Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Harvey Fellow News
An Advent Reflection | The Lord's Third Coming
From a sermon by St. Bernard
Let the word of the Lord come to us
We know that the coming of the Lord is threefold: the third coming is between the other two and it is not visible in the way they are. At his first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men, who saw him and hated him. At his last coming All flesh shall see the salvation of our God, and They shall look on him whom they have pierced. In the middle, the hidden coming, only the chosen see him, and they see him within themselves; and so their souls are saved. The first coming was in flesh and weakness, the middle coming is in spirit and power, and the final coming will be in glory and majesty.
This middle coming is like a road that leads from the first coming to the last. At the first, Christ was our redemption; at the last, he will become manifest as our life; but in this middle way he is our rest and our consolation.
If you think that I am inventing what I am saying about the middle coming, listen to the Lord himself: If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and the Father will love him, and we shall come to him. Elsewhere I have read: Whoever fears the Lord does good things. – but I think that what was said about whoever loves him was more important: that whoever loves him will keep his words. Where are these words to be kept? In the heart certainly, as the Prophet says I have hidden your sayings in my heart so that I do not sin against you. Keep the word of God in that way: Blessed are those who keep it. Let it penetrate deep into the core of your soul and then flow out again in your feelings and the way you behave; because if you feed your soul well it will grow and rejoice. Do not forget to eat your bread, or your heart will dry up. Remember, and your soul will grow fat and sleek.
If you keep God’s word like this, there is no doubt that it will keep you, for the Son will come to you with the Father: the great Prophet will come, who will renew Jerusalem, and he is the one who makes all things new. For this is what this coming will do: just as we have been shaped in the earthly image, so will we be shaped in the heavenly image. Just as the old Adam was poured into the whole man and took possession of him, so in turn will our whole humanity be taken over by Christ, who created all things, has redeemed all things, and will glorify all things.
This selection is taken from the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours for December 2, the Tuesday of the first week of advent.
Harvey Fellow Profile | Amy Reynolds '05
By Mike Lee '09
July of 2007 found Amy Reynolds living in Costa Rica, studying the local Catholic Church's answers to questions of social justice. Amy had traveled in order to interview local leaders and to read their writings and documents in order to understand their motivations better. Amy also wanted to spend time learning about life in Costa Rica, and how it shaped the views of the people around her. How did local economic conditions shape their views on Christ's role in provision of necessities?
It became more than an academic question when Amy’s family had a chance to see the health care system firsthand. Her daughter Adrianna became suddenly ill: her throat began to close up, her lips became puffy, and the local physicians wanted to hospitalize her. The medical staff was injecting Adrianna with steroids to combat a presumed allergic reaction, but they were either unable or too busy to explain to Amy what medications they were giving her. "This was all going on in Spanish," Amy recalls, "so that was a little bit intimidating." Adrianna recovered fine and is now a healthy four-year old, but Amy still remembers the anxiety of that day very clearly. I find myself suspecting that that day has shaped her ideas of the directions in which Costa Rica must grow from here.
Of course, the emergency rooms in Costa Rica are not a normal part of graduate school in sociology. Then again, Amy Reynolds isn't a normal graduate student.
* * * *
When Amy first set foot at Harvard for college at age eighteen, she had every intention of studying math or biochemistry. While neither of her parents had gone to college, her father was in engineering and Amy hoped to follow him into the sciences. She found, though, that sociology and its discussion of racism gripped her interest in a particularly profound way.
"It wasn't until college that I first confronted questions of race," Amy tells me. "I lived in a fairly white town, and all my friends were white. But now college was a different environment." Sociology intrigued her because it gave her a way of thinking about the questions that were on her heart: where does racism come from? How does it affect the people around her, both victims and perpetrators? Over time, questions of economic as well as racial inequality became her life's passion, and she has continued studying them throughout graduate school at Princeton.
In particular, international inequality as evidenced in international trade caught Amy's attention. What power relationships were involved in this phenomenon, and what were the economic consequences for the poor? And, most importantly, how did religion impact the way that people think about free trade?
As Amy began to study the way that religious groups become involved in the market--implicating questions of international trade and economics--she focused her attention on three groups that had made statements regarding the Clinton Administration's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a similar treaty for Central America (CAFTA). Her dissertation, now in its final stages—"I defend in January," she tells me—focuses on the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the Catholic Church in Costa Rica, and an unofficial group called "Kairos" in Canada. Each of the three organizations is shaped by mission and calling, yes, but also by circumstances and geography.
"I was most curious about why the church was saying so much in Central America," Amy says. "How did they enter into the public discourse? Why do they think they have a role? Various groups do bring their religious values into their analysis, but they bring it about in different ways. Most of them don't critique capitalism per se, but they do all really critique the individualism of the market despite their diverse theological origins. They all claim that markets have to prioritize what happens in the community over the individual."
The Catholic Church in Costa Rica, for example, is relatively constrained in the statements it can make and can't explicitly denounce free trade agreements. "Still, if you read between the lines," Amy says, "they weren't in favor of the free trade agreement."
As Amy explains to me, there are two major reasons for this. The first, of course, is that the local Catholics are accountable to a global body. But perhaps the more important reason lies in Costa Rican history. Because of past civil strife, Amy says, "they have an emphasis on keeping society together, as Costa Ricans prioritize peace and dialogue." On controversial stands—Costa Rica was the first nation to have a referendum on CAFTA—the church wants to make sure that it is not too strident in its denunciations. This is the sort of analysis at which Amy's expertise really shines through: composing a context to better explain a group's true feelings, giving her audience—in this case, me—a sense of what makes these groups respond the way they do.
By contrast, the Presbyterian Church in the United States is limited mostly by internal constraints as a quasi-democratic body. "Any social policy they make," Amy explains patiently, "is the result of a representative social body voting on it. If they make a social stand, it's because the general assembly body and the ministers are voting yes and representing what the church wants to say." The church's rhetoric "comes out of an intellectual Reformed tradition, with an interest in research and thinking through things."
Still, this bottom-up legitimacy and thoughtful consensus gives them greater strength: "They've come out and said these free trade agreements aren't good and that they reject them. They don't reject free trade in principle; they just say that we need more provisions to protect the environment, to protect health, to guarantee that America doesn't drive out small farmers in Central America through subsidies for American workers." Again, Amy's explanation is tremendously enlightening: the democratic process pushes the church towards a more moderate stance, but the accompanying legitimacy permits it to take that stance more firmly. The church can declare its nuanced policy with authority in a way that the Costa Ricans often cannot.
Finally, the Kairos group in Canada—"kind of like Sojourners, in the US"—remains an unofficial church arm precisely because they don't wish to function with those constraints. "They're quite leftist and alternative in their politics and their approach to the economy. They would reject capitalism entirely, if they could. They would encourage management boards that would guarantee that goods were provided for all, and they really protest free-trade agreements. They take a critical approach to everything that happens, including WTO meetings. They almost have a conspiracy theory, saying that people were kept out of talks, and that what happens there is not legitimate. They advocate an alternative economic order." Amy pauses here for a moment. "They don't really convert people to their side. They don't really aim to. They feel more... prophetic," she explains. "They feel that as long as they're speaking the truth, that's the good they pursue."
What makes the Canadian group more radical? A host of factors, but Amy points to one in particular. "Canadian organizations pride themselves on the fact that Canada does a better job than the US of supporting human rights. They appeal to Canada's tradition." Amy's excitement is tangible as she explains that "these groups are becoming transnational, yes, but they are still speaking on the issues that are important within their own societies."
Her dissertation, as she says, "is mostly like a textual analysis, examining the published documents that are different for each group." She's spent a month examining church archives in Costa Rica; she's attended Kairos meetings in Canada; she's interviewed about thirty people and analyzed over two hundred documents relating to each group's stand on inequality. "What are the themes that come up? What were the major religious themes? Why do they do what they do? How did their structure or their beliefs or their location influence the things that they choose to say?"
* * * *
In addition to Adrianna, Amy has a husband, Steve, and another daughter named Emily. Amy chuckles over the phone as she tells me that Adrianna was born just a month after her third-year comprehensive exams, and that Emily was born just a year ago, as Amy was finishing up her dissertation. "Having kids during graduate school has been one of the big faith challenges—it's definitely been the biggest struggle that my faith has come into. For the last four years, they've been there all the time—and that's good!—but I've had to learn how to deal with what it means to be someone committed to being a mother and committed to being in missions."
Amy pauses to reflect on her faith experience at Princeton. "I really liked my church there," she says. "It really taught me a lot about honoring church and I grew in my faith... but there definitely was this idea that motherhood is more important than vocation. And yet I believe that He has called me to this vocation, and so it makes it hard when you're already trying to balance the challenges of parenthood and career and the faith communities that you're a part of have been more hurtful than helpful in that regard."
Fortunately, she tells me, Steve is in a similar field. "He also studied sociology in grad school," and in fact part of his work also focused on Central America. His work took him around the world as well, as he worked in South Africa and El Salvador. I find it easy to picture Amy and Steve traipsing around the world, bringing their children with them as they grow as a family that works towards the social justice issues that they're confronted with.
* * * *
The normal discouragement of graduate school can make it easy to doubt God’s purposes. “Was God really calling me to this? What do I have to show for six or seven years? And you start to wonder: am I furthering God’s Kingdom? Sometimes you lose sight of that in graduate school: I’ve got to get this assignment done, this paper done, turn this chapter in.”
Amy stops to think. “Sometimes when I start to doubt, I think back to the Harvey Fellowship. I don’t take the mark of the Harvey lightly. It represents people saying ‘We believe God can really use you and what you’re studying.’ The application process more clearly showed me God’s hand in my academic life. And thinking back to that process has been very helpful at the moments where I feel like giving up. With the economy the way it is, sociologists aren’t particularly in demand—but God’s given me the encouragement to press on with what I believe He’s been calling me to.” Here, Christ has provided an anchor for her. “I entered grad school with the idea that I wanted to do research in an international setting, and was open to God possibly leading me to teaching overseas. It’s been hard to maintain that focus, and not be enslaved by the graduate school mentality of seeking prestige: ‘You have to be at X institution or Y university.’ I have prayed instead that God would help me to do great research and be where he would have me make a difference. Where God calls me may not be where Princeton thinks I should go. Sometimes I forget that as I come to the end.”
* * * *
When I ask Amy about her future career, her voice perks up noticeably. She knows exactly what she wants to do: she wants to bridge a gap. “The groups I’ve been interviewing tend to be theologically more liberal; they’re not evangelicals. And so I’m kind of viewed as an outsider—because many social activists feel disdainful of evangelicals. For most of these groups, evangelicals have often been part of the problem, or at least the communities who are not concerned with these social issues. Meanwhile many evangelicals feel a void between their calling and their faith—but my own faith does come in and does influence me.”
Amy pauses for a moment to reflect. “And it isn’t just in research, but it’s especially in teaching. I think professors can be profoundly influential. If it weren’t for some of my professors, I don’t think I’ve have become interested in inequality as a justice issue. And,” she says, “I would love to be present for the moment when students start to experience justice as a calling.”
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Harvey Fellow News
Kyla Ebels Duggan '01 has been awarded the Laurance S. Rockefeller fellowship at the Princeton University Center for Human Values and plans to spend the next academic year on study leave there.
Ellen Huang '05 finished her PhD in August 2008 and is now in a 2-year postdoc in History of Art at UC-Berkeley.
Hot News | HF Mentoring Program
Harvey Fellow Profile | David Lewis '97
It’s not easy to be a committed family man and do first-rate academic work. But having to trust God every step of the way makes it possible.
By Matthew Cabeen '07
David Lewis didn’t attend church regularly when he and his brother were growing up, as his parents had divorced when he was very young. His grandparents were very faithful believers, however, and summers with them meant spiritual formation at camp and Vacation Bible School. By the time he was a teenager, David’s mother had remarried and was attending church with his stepfather. It was at this point, during junior high school, when a remarkable conversion occurred. “I was lying in bed one night,” David recalls, “and I felt God clearly calling me: ‘You cannot ride the fence. Are you going to follow me?’ And I said, ‘I will follow you.’” From that point on, he made a real effort to commit his life to Christ. His brother, a year and a half elder than he, encouraged him in this endeavor. “He was always a bit ahead in following Christ,” David says, “and is still an encouragement today.”
David went to Live Oaks High School (the mascot was “The Mighty Acorn”) where he excelled academically and attended a conservative Baptist church and youth groups. He was on the debate team, which led to an interest in political science. He enrolled at UC-Berkeley to study political science. “I drifted away a little bit at the end of high school,” he remembers, “and I was very lonely for God by summer of freshman year.” This desire of his heart led him to join a Christian fraternity, Alpha Gamma Omega, and he moved into the fraternity house—more on that later.
That same summer, he did a three-month internship with a California state representative, which in turn led him to apply for a job with U.S. Representative Pete Stark (D-CA). When he interviewed with Rep. Stark’s chief of staff, David was asked about his view on abortion. When he replied that he was pro-life, the chief of staff said, “but you know that Rep. Stark is pro-choice, right?” David responded that he did. This difference might have spelled the end of his chances to work there, but in an odd twist, Rep. Stark decided to hire David before the chief of staff had a chance to brief him. David worked in Rep. Stark’s office for the rest of his time at Berkeley, where he helped citizens who sought help dealing with government agencies. He would contact the agencies on the person’s behalf , sometimes putting pressure on officials in order to get problems resolved. By the end of his time at Berkeley, after three years of interning with Pete Stark, David began looking for public policy schools. “I had decided that I was going impact the world for God,” David says. “But then I felt God saying to me, ‘You haven’t asked what I want you to do.’” At that point, he began praying not to get into the best schools, but for God’s will to be done. And he got into only one school—the University of Colorado, Boulder.
About the time David moved into the Alpha Gamma Omega house, he met a girl named Saskia. She was in the Christian sorority on campus, and her roommate was dating David’s roommate. “I was still dating my high school sweetheart at the time,” David remembers, “And I thought—you know your relationship is in trouble when you have this thought—now that’s the kind of girl I should be dating.” They became friends, and several months later began dating. It was senior year when he took a trip to her parents’ house to ask for her hand in marriage. After dinner, her parents looked at him and deadpanned, “Want some dog food? We always have some after dinner.” “What could I say?” asks David. “Of course I said yes.” They produced a dessert that did look remarkably like dog food, and David evidently passed the test. He and Saskia were married right after college, but not before David convinced her to graduate early by taking some extra classes so that she could move to Colorado with him after graduation. The newlyweds packed their things and struck out for Boulder.
Once in Colorado, Saskia took some classes to prepare for nursing school, as her mother had been a nurse and she was thinking of doing the same. However, after not getting into her choice of schools, she did some food science instead; she had majored in molecular biology at Berkeley. She worked at a cheese company, where she helped formulate the special cheese that pizza companies like Domino’s put in their stuffed crusts. Meanwhile, David began his Master’s program at Boulder. “After a semester, we just ran out of money,” David recounts. “I worked in a record store and Saskia at a deli to make ends meet. I even applied to be a county sheriff!” With the financial hardship, David began to wonder whether graduate school had been the right choice. He persevered, but went into political science rather than public policy (public policy is more of a vocational path for future public servants). “I was motivated to answer bigger questions and do a PhD,” David says. He was admitted to the PhD program at Boulder and gradually got some funding so he didn’t have to work in addition to his studies. He became interested in political theory. Then, after two years of courses, he was talking to his advisor, who asked him why he was doing political theory. “I like it,” replied David. She told him that he really wasn’t very good at it and should reconsider, which he did. He began studying American politics, another area of study in which he had taken classes. And he didn’t look back.
About the time he took his comprehensive exam and was preparing to write his dissertation during his third year, his advisor left the university—and academia altogether. By this time he had published an article and was looking like a more attractive candidate for top schools. So he re-applied to graduate schools, applying to only four: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. “I had to re-take the GRE for those applications,” David remembers, “and I had always tested very consistently, ever since the SAT. I only studied the night before. But my score went up by 300 points! It was nothing short of a miracle.” Even with his much-improved record, David still only got into Stanford, but it was the best school for what he wanted to study. So, after 4 years in Boulder, with a new baby daughter, the Lewises moved to Palo Alto.
David had to start graduate school all over again, taking time-consuming courses rather than having the flexible hours of writing a dissertation. “It was different from what we had planned, with a new baby,” he says. To make ends meet, Saskia worked on the Human Genome Project while he continued with graduate school. Fortunately, having already been to graduate school once gave him a head start, and David ended up finishing his PhD in just 4 years. But all the work that first year was taking a toll on his family life, until receiving a Harvey Fellowship during his first year at Stanford provided a turning point for both his career and his marriage.
“Both Saskia and I were working, and Julianna was a baby,” David recalls. “We were living separate lives—I was working all the time, Saskia was doing child-care, and we were trading off watching Julianna. I didn’t really know my wife, and I suddenly realized, wow, our marriage is in trouble!” At the Summer Institute he attended after his first year at Stanford, he decided to confront this problem head-on and work on fixing it. “I came back from the Summer Institute and told Saskia that we needed to make things work better—and I told her that even if it meant giving up my career, I would do it for the sake of our marriage and family.”
With his coursework behind him, David had more flexibility and reserved more family time. He drew hard lines about when he would or would not work. Saskia was fortified by his commitment, and they became a better team. He wrote his dissertation, went on the job market, and got just one offer, at William and Mary, so he moved his family to Williamsburg, VA. They were there for two years before a friend from Princeton invited him to apply for a position there. He decided to go on the market again, and got an offer from Princeton and decided to move. “It was a hard decision, as I felt loyalty to William and Mary,” he says. “But I wanted to do more research, as well as see if I could make it; there was a reputational component.” After six years at Princeton, David was promoted to Associate Professor and got tenure. During the tenure year he began getting offers from other schools, one of which was Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt offered him a full professorship and recruited him strongly. “I had a hard time maintaining a happy life at Princeton. I’m the kind of person who tries to meet people’s expectations, and I was always trying to do this at Princeton, which led to a constant dissatisfaction,” David reveals. “I didn’t feel like in the long run I could be what I was expected to be.” After seeking the counsel of their closest friends and family, he and his wife made the decision to move to Vanderbilt in the summer of 2008. “It was a risky choice, but Christians of all people should be able to take risks.”
Now settled in to his third semester in Nashville, David is enjoying it immensely. “It’s been great, and my quality of life and happiness are much improved,” he says. He enjoys having less job pressure and more time with his children, and having a larger back yard than he had in New Jersey. He published a book last year, “The Politics of Presidential Appointments” (Princeton Press), and continues studying presidential appointments. As a presidential and bureaucracy scholar, he is now turning his attention to the process of patronage appointments—presidential appointments made because of political connections rather than qualifications. He uses a mix of methods from qualitative to quantitative, looking at documents, doing interviews, and gathering statistics to analyze how presidential appointments are made. David is currently studying the Obama and Bush administrations.
Finally, David encourages other Harvey Fellows to focus on being faithful. “Let God lead the way,” he advises. “I have had times when it’s my job just to plow the field, and God will bring the rain. God knows best, and if He wants you to have a particular job or career, you will have it. God is worth trusting. I have not yet been disappointed.”
David Lewis is a 1997 Harvey Fellow, a member of the Harvey Fellows Advisory Board, and is Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He lives in Nashville, TN with his wife Saskia and children Julianna and DJ, where they attend the Village Chapel.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Harvey Fellow News
The 2009 Harvey Fellows have been announced and are listed on the Harvey Fellows web site. Biographies of each Fellow will appear around the beginning of September.
Gregg Helvey ’06's movie, Kavi, won the gold medal at the Student Academy Awards on June 13. This means that Kavi is now qualified for competition in the 2010 Academy Awards for Short Live Action! Additional information, including Gregg's acceptance speech, is available here.
Mark Wistey '99 received a tenure-track position in electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, IN. His research will be on integrating new materials on silicon chips to bring lasers, sensors, and terahertz devices onto conventional integrated circuits.
Featured Article | What Marriage is—and what it isn't
EDITOR'S NOTE: As the national debate over gay marriage continues, I hear and read a wide range of arguments from friends, business leaders, and politicians. Today, even among Christians, there are differences of opinion. This article by Robert P. George cuts to the heart of the matter and lays out the underlying principles of marriage and its role in society. Such clear and critical thinking is invaluable in the formation of a carefully considered opinion.
This article is reprinted from the Aug/Sept edition of FIRST THINGS magazine with the kind permission of its editors and Professor George. It is also available at the FIRST THINGS website. Print subscriptions to FIRST THINGS are available at a significant discount to students.
What Marriage Is—And What It Isn't
Robert P. George
Everyone agrees that marriage, whatever else it is or does, is a relationship in which persons are united. But what are persons? And how is it possible for two or more of them to unite? The view typically (if often unconsciously) held by advocates of liberal positions on issues of sexuality and marriage is that the person is the conscious and desiring aspect of the self. The person inhabits (or is somehow associated with) a body, certainly, but the body is regarded (if often only implicitly) as a subpersonal reality, rather than a part of the personal reality of the human being whose body it is. The body is viewed as an instrument by which the individual produces or otherwise participates in satisfactions and other desirable experiences and realizes various goals.
For those who formally or informally accept this dualistic understanding of what human beings are, personal unity cannot be achieved by bodily union. Persons instead unite emotionally (or, as those of a certain religious cast of mind say, spiritually). And, of course, if this is true, then persons of the same sex can unite and share sexual experiences together that they suppose will enhance their personal union by enabling them to express affection, share pleasure, and feel more intensely by virtue of their sex play.
The alternate view of what persons are is the one embodied in both the historic law of marriage and what Isaiah Berlin once referred to as the central tradition of Western thought. According to this view, human beings are bodily persons, not consciousnesses, or minds, or spirits inhabiting and using nonpersonal bodies. A human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Far from being a mere instrument of the person, the body is intrinsically part of the personal reality of the human being. Bodily union is thus personal union, and comprehensive personal union—marital union—is founded on bodily union.
The bodily unity of spouses is possible because human males and females, like other mammals, unite organically when they mate—they form a single reproductive principle. Although reproduction is a single act, in humans (and other mammals) the reproductive act is performed not by individual members of the species but by a mated pair as an organic unit. The point has been carefully explained by Germain Grisez:
Though a male and a female are complete individuals with respect to other functions—for example, nutrition, sensation, and locomotion—with respect to reproduction they are only potential parts of a mated pair, which is the complete organism capable of reproducing sexually. Even if the mated pair is sterile, intercourse, provided it is the reproductive behavior characteristic of the species, makes the copulating male and female one organism.
What is unique about marriage is that it truly is a comprehensive sharing of life, a sharing founded on the bodily union made uniquely possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman—a complementarity that makes it possible for two human beings to become, in the language of the Bible, one flesh—and thus possible for this one-flesh union to be the foundation of a relationship in which it is intelligible for two persons to bind themselves to each other in pledges of permanence, monogamy, and fidelity.
People who reject this understanding of sex and marriage say that “Love makes a family.” And it does not matter whether the love is between two people of opposite sexes or the same sex. (Those who are clearheaded and candid acknowledge that, by the same token, it would not matter if the love were among three or more people.) Nor does the sexual expression of that love make any difference.
In fact, however, at the bottom of the contemporary debate over marriage is a possibility that defenders of conjugal marriage affirm and its critics deny: the possibility of marriage as a one-flesh communion of persons. If acts that fulfill the behavioral conditions of procreation (whether or not the nonbehavioral conditions happen to obtain) are, in fact, capable of uniting spouses interpersonally—thus providing the biological matrix of the multilevel union and sharing of life that marriage is, according to the traditional understanding long embodied in Western law, philosophy, and culture—then truly marital acts differ fundamentally in meaning, value, and significance from intrinsically nonmarital sex acts (such as acts of sodomy and mutual masturbation).
Arguments that true marriage is something other than or broader than the union of two sexually complementary spouses necessarily suppose that the value of sex must be instrumental either to procreation or to pleasure, considered as an end in itself or as a means of expressing affection, tender feelings, etc. Thus, critics of traditional norms of marriage and sexuality say that homosexual sex acts, for example, are indistinguishable from heterosexual acts whenever the motivation for such acts is something other than procreation. That is to say, the sexual acts of same-sex partners are indistinguishable in motivation, meaning, value, and significance from the marital acts of spouses who know that at least one spouse is temporarily or permanently infertile. Thus, the argument goes, the traditional understanding of marriage is guilty of unfairness in treating sterile persons of opposite sexes as capable of marrying while treating same-sex partners as ineligible to marry.
Stephen Macedo has accused the traditional view and its defenders of precisely this “double standard.” He asks: “What is the point of sex in an infertile marriage? Not procreation: The partners (let us assume) know that they are infertile. If they have sex, it is for pleasure and to express their love, or friendship, or some other good. It will be for precisely the same reason that committed, loving gay couples have sex.”
Many people find this sort of criticism impressive, and even some conservatively oriented people seem to find themselves stumped by it. Once the core of the traditional view is brought into focus, however, it is clear that the criticism straightforwardly fails because it presupposes that the point of sex in marriage can only be instrumental. It is a central tenet of the traditional view, however, that the point of sex is the good of marriage itself, consummated and actualized in and through sexual acts that unite spouses as one flesh and, thus, interpersonally.
The traditional view rejects the instrumentalizing of sex (and, thus, of the bodies of sexual partners) to extrinsic ends of any sort. Of course this does not mean that procreation and pleasure are not rightly sought when they are integrated with the basic good and justifying point of marital intercourse, namely, the one-flesh union of marriage itself.
Critics of the traditional understanding of marriage who grasp this point must therefore argue that the apparent one-flesh unity that distinguishes marital intercourse from sodomitical and other nonmarital sex acts is illusory and, thus, that the apparent bodily communion of spouses in acts that fulfill the behavioral conditions of procreation is not really possible.
Macedo, for instance, claims that “the ‘one-flesh communion’ of sterile couples would appear . . . to be more a matter of appearance than reality.” Because of their sterility, such couples cannot really unite biologically: “Their bodies . . . can form no ‘single reproductive principle,’ no real unity.” Indeed, Macedo argues that even fertile couples who conceive children in acts of sexual intercourse do not truly unite biologically, because, he says, “penises and vaginas do not unite biologically, sperm and eggs do.”
John Finnis has aptly replied that “in this reductivist, word-legislating mood, one might declare that sperm and egg unite only physically and only their pronuclei are biologically united. But it would be more realistic to acknowledge that the whole process of copulation, involving as it does the brains of the man and woman, their nerves, blood, . . . secretions, and coordinated activity is biological through and through.” Moreover, as Finnis points out, “The organic unity which is instantiated in an act of the reproductive kind is not,” as Macedo reductively imagines, “the unity of penis and vagina. It is the unity of the persons in the intentional, consensual act” of sexual intercourse.
The unity to which Finnis here refers—unity of body, sense, emotion, reason, and will—is central to our understanding of humanness. Yet it is a unity of which Macedo and others who deny the possibility of true bodily communion in marriage can give no account. For this denial presupposes a dualism of person (as conscious and desiring self), on the one hand, and body (as instrument of the conscious and desiring self), on the other hand, which is flatly incompatible with this unity. This dualism of person and body is implicit in the idea, central to Macedo’s denial of the possibility of one-flesh marital union, that sodomitical acts differ from what law and philosophy have traditionally regarded as chaste and honorable marital acts only as a matter of the arrangement of the “plumbing.” According to this idea, the genital organs of an infertile woman or man are not really “reproductive organs” any more than, say, mouths, rectums, tongues, or fingers are reproductive organs. Thus, the intercourse of a man and a woman, where at least one partner is infertile, cannot really be an act of the reproductive type.
But the plain fact is that the genitals of men and women are reproductive organs all of the time—even during periods of sterility. Acts that fulfill the behavioral conditions of procreation are acts of the reproductive kind even where the nonbehavioral conditions of procreation do not obtain. Insofar as the point of sexual intercourse is marital union, the partners achieve the desired unity (become “two-in-one-flesh”) precisely insofar as they mate or, if you will, perform the type of act on which the gift of a child may supervene—what traditional law and philosophy have always referred to interchangeably as “the act of generation” and “the conjugal act.”
Now, in some sectors of our culture, the views advanced by Macedo are hardly considered radical. On the contrary, his views about sex and marriage are considered by many to be too conservative, even old-fashioned. He and other defenders of this “moderate liberal” position have been taken to task for affirming the principle of sexual fidelity and criticizing, if usually only implicitly, promiscuity. They have an admirable commitment to the notion of marriage as a permanent and exclusive sharing of life integrated around (but certainly not reducible to) sexual activity. But they think that the nature of the sexual activity just does not matter. Sex is sex. It cannot really unite people as one flesh, but it can enable them to express their affection in a special way.
Once marriage and marital intercourse are thus reduced to the status of instrumental goods, the only intelligible point of entering into marriage will be the achievement of some other end or ends. For some, certainly, the end of marriage will be procreation, but whether a particular marriage is a “reproductive alliance” or an alliance for purposes entirely unrelated to reproduction is purely a matter of the subjective preferences of the parties entering into the alliance. In no way is marriage considered to be naturally ordered to the coming to be and nurturing of children. Nor are the contours of the marital state or the terms of the marital relationship understood to be established or shaped by a natural orientation toward child rearing.
Marriage, on this revised understanding, is marked by a plasticity or malleability that sharply distinguishes it from the conception of marriage it is proposed to replace. In this revisionist understanding, marriage is also unnecessary—even for child rearing. If two (or perhaps more) people find, or suppose, that the state of being married works for them, then they have a reason to marry. If not, then marriage is not as a matter of principle understood to be a uniquely, or even especially, apt context for them to structure their lives together.
What about sex? What is the point of that in the revised conception of marriage? What is sometimes referred to as lifestyle liberalism (to distinguish it from the political liberalism of, say, Franklin Roosevelt or Hubert Humphrey) rejects the view that sex is to be restricted to the marital relationship. It certainly has no ground of principle to object to sexual cohabitation outside of marriage. And even with regard to sex apart from stable relationships, lifestyle liberalism is “nonjudgmental.” Its main principle of rectitude in sexual matters is the principle of consent, not, as in the traditional view, the principle of marriage. So long as there is no coercion or deceit in the procurement of sex, sexual choices—as Frederick Elliston, for example—insists, do not raise moral questions.
Even adultery is unproblematic under the lifestyle-liberal conception of marriage if, as in so-called open marriages, there is no deception of a spouse involved. Indeed, under the lifestyle-liberal conception, as defended by Elliston and many others, it is impossible to identify any reason—there are only subjective preferences—for spouses to demand fidelity of each other. Why should they “forsake all others”? What is the point of sexual fidelity? There is no reason, strictly speaking, not to have an “open marriage”—only emotions that some people happen to have and others happen not to have. This is why people who reject the traditional terms of marriage—even those, like Macedo, who do so for putatively conservative reasons, for instance, to make the good of marriage available to people who prefer erotic experiences with partners of their own sex—find it impossible, in the end, to condemn promiscuity and the like, except, occasionally, on pragmatic grounds. Thus Andrew Sullivan, who once framed his case for altering the traditional understanding of marriage in conservative terms, now finds himself affirming the “beauty” and even “spirituality” of anonymous sex—sex among partners who do not even identify themselves to each other by name.
So what is the point of sex in the revised conception? Even if sex is permissible outside of marriage, is it nevertheless an intrinsic part of marriage? The answer has to be no. Under the revised conception, the point and value of sex, even in marriage, is instrumental. Marriage is not, in principle, a sexual relationship. If the partners happen to want to have sex with each other, fine—their goals might be to conceive children, to have or share pleasure or intimacy, or to express tender and affectionate feelings toward each other. But not only is it the case that all these goals can be legitimately pursued outside the marital context, it is also the case that there is no reason to pursue them within the marriage—or at all—if the people involved happen not to desire having sex with each other, or at all. Just as you can have sex without marriage, you can have marriage without sex. Thus, the whole idea of marital consummation—an idea historically central to the philosophy and law of marriage in our culture—loses its intelligibility.
A standard revisionist response to the defense of conjugal marriage like the one I am here proposing is the claim that, even if the traditional position is, from the moral viewpoint, true, it is nevertheless unfair for the law to embody it. Macedo, for example, argues that if disagreements about the nature of marriage “lie in . . . difficult philosophical quarrels, about which reasonable people have long disagreed, then our differences lie in precisely the territory that John Rawls rightly marks off as inappropriate to the fashioning of our basic rights and liberties.” So Macedo and others claim that law and policy must be neutral with regard to competing understandings of marriage and sexual morality.
This claim is deeply unsound. The true meaning, value, and significance of marriage are fairly easily grasped (even if people sometimes have difficulty living up to its moral demands) in a culture—including, critically, a legal culture—that promotes and supports a sound understanding of marriage. Furthermore, ideologies and practices that are hostile to a sound understanding and practice of marriage in a culture tend to undermine the institution of marriage in
that culture. Hence it is extremely important that governments eschew attempts to be neutral with regard to marriage and embody in their laws and policy the soundest, most nearly correct, understanding.
The law is a teacher. It will teach either that marriage is a reality in which people can choose to participate, but whose contours people cannot make and remake at will, or it will teach that marriage is a mere convention, which is malleable in such a way that individuals, couples, or, indeed, groups can choose to make of it whatever suits their desires, goals, and so on. The result, given the biases of human sexual psychology, will be the development of practices and ideologies that truly tend to undermine the sound understanding and practice of marriage, together with the development of pathologies that tend to reinforce the very practices and ideologies that cause them.
The Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, a liberal who does not share my views regarding sexual morality, is rightly critical of forms of liberalism, including Rawlsianism, that suppose law and government can and should be neutral among competing conceptions of moral goodness. He has noted, for example, that “monogamy, assuming that it is the only valuable form of marriage, cannot be practiced by an individual. It requires a culture which recognizes it, and which supports it through the public’s attitude and through its formal institutions.”
Of course, Raz does not suppose that, in a culture whose law and public policy do not support monogamy, a man who happens to believe in it somehow will be unable to restrict himself to having one wife or will be required or pressured into taking additional wives. His point, rather, is that, even if monogamy is a key element in a sound understanding of marriage, large numbers of people will fail to understand that or why that is the case—and therefore will fail to grasp the value of monogamy and the point of practicing it—unless they are assisted by a culture that supports, formally by law and policy, as well as by informal means, monogamous marriage. What is true of monogamy is equally true of the other elements of a sound understanding of marriage.
In short, marriage is the kind of good that can be chosen and meaningfully participated in only by people who have a sound basic understanding of it and choose it with that understanding in mind—yet people’s ability to understand it, at least implicitly, and thus to choose it, depends crucially on institutions and cultural understandings that both transcend individual choice and are constituted by a vast number of individual choices.
Robert P. George, a member of the First Things editorial and advisory board, is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. This article is adapted from a speech delivered in NewYork City on March 11, 2009 at a meeting of Socrates in the City.
Harvey Fellow Profile | Bryan McGraw '02
An “air force brat” exceeds his high-school guidance counselor’s hopes, cluelessly applies to graduate school, ends up with a Harvard PhD and becomes a professor at Wheaton College.
By Matthew Cabeen '07
Bryan McGraw spent his childhood at Air Force bases throughout the United States—his father was a B-52 pilot—before ending up in the optimistically-named town of Niceville, in the Florida panhandle. “We like to refer to it as the Redneck Riviera,” he laughs. Even though he went to a very good public high school and excelled academically, his guidance counselor said he wouldn’t get into top colleges. With a family income too high for significant financial aid, but too low to pay for tuition at a college without merit scholarships, he only applied to four schools: Florida, Furman, Duke, and Vanderbilt. And Vanderbilt was a last-minute decision. “My guidance counselor thought I wouldn’t get into Vanderbilt, and I bought into it,” Bryan remembers. But then he learned that his English teacher had written “an amazing two-page recommendation for me. I didn’t want to waste her time.” So he whipped up an essay and sent it off to Vanderbilt, with no revision, two days after the application deadline. The result? Admission with a 75% tuition scholarship. He used an ROTC scholarship to pay for the rest.
Freshman year at Vanderbilt turned out to be an important time for Bryan both personally and spiritually. “I was cocky at summer orientation,” he says. “So I told them I didn’t want to take any easy classes.” He signed up for Physics for Physics majors, Honors Math, and Russian. “And boy, was it hard,” he recalls. One day in October he was sitting in his dorm room studying, and suddenly he had a terrifying thought—was he one of those guys who do well in high school but are really faking it, are not really as smart as they seem? Fortunately, he ended up doing well that semester, and in addition met a girl named Martha in his Honors Math class, one of two partners for a class project. He got to know her better at a Bible study later that year. “I guess I didn’t make much of an impression on her,” he says. “When I told her that we had worked together on a math project the semester before, she didn’t remember me at all!” Nonetheless, he asked her out on a date and she consented. It was a Saturday, and Bryan had an ROTC exercise that was expected to end in time for his 7PM date. It went two hours overtime, and he didn’t make it home until nearly 9, bedraggled, exhausted, and streaked with mud. Undeterred, he phoned her to see if she was still interested, and she indicated that she was. They went to see a movie, then went to a coffee shop for a snack afterwards. “At some point I told her I should really go to bed, because I hadn’t slept the night before,” he says. He looked at his watch and to his surprise it was 2:30AM! “On every other date I had been on, I was bored by 11. I was hooked!” So began a relationship that is still going strong 19 years later.
Bryan’s faith was solidified the summer after freshman year, when he worked at Yellowstone National Park with a Baptist program for young people. They would clean cabins and do park work, but also hold Bible studies for park employees. He had grown up in a Southern Baptist household, “serious about faith and immersed in Scripture, but not theologically aware or intellectually oriented.” He began the program at Yellowstone working with some college seniors, but was soon assigned by himself, cleaning some remote cabins. “I was handed a Bible and told, ‘have some Bible studies for park employees. Good luck!’” He posted some signs and waited for someone to come to his study. “A guy shows up for the Bible study wearing a long black trench coat, covered in tattoos and piercings. And I think, oh boy,” Bryan remembers. “Then he takes off his coat and has JESUS tattooed on the back of his neck! He’s this Jesus freak. He’s awesome.” They had their study together and even led a woman to Christ that summer. And he realized that this was faith: “Here I was, doing something I thought I was totally unqualified to do, with nobody to rely on but God, and I realized that trust and faith were much deeper than just rules.”
Back at Vanderbilt, Bryan took up Modern European Studies as a major, a multidisciplinary program focusing on 20th century Europe. “I went to school to be a spy—CIA, maybe,” he notes. Then during his senior year, he was taking a class called Communism and its Critics and reading anticommunist literature from the 1960s-1980s. “I had such a great time writing the final paper,” he says, “and I realized that people are paid to do this!”He then decided to go into academics without even knowing what work as an academic would entail. He also had his ROTC commitment, but he didn’t foresee any conflicts at that point. In fact, he got a 2-year deferral on it so that he could get a master’s degree in Russian Area Studies at Georgetown, while Martha began medical school in Augusta, GA.
After receiving his Master’s, he and Martha got engaged, but he then had his Army commitment. “As an Army officer, you get ‘branched’,” Bryan explains.”You get assigned to a particular unit or specialty. I was put in intelligence.” He didn’t even bother to request an assignment near Augusta, since there weren’t any intelligence units there. But amazingly, he was placed at Fort Gordon, right near Augusta, as an intelligence officer! One month after his arrival, he and Martha were married. As he had a 4-year commitment and Martha had 3 years of medical school remaining, they were anticipating a one-year gap. After 3 years, Martha got a residency in Providence, RI at Brown University, and Bryan requested an early release so that he could go to New England with his wife. It was rejected.
Bryan talked to an Army captain, who told him that he could reapply for release, but if it were approved he might have to repay some $10,000 of scholarship money. This kind of cost led Bryan and Martha to decide that they would just deal with a year apart. Then Bryan came home from work one day, while Martha was cooking dinner. Martha had spoken with her mother that day about their situation. “Is New England where you feel led?” her mother had asked? Yes. “And it’s only the money that’s keeping you from being together?” Yes. “So you don’t trust God for it?” Framed this way, Bryan decided to reapply for a release. It was not only granted, but with no financial liability.
Free to move with Martha to Providence, Bryan began applying to graduate schools all around New England. “I was a terrible applicant,” he laughs. “My recommendations were written by people who had been fired from lecturer positions.” It turned out that only Brown accepted him and offered him funding. “So I went to the website to see who taught there,” he says. Upon his arrival, he wanted to study post-communist politics, and took a political theory class with Nancy Rosenblum, who became his advisor. He loved it, and decided that political theory was exactly what he wanted to do—he loved the connections between political institutions and human nature, and the organization of society. Having taken only one political theory class as an undergraduate, he had a lot of catching up to do. Brown gave him the space and ability to do so. “It was a very good place for me,” he says. Then, in 2000, Nancy was moving to Harvard University. Bryan arranged a meeting to see if he could still work with her. “She said, ‘Do you want to come to Harvard?’” Bryan recalls. “She calls them to ask, and they told her, ‘whatever you want.’” And so, Bryan found himself studying political theory at Harvard.
“There were so many providential steps along the way,” Bryan recalls. He received his Harvey Fellowship in 2002 while at Harvard. “The money was nice, but the network of people was the biggest benefit to me.” There was no Summer Institute that year, so he went the next year. His sister-in-law Catherine was also a Harvey Fellow and was at the same Institute, which caused no little confusion, as he brought his wife Martha, Catherine’s sister! Bryan worked on his PhD at Harvard while commuting from Providence, where Martha finished her residency. His dissertation-writing was progressing slowly, as he was doing lots of child care for their daughter, Anna Catherine. Martha got a job in her hometown of Athens, GA, and so the McGraws moved to Georgia, which had the added benefit of grandparental child-care help. Bryan finished his PhD a year later, and got a 10-month postdoc at Notre Dame’s Erasmus Institute.
So began a period of Bryan’s professional life characterized by commuting by air. He would fly to Indiana on Monday mornings and fly back on Thursday nights. During his postdoc at Notre Dame he was on the job market, and got only one offer, from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles. He took it, and now was commuting to California each week. He liked the job, but it was unclear how he could make it work with Martha’s practice and his family being back east. After a year, he made the difficult decision to give up the job and moved back to Athens, where he did a non-paid Spruill Fellowship for a year at nearby Emory University for a year while he looked for a new job. He finally got an offer from Wheaton College in Illinois, and moved in August 2008.
Bryan and Martha are now settled with their three children in Wheaton, where they recently bought an 1887 Victorian home very close to campus. Martha is in a very good medical practice and Bryan loves his job at Wheaton. His first book, “Faith and Politics: Religion in Liberal Political Thought” is expected to be published early in 2010 by Cambridge University Press.
What advice does Bryan have for other Harvey Fellows? “Be prudent but not afraid,” he says. He learned with his experience at Pepperdine that he probably shouldn’t have taken the job, but was afraid that if he didn’t, nothing else might come his way. To grad students, Bryan says not to be afraid to make your opinion known. “I kept my head down during grad school,” he recalls. “Sometimes it’s important to keep your views to yourself, but it can become a harmful habit that leads to difficulty expressing your views later.” Bryan found in grad school that he didn’t always fit in.”I had a professor who would take me to coffee sometimes and look at me as a curiosity. Here I was, a conservative Evangelical Army man—he would say, ‘What are you doing here?’”
Today Bryan is most excited about a new project he has put together with two other men, including Harvey Fellow Micah Watson’04, called the Evangelical Political Theory Project. The purpose is to encourage deeper thinking about the purpose of politics and its relation to Evangelical Christianity. “This is good not only for American Evangelicals but around the globe, as Evangelicals are getting involved in politics in Latin America and Africa as well,” he says. “It would be nice to think that we can do politics more smartly and faithfully.”
Dr. Bryan McGraw lives in Wheaton, IL with his wife Martha and three children.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Harvey Fellow News
Erica Carlson '98 received tenure at Perdue University and will be Associate Professor of Physics in August 2009.
Any fellows passing through Berlin, Germany this month should stop in to see the photography exhibition “Personally Political - Contemporary Sensation” at Kunsthaus Tacheles. Lia Chavez ’07 has some photographic work in the exhibition.
This fall, Reena Goldthree ‘07 will be enjoying the New England fall colors as the Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellow at Dartmouth College. This past academic year, Reena has been in Trinidad and Tobago on a Fulbright grant and recently gave a lecture at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies-St. Augustine.
Nathan Grills '07 is working as a public health fellow for the department of Health in Melbourne, Australia. He and his wife Claire finish their specialist training this year (Claire in Dermatology, Nathan in Public Health) and then hope to move to India to serve with a network of Christian community health programs.
Kristen Gustavson '04 and her husband Jan welcomed their second son, Martin David Gustavson, on April 1, 2009.
Things have been swinging in NYC. Greg King ‘01’s documentary film, “Our House” was one of 10 projects accepted to the Independent Filmmaker Project’s lab workshop in April. The week-long forum provides advice/instruction from experts in the film industry on completing and marketing feature films. On a more musical note, Bridget Kibby ‘01 played her Carnegie Hall (Weill Hall) debut in April, under the auspices of Concert Artists Guild. She has been plucking pieces all over the world including the New York premier of Elliott Carter's "Mosaic", a piece which heavily spotlights the harp, in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, the American Premier of Sebastian Currier's "Broken Minuets" with Symphony in C in Philadelphia's Kimmel Center and Osvaldo Golijov's "Ayre with Dawn Upshaw" in the UK! Bridget will perform with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Young Artist program the next three seasons while she teaches at Bard Conservatory, Juilliard School Pre-College program, New York University, and Vassar College.
Astri Swendsrud ’07 is presenting "While It Lasted," a solo exhibition of
drawings and sculpture, featured by The Suburban gallery as part of the exhibition "Artists Run Chicago" at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL. The exhibition will be on view June 15-21.
Hannah Swift '08 is getting married this summer (on July 18th) to Onsi Fakhouri, after which she will be Hannah Fakhouri, at their church in Berkeley: First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley.
As of February 2009, David Tien ‘04 is Dr. Tien. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Dr. Tien is currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore.
Sara Vanderhaagen ‘07 had her first article published in the Winter 2008 issue of the journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs. The article was entitled, "Renewing Tradition in Community: George W. Bush, Calvin College, and the Controversy over Identity."
Featured Article | Focusing on Prayer
By David Lewis '97
The prayer committee is committed to keeping prayer for and by Fellows at the forefront of what we do as a fellowship. Prayer is one aspect of our faith that, unlike fellowship, corporate worship, or service, happens largely in private. Our patterns of relating to God in prayer and our experiences with Him in prayer happen largely outside of the view of others. This is necessary, but also a shame, since learning about the interesting and diverse ways other followers of Jesus interact with Him can be a real encouragement. And sometimes we need encouragement, because regular, meaningful prayer can be difficult and can feel more like a discipline than something that flows from a loving, holy relationship.
To that end, Kyele King'oo and I would like to ask the prayer committee and other interested Fellows to share meaningful lessons they have personally learned about prayer - whether through Scripture, experience, or instruction – in order to sanctify other Fellows. These lessons are not intended to be a “how to” on prayer. That would be a lot of pressure for anyone! Rather, these lessons are intended to be like conversations about things all of us have learned about prayer and communion that have drawn us in closer to God. This is something akin to advice we might give each other about our relationships with common acquaintances, or with friends. Kind of like, “oh, when we are together, I always talk first about family;” or “oh yeah, we have our best conversations over a cup of coffee.”
Most of the lessons I have learned about prayer have less to do with coffee (although that plays a larger role in my prayer life than it ought to!), and more to do with keeping the relationship healthy and on-going even when things are difficult. Here are three thoughts:
- Don’t drop the 10. When praying is tough, when I’m busy, or when I don’t want to do it, I resolve to pray about 10 things. I write them down on a piece of paper or in the journal I carry around with me. I think about 10 things that I’m worried about or that I wish would change, and I start there. This is not ideal prayer. There is no worship. There is no thanksgiving. There is no communion, at least at the start. But at least there is recognition on my part that I need help, and that is something! Sometimes, the 10 is as far as I get for several days. Over time, however, the 10 becomes 12, and the percentage of requests that concern me decreases. My heart begins to soften both toward God and the people around me, and my prayer no longer looks like the 10 requests I started with days before. The practice of 10 is my baseline, but it is a place I have started on many occasions.
- Set aside time just for thanksgiving. I don’t mean the holiday. I mean the practice of setting aside time for prayer without requesting anything, and instead giving God glory for who He is and what He has done. The end of the day before bed might be a good time. I go and sit on the stairs and just end the day with thanksgiving. I have found this to be good practice for a few reasons. First, my relationship with God is poorer when I don’t spend time in thanksgiving. I frequently get caught up in my worries, and my prayer time is dominated by asking for things, more than anything else. Second, giving thanks is good in its own right. We should do it. Finally, I can often hear better when I am worshipping and giving thanks, than when I am asking God to do things.
- Let the question hang in the air. When I hear prayer, it rarely sounds like any other form of speaking. And perhaps it shouldn’t, because it’s a special form of communication. That said, direct, personal, and reverential talking is not always what prayer sounds like. Let me give an example. Consider the following prayer: “Lord, I pray that I could finish this manuscript or project.” This is a pretty common prayer, but it is distant. It does not directly, in common language, ask the God of the universe to intervene in this world on your behalf. Compare the previous prayer to: “Lord, will you help me finish this project?” This is a direct personal request and the question, once asked, hangs in the air, awaiting a response. This can be uncomfortable, because you are at risk! You are vulnerable, and you give God a direct opportunity to say, “No.” You are also acknowledging that God may not answer your question right away, and this can shake your faith. But this kind of prayer is real, and I have found that asking direct questions and letting them hang in the air reminds me of what it is that I’m doing, and reminds me that God is real, personal, and listening.
Our relationships with Jesus are personal, but we can benefit from learning how others relate to Him. If you’d be willing to share a few meaningful lessons you have personally learned about prayer, please email the prayer committee (Abraham.Kingoo@business.uconn.edu or david.lewis@vanderbilt.edu).
David Lewis is a 1997 Harvey Fellow and is Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He is on the Prayer Committee of the Harvey Fellows Advisory Board.
Harvey Fellow Profile | Kristina Faul '96
By Matthew Cabeen '07
Growing up in small-town New England, Kristina Faul never would have guessed that one day she’d be a paleoceanographer at a small women’s liberal-arts college in northern California. Through a journey marked by special mentors and local church families that “adopted” her, she has ended up achieving success both in her scientific career and in her ministry, where she is inspiring the next generation of scholars.
The eldest of three children, Kristina grew up in New Hampshire as the daughter of a Congregational minister. Her parents, who met at Gordon College in Massachusetts, gave her a solidly grounded Christian upbringing, and her father baptized her at age 12. “It was definitely a believer’s baptism,” she recalls. However, in her Congregational New England world, going to church each week was at least as much a matter of social tradition as of personal belief.
It wasn’t until high school that Kristina’s faith solidified, when she went away to boarding school at Phillips Andover Academy. She was something of a minority, as a “scholarship kid” among many wealthy students, and one of only a few Christians there. However, she quickly got involved with a group run by FOCUS (Fellowship of Christians in Universities and Schools) and had weekly Bible studies. “It wasn’t a hostile environment,” she notes, and drew encouragement from a family at a local church that “adopted” her during her time at school. She was especially excited to go to Andover because they had an observatory—Kristina had wanted to be an astronomer ever since she was inspired by her sixth-grade teacher. She worked at the observatory and studied math and science. Her guidance counselor at Andover thought she’d be a perfect fit for a small women’s college, but she had other ideas. Still wanting to study astronomy, and encouraged by an “adopted grandfather” (and MIT alumnus) she had met when he judged her eighth-grade science project, she applied to MIT and was accepted.
Arriving at MIT, Kristina entered the astronomy program. She attended church at Park Street Church and participated in Seekers, their college fellowship group. Then she went to Astronomy Camp at Lowell Observatory in Arizona her sophomore year. There, she learned that the real work of astronomy didn’t involve much looking at the sky, and that she didn’t enjoy the daily tasks. “The computer ran the telescope for you, and then it was all computer work,” she says. “I was happy that my desire to be an astronomer propelled me towards math and science, though” as she quickly changed her major from planetary science to Earth science, a move that at MIT didn’t even require her to change departments. MIT had recently opened a climate change institute, and Kristina was inspired to study climate change.
Kristina had always imagined going to graduate school and getting a PhD. But as her time at MIT went on, she began having second thoughts, and considered doing a master’s program in environmental policy. Her senior year, she responded to an advertisement from a faculty member who needed a lab assistant, she spent a year working in the lab of Maureen Raymo (now at Boston University), where she did her senior thesis project. Her work there whetted her appetite for research, and so she decided to take a year to do research at the venerable Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in Massachusetts. There, she worked as a research assistant for William Curry, a paleoceanographer. Not only did she receive great mentoring from him and from other colleagues in the field, she also met two Christians, Ed Peltzer and David Chapman, who were researchers at WHOI and with whom she attended church and Bible studies. All of these mentors and friends were very supportive of her continuing her education. “Without them, I might not have continued,” she says. “It seemed that everywhere I went, God provided a family for me.”
She decided on UC-Santa Cruz for her PhD in paleoceanography. Paleoceanography is concerned with the geological history of the oceans and their sedimentation patterns, which can inform us about the chemistry and biology of the oceans in the distant past. Upon arriving in California, she had quite a culture shock, having spent all her life thus far in New England. “Weather, people, food, attitudes, the way church worked” all were different. In California, she says, “people went to church only if they believed something,” not just for tradition’s sake. She felt very free to be openly Christian in her graduate department, even though she only met one or two others in the department during her time there. “I got more questions from Christians about my being a paleoceanographer,” she laughs, “than questions from colleagues about being a Christian!” She found then and still finds now, as a professor, that her scientist colleagues are very tolerant of Christians.
One important thing that happened to Kristina in Santa Cruz was that she got her PhD. The other was that she met Ricardo Cortes, now her husband of seven years, at a Bible study. She speaks of Ricardo, a police officer, with refreshingly great love: “he’s my best friend, my spiritual partner, the best part of my life.” After graduating from Santa Cruz in 2001, she began her postdoctoral work at Stanford, and she and Ricardo were married in 2002. She was at Stanford for just two years before she got a job offer from Mills College, a small liberal-arts college, in Oakland.
Kristina has been teaching environmental science in the chemistry department at Mills ever since then, and recently received tenure. There, she advises and mentors the leaders of the InterVarsity student group on campus. Mills is distinctly different from the liberal-arts colleges scattered throughout New England and the Midwest. The oldest women’s college west of the Mississippi and one of only a few on the West coast, its student body comprises many more financially needy (95%) and minority (1 in 3) students than an average liberal-arts college. About 40% of the women are first-generation college students, and many of them are commuters and mothers who are going back to school, which drives up the average student age a bit. Kristina recalls one lady she had in class who was 92 years old, aiming to get her college degree before becoming a centenarian (she’s still working on it!). Even though Mills is too small to have a specific program in paleoceanography, she has managed to keep an active research program, thanks in large part to collaborations with colleagues at research institutions.
Kristina’s research program has two primary thrusts. The first is looking at nutrient cycling in the ancient ocean. There was a massive amount of global warming about 55 million years ago thanks to a huge injection of carbon (primarily methane) into the atmosphere, the exact cause of which remains unknown. The Earth recovered from this period of warming very quickly in geological terms (10,000-100,000 years), and Kristina’s research looks at the role of ocean life in this rapid recovery. Specifically, she looks at the role of the nutrient phosphorus, which is a limiting factor in the ability of ocean organisms to grow and thus sequester carbon in their biomass. Her second interest is looking at the role of phosphorus in the modern ocean, and with a colleague at UC-Davis she is developing a technique that uses deep-sea coral as a way to measure historical phosphorus concentrations in seawater. Now on sabbatical, she is traveling to Wales this fall to do some work with colleagues there, continuing on the theme of ancient climate change. With the importance of climate change in the political and scientific world in the past few years, her work has taken on a renewed importance as researchers and world leaders look for ways to minimize the climate impact of human activity.
Kristina sees Christians as having a responsibility to be at the forefront of conservation and good stewardship of the earth, remembering God’s commandments to Adam and Eve in Genesis. She also uses care for the environment, along with social justice issues, as “bridges” between Christians and nonbelievers that can foster cooperation and lead people to Jesus. In mentoring Christian groups on campus, Kristina always points out that Jesus cares about many issues that are in the public mind today.
Does Kristina have advice for Harvey Fellows beginning their careers? “It’s tough to keep up on research when teaching at a small liberal-arts college,” she warns. “At a small school you will have to balance teaching, research, and service, and will have few colleagues in your field.” She urges finishing PhD students to think very carefully about the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a professor at a teaching college or a research university. She also stresses the importance of being rooted in the local church community. “That emphasis on local church involvement was one of the things that drew me to the Harvey Fellows program,” she remembers. And her advice as a climate-change researcher? “If we consume less and then use the excess to help others,” she says, “how can that be bad?”
Dr. Kristina Faul lives in Oakland, CA with her husband, Ricardo Cortes, a police officer in Fremont, CA. They attend First Covenant Church in Oakland.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Harvey Fellow News
Imran Babar ’07 was one of fewer than 80 students selected to attend a prestigious meeting for PhD students in Lindau, Germany this summer. At the meeting, he will meet and interact with several Nobel laureates in the field of chemistry.
Josh Blander '05 is currently teaching in the philosophy department at Loyola Marymount University and is going on the job market this fall. He was awarded "Best Paper by a Young Scholar" by the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy for his paper "Natural Priority, Essential Dependence and Divine Power in William of Ockham". Josh and his wife Jen are expecting their second child in June 2009. And he writes: "Alas, John Duns Scotus is still dead. But his canonization is progressing, so my flickering belief in goodness in this world survives".
Katie Brenner '05 now has a daughter, Ruth "Ruthie" Elizabeth Brenner, born July 2008. She just defended her PhD thesis in Bioengineering at Caltech.
Matt Cabeen ’07 published a research article, “Bacterial cell curvature through mechanical control of cell growth” in March 2009 in The EMBO Journal. He and his wife Rose had their first child, Thomas, in September 2008.
Lia Chavez ‘07’s recent show for Affirmation Arts returned for a two week extension! The innovative Hillman+Chavez work in celebration of The Armory Show 2009 received such a positive response in September-October 2008 that it returned to allow viewers a second chance to see it. It comprised nine large, unique photographic works exploring light and space, while abstractly presenting the figure as form.
Gregg Helvey '06 was recently married to Margaux Stuary (July 2008) and has been hired to shoot part of a National Geographic TV show (to air in about 6 months) about Alaska State Troopers in Alaska. He is finishing up his USC thesis film Kavi, about a boy who attempts to escape from the brick kiln where he's forced to work as a modern-day slave. It was filmed entirely on location in India, and will be premiering at the Nashville Film Festival on April 17 & 19, and then in LA at the Indian Film Festival April 23 & 26. Gregg's other film Overexposed, about the effect of pornography on men, will be shown at the USC First Look Film Festival on April 4. His films are eligible for audience awards; if anyone would like to attend and vote, please email Gregg.
Erik Hom ’01 and his wife Christine had their first child, Nathaniel, in August 2008.
Sam Kho '06 was awarded a part-time curatorial post at Neighborhood Church of Greenwich Village based on a 2008-9 Mustard Seed Foundation grant. He also had the opportunity to lead a workshop at last month's IAM conference and is spearheading that group's "LA chapter".
Kyele ’01 and Claire King’oo ’01 had their first child, Edward, in June 2008.
Andrew Legg ’06 was appointed Law Lecturer of Regents Park College, Oxford, and St. Peter’s College, Oxford, where he is teaching Contract Law and Administrative Law as he finishes his doctorate.
David Lewis ’97, having earned tenure at Princeton University, accepted a full Professorship at Vanderbilt University in Political Science beginning Fall 2008. He recently published The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Appointments (Princeton U Press, 2008).
Josh Swamidass '01 is graduating from his MD/PhD program this June and is taking a position at Washington University in St. Louis.
The work of Astri Swendsrud '07 was featured in the exhibition "Domestic Utensils" at COMA Alternative Space in Los Angeles. She also gave a lecture as part of the visiting artist program at Biola University in La Mirada, CA.
Featured Article | Life Together
By D. Michael Lindsay '03
Alan Greenspan was speaking to a packed audience in the room below. A producer from Bill Moyers’ show on PBS was in the audience, said my editor, deciding if they wanted to run a special about my book. It was the opening night of what was billed as a “national book tour”—a phrase that sounded a bit too glamorous for what I would come to experience over the next few months. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I was pretty excited. The kickoff event took place on September 18, 2007, at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side, and being home to New York’s Jewish establishment (it is the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, after all), it is not exactly where one ought to expect to receive a friendly reception to a book that explores how evangelicals have joined the American elite. I probably realized that deep down, which is why I had extra butterflies as I stepped onto the stage. Little did I know, however, that the crowd would soon turn on me. “You’re just defending Bush!” one lady screamed from the audience as I desperately tried to think of a funny retort to this, my first heckler.
When I wrote Faith in the Halls of Power (Oxford, 2007), I very much hoped that I would have the opportunity to share some of the stories of the people I interviewed. For nearly five years, I had the chance to sit down with people like Dennis Bakke, Karen Hughes, Tony Dungy and Mako Fujimura, probing them about the intersection of faith and the challenges they faced as Christians in public leadership. As a Harvey Fellow, I benefited greatly from the generosity of the Mustard Seed Foundation, not just financially but also in terms of community.
In 2003 I met Jacquelline Fuller, one of the very first Harvey Fellows (1992, Harvard) at the Harvey ten-year reunion in Washington; I also participated in that year’s Summer Institute for new Fellows. Following a casual conversation, Jacquelline and I corresponded via email, and later she introduced me to Kay James, a senior member of the Bush administration and a woman Jacquelline had known for years. In the end, Kay James was one of the first leaders I interviewed for my research, and the introduction came through the Harvey Fellow community.
I met Will Inboden, another Harvey Fellow (1999, Yale), during the summer of 2003, and he quickly became a good friend as I tried to navigate the political terrain surrounding faith in the nation’s capital. Not only did Will introduce me to many people whom I would eventually interview for my book, but he frequently offered feedback on my preliminary conclusions, becoming an incredibly helpful sounding board for my thoughts and impressions. Drew Ladner (1996, Harvard), Randy Heinig (1993, Yale), and Sean Womack (2002, USC) provided similarly helpful feedback early on in the project’s development. And of course, Duane Grobman (1995, Harvard) is the glue of the Harvey Fellow community. At nearly every turn he supplied support, encouragement and counsel for me and my research.
Indeed, by the time I drafted the list of friends I wanted to acknowledge for their help and encouragement, I had become indebted to nearly two dozen Harvey Fellows. Brian and Christy (2002, Northwestern) Gardner let me sleep in their spare bedroom while I collected data at Wheaton. Dano (1998, Johns Hopkins) and Jennifer Jukanovich hosted me for multiple meals at their home in Seattle. But perhaps the most serendipitous hospitality occurred during the fall of 2007, during which time I came to value the Harvey Fellows community the most.
Over ten weeks I traveled to twenty-four cities, logged over 25,000 miles, and often gave the same book talk multiple times in one day. I was a walking hodge-podge of emotions—pride, fear, excitement, anxiety—but most of the time, if I’m being honest, I was lonely. Excepting the three trips where my wife Rebecca was able to join me and the one time my mom was able to tag along, I spent most nights on the road alone, away from family and friends. The busyness of the day’s activities could usually occupy my mind, but nighttimes were particularly lonesome, especially on evenings when I got back to the hotel too late to call home.
I will always be grateful for the friendship and support that the Harvey Fellows community provided during that season of my life. Kyle Van Houtan (2005, Duke) and Brian McGraw (2002, Harvard) went with me to a talk I gave at an Atlanta-area Barnes & Noble. I was incredibly glad for their attendance, for they instantly doubled the audience’s size! Micah Watson (2004, Princeton) hosted me at his new institutional home, Union University, as I visited the campus in October. In Boston Erik Hom (2001, UC San Francisco) organized a late-night dessert visit with area Harvey Fellows after a talk at Harvard, just as Kristen Gustavson (2004, Berkeley) had done a few days earlier on the West Coast. Christy Gardner brought together Chicago-area Fellows for a show of support in mid-November. In fact, in just about every city I visited, I met up with a friend or acquaintance I knew through the Harvey Fellows community.
But support came not just in the form of shared meals or late-night conversations. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together, “It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the other.” In late November of 2007, another Harvey Fellow, Tim Shah (1997, Harvard) lifted my burden in a way few could. My book received a negative review in The New York Times by a well-known scholar who called me a “sociological dictation machine.” The review concluded by saying, “[Lindsay] is clearly on a mission, one, moreover, he obviously loves. Unfortunately for Lindsay, if you do not agree with him beforehand, you are unlikely to agree with him after he has had his say.” No doubt, there was truth in the review, but it really did sting.
At the time, Tim was just beginning a major research project with Peter Berger, the esteemed sociologist. Tim learned of the Times review a few days before it was published and approached Professor Berger about co-authoring a rejoinder. In the end, the rejoinder was circulated fairly widely, largely blunting the effect of the Times review on my academic career. I am forever grateful for this show of support.
It’s too early to tell if my book helped make the Gospel more plausible. I certainly hope so, but the thing I have to come to appreciate the most from my experience with this book is the way it has allowed me to develop and deepen friendships with fellow pilgrims, especially with other Harvey Fellows. For this community and the blessings it has bestowed, I am incredibly grateful.
D. Michael Lindsay is a 2003 Harvey Fellow (Princeton) and is a member of the sociology faculty of Rice University. Faith in the Halls of Power was named a “Best Book of 2007” by Publishers Weekly and received one of the 2008 Christianity Today Book Awards.
Harvey Fellow Profile | Jacquelline Fuller ‘92
By Matthew Cabeen
It’s not always clear how the choices we make at one moment might affect our lives and the lives of those around us at the next moment. The life of Jacquelline Fuller, one of the first class of Harvey Fellows in 1992, has been marked by the bold decisions, amazing blessings, and difficult challenges that come to one who walks by faith rather than sight.
As the daughter of a military intelligence professional who served three tours in Vietnam and taught at West Point, Fuller remembers the dinner table conversations about international diplomacy and global political processes that led her to eventually study political science. Though her parents were not Christians, they encouraged their children to attend Sunday school, and Fuller became interested in God at an early age. By high school, she was active in Young Life programs and was baptized at age sixteen.
Ready for a change, she packed up and headed to UCLA for college. Deciding between two loves of hers—political science and brain science—was made easier for her after experiencing the difficulty of math and science classes, and she was content to minor in psychobiology while concentrating on political science. Fuller had initially imagined a glamorous career in international politics but felt drawn to the study of urban poverty in America instead.
She returned from California to Washington, DC, where she was soon married to her husband John. She got a job though a church connection with Kay James, whose children she had taught in Sunday school before leaving for college. James was one of the most senior black women in the George H. W. Bush administration and worked with the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)—a bureau of the U.S. federal government so vast that its budget outpaced all but three nations of the world. Fuller was hired to help with the National Commission on Children, and was soon writing on issues of minority violence and health disparities among different groups of citizens. The secretary of HHS under George H. W. Bush, Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, took such a liking to Fuller’s writing that he soon had her writing speeches for him. She had studied urban poverty, putting her in an ideal position to write about health care reform, one of the hot-button issues at the time. “I felt in over my head,” she says as she recalls her sudden rise to become a speechwriter, a position she held for two years.
One reason for her success at work was that her knowledge of urban poverty was not merely academic. She and her new husband quickly enlisted as Young Life leaders as they settled in Washington. While they would usually work with high school students, their neighborhood was full of high school-age dropouts. They primarily worked with teenage mothers at the Sursum Corda housing cooperative, within sight of the Capitol. One day, one of these mothers, named Mechelle, announced that she and her six month-old baby girl were moving out of her mother’s apartment to a homeless shelter. Mechelle had discovered that her crack-addicted mother had put bleach in the baby bottle—she didn’t know if it was deliberate or not—and needed to get away. Despite being a newlyweds, Fuller and her husband decided to undertake a bold rescue, taking take Mechelle and her daughter into their one-bedroom apartment to live. The pair ended up staying with the Fullers for eight months.
Her everyday experience with the urban poor yielded insights at meetings and in her speeches that got Jacquelline Fuller noticed. Reading an internal statistical report in 1991, she realized that there were more children in the U.S. killed by urban violence in 100 hours than there were war casualties during the Hundred Days War in 1978. She wrote this into one of Dr. Sullivan’s speeches, and this line made newspaper headlines and became one of Newsweek’s quotes of the year—a highlight of Fuller’s speechwriting career.
Next, she moved to Boston to attend graduate school at the Kennedy School at Harvard, where she got a master’s degree in public policy and became one of the first Harvey Fellows in 1992. During her second year, she was blessed with her first daughter, Hosanna. Having a child was more challenging than she imagined, and she remembers her first Summer Institute in 1994 as feeling overwhelmed. Here she was, surrounded by amazing scholars, while it was all she could do to get her homework done and nurse her baby! While a part of her wanted to run with her career and solve difficult public policy problems, her maternal instinct was also strong. Feeling conflicted about balancing work and family life, she talked to Eileen Bakke that summer. Was she letting the Harvey Fellows down if she decided to take time for her family? Eileen assured Fuller of her confidence in Fuller’s ability to make a right decision regarding her family life, and Jacquelline left the conference with peace in her heart.
Fuller decided to stay home for awhile, to concentrate on being a mother. Just after graduating Harvard, her family moved to Washington state to be closer to John’s family. Their second child, Sophie, was born 18 months later. A few years later, still interested in public policy and poverty, she was taken by the nascent Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s directive to help the poorest of the poor around the world. “I badgered them until they gave me a job,” she says, and she worked on projects regarding global health disparities there for the next 8 years, during which the Gates Foundation grew from12 to over 400 staff. In 2004, the Gates Foundation launched its first and only internally-run project, focused on HIV/AIDS prevention in India. She was asked to help with the launch, so she and her family moved to Delhi for a year—John taught at an international school and the girls went to fourth and fifth grades there.
As the Gates Foundation grew, Fuller realized she preferred working with a smaller organization. She had heard of google.org, a philanthropic organization of the ubiquitous Internet search company. Intrigued by their creative approach that combined grant-making with for-profit solutions, she took a job there and moved to Orinda, California, where she lives now. She loves the whimsical, innovative style of Google—her office even has a slide that one can take from the third to the second floor! The Fullers attend First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, CA, and Hosanna and Sophie are now 15 and 13 years old. Jacquelline, despite having been a political appointee in the Republican George H. W. Bush administration, is excited about the upcoming Obama presidency. She is optimistic about America’s ability to take on health care reform and clean energy policies in the next few years.
And what advice would Fuller give Harvey Fellows who are still discerning their vocations and facing tough decisions? “Follow your heart, where your true passion is, where God is leading you, more than concerns about pay and prestige and power.” The astonishing path that her life has taken so far is more than enough evidence that this strategy is effective.