a “growing edge.” Yet questions of voice, academic criticism, and practice keep the dialogue fresh. For Jane Redmont, a doctoral student who teaches religion and women’s studies at Guilford College in North Carolina, Judaism provides a precious insight into the relationship between the scholar and the spirit. “The study of Torah and prayer are equally done in sacred time and space,” she explains. “The act of study is a reverent act, just as our prayer incorporates our doubts and our questions.”

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