Harvey Fellows Mentoring Program

Have you ever needed a Christian mentor in your field? The Advisory Board has launched a new program that it hopes will deepen the support of the fellowship. We had fourteen new fellows sign up for mentoring at the Summer Institute and dozens of more senior fellows volunteer to mentor them. In this first year, mentors and mentees will meet via phone twice per semester for support and prayer. We believe that these relationships will be a great encouragement to new fellows as they navigate their studies and careers with their attendant challenges. If you are interested in being either a mentor or mentee, please contact Amy Reynolds (amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu) or Olivia Mather (ocmather@gmail.com). We currently have a need for volunteers in the non-medical sciences and music.

Sacrificial Knowledge

David Vishanoff (HF 2001, University of Oklahoma)

Like many of you, I am not yet convinced that the faith by which I seek to live has sufficiently transformed the work I do. In my case, that work consists of scholarship and teaching in the field of Islamic studies. Ah, you say, an easy vocation in which to integrate one’s faith! Since my Christian beliefs are directly comparable to the Islamic teachings I study, all I need to do is compare them, and publically declare which I approve and which I reject, et voilà: my faith has shaped my scholarship. But that’s too easy – like saying that one’s scientific inquiry is motivated by wonder at God’s creation, or that one’s medical choices are guided by Christian ethics. Surely the Gospel that so transforms my perspective on daily life has much more to say about the study of Islam, or particles, or diseases. Besides, how many of our colleagues and students really care to hear what we believe, or what sentiments and values motivate our work? Undoubtedly the Gospel shapes our beliefs and motives and values, but if it really transforms the way I view the world, shouldn’t it enable me to know the world better, in ways that even my non-Christian colleagues will be able to appreciate?

It was teaching, more than scholarship, that first compelled me to rethink in explicitly Christian terms what knowledge in my field of study should consist of. Some of my colleagues – even in a state university – unabashedly seek to inculcate in students their own conviction that there must be some deep spirituality or morality that unites all religions. Others seek to socialize students into a critical discourse of suspicion that unmasks the drive for power that must lie behind all religions. Others are content to present supposedly objective textbook summaries of disembodied abstractions called Islam or Hinduism. I have never been able to bring myself to do any of these things in the classroom, but it has taken me some time to figure out why.

The reason, it turns out, is my view of knowledge, which I hope is shaped by the Gospel. I believe the purpose of knowledge in religious studies (and perhaps in the humanities generally) should be the development of human relationships characterized by integrity and sacrificial love. This requires a practice of sacrificial listening, in which the knower’s categories are deconstructed and renegotiated to enable communication with the other, through an ongoing process of identifying and overcoming misunderstandings.

I have yet to encounter a colleague who shares this view of religious studies. For some of my colleagues, to know about a religion is to isolate its essence – the spiritual or moral values that lie hidden beneath the historical and cultural accretions that shape particular manifestations of that religion. For others, to know means to take sides – for the oppressed, and against the hegemonic knowledge-construction of the oppressor. For still others to know means to assimilate generalizations that enable us to classify persons and phenomena as we encounter them. It takes no special discernment (or does it?) to realize that such knowledge is often a self-serving attempt to buttress the knower’s own sense of being right in the world, by reinforcing the belief structure that feeds his or her self-righteousness. Such knowledge is created for the knower’s own ends, and often it is really more about the knower than about the thing known.

Christians are not immune from such self-serving knowledge. Many of us, for example, are perversely comforted by the knowledge that some abstraction called “Islam” is violent or legalistic. Because that knowledge preserves our moral or spiritual self-confidence, we will cling to it, citing chapter and verse from the Qur’an, even when a Muslim tells us to our face that he believes no such thing. Alternatively, we choose to believe that Muslims really share the same values we do so that we can coopt them for our own moral agenda, regardless of what they actually say and do. Such an embrace of the other is not love; it loves only a projection of myself. If I am to love my neighbor as myself, and not merely as a projection of my own hopes and fears, then I will have to be willing to let my self-confidence be shaken by what I learn in conversation with my neighbor. When my self-centered way of knowing others is evaluated against the standard of Christ’s self-sacrificial love, it is subjected to a radical critique. The Gospel demands that I replace my natural mode of knowing human beings with a self-sacrificial epistemology.

In my classes, this idea has led to a pedagogy of sacrificial listening. That means reading primary texts by Muslim authors, regardless of how relevant or comprehensible they are to us, so that students are forced to listen to individual Muslims for themselves, rather than understanding them through the filter of generalizations formulated by myself or other scholars. Generalizations are a necessary tool of understanding, but I want my students to construct them for themselves as they listen to Muslims, and then, just as they are beginning to sense that they have a grasp on an author and can fit him or her comfortably into their worldview, I want them to be compelled to deconstruct their generalizations as they listen with sacrificial attention to yet more Muslim voices. Because this goes against the ways of knowing that are most natural to us, it always involves confusion and frustration. If it is truly self-sacrificial learning, it will be painful for both student and teacher, because our sinful nature resists intellectual as well as material self-sacrifice.

If the Gospel’s demand for a self-sacrificial epistemology implies sacrificial listening in my classes, what does it imply for my scholarly writing? I do not know. At present I only sense that instead of writing “about” Muslims from some higher academic vantage point, and molding their words to my intellectual purposes, I must somehow begin to engage them in conversation, at eye level, so that they can threaten my conclusions and suggest new ones. That would be one step toward writing Christianly, as Miroslav Volf put it at the 2003 Summer Institute.

What about teaching and scholarship in other fields? Does a Christian epistemology require us (and enable us) to listen differently to research data in the social sciences, allowing our cherished theories (and even our Christian policy objectives) to be threatened by the voices of the people we study? Does the whole idea of studying “people in general” need to be re-imagined in terms of the ethics of human relationships? What about the emphasis on self-expression in art: isn’t that challenged by an epistemology of listening to the other? And how should sacrificial love affect the way one knows about “the human body,” or the way one listens to empirical data about the rest of nature, or the way one constructs abstract structures that seem to have nothing to do with human relationships? I do not know. But I want to know. If you can offer even the beginning of an answer, or a comment on the trajectory of my thinking, please email me at vishanoff@ou.edu. Better yet, respond right here on the Harvey Nexus blog. I need your help, and perhaps others do too.

Summer Institute Update

Dave Lewis, a member of the HF Advisory Board sends in this report from last month's Summer Institute. Reading it filled me with memories of my summer institute, the great speakers and inspiring discussions with other fellows. I hope it does the same for you!

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Thank you for your prayers about the summer institute. God is good and he blessed the event. It was a wonderful week. The institute was held June 15-21 at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC. Thirty four fellows attended from a variety of different fields from philosophy to business to performance art to music and social sciences. The theme for the week was "advancing truth faithfully" and the week included a number of activities around those themes. The fellows visited the Holocaust Museum's exhibit on Nazi propaganda and watched Shattered Glass, a movie about New Republic author Stephen Glass who fabricated portions of a number of articles he wrote for the magazine. Jill Jensen, Brian Bakke, and the MSF team did a wonderful job with logistics and encouragement. Jerry and Jeannie Herbert led the week
ably with a bit of help from Laurena Ketzel-Kerber (HFAB chair) and myself.

There were some wonderful moments during the week but let me describe a few. Jennifer Mills, a performance artist at the Art Institute of Chicago, did a slide show of her different performances from the last 6 months and explained what she did. It was a really lovely explanation of how she wanted to bring joy back into art and use art to highlight some of the exclusivity and monetization of the art world. It was encouraging to see God work out his good pleasure in her unique skills and vision.

Alex Macdonald, a fellow at Julliard, did a piano performance on the last night. He practiced all week early in the morning in the hotel lobby! He played 30 Goldberg variations for us, preceded by a discussion of Bach and an explanation for how they are crafted, how they relate to each other, and what Bach was trying to accomplish. It was a beautiful performance.

The fellows were broken into six disciplinary groups and asked to give a presentation at the end of the week about what they had learned about integrating faith and vocation in their fields. We had scientists performing a skit depicting how they often were in the difficult position of speaking truth to non-believing scientists but also to the science-skeptical church. The social scientists did a skit surrounding a job interview where academic interviewers were asking, "what is this Harvey Fellowship?" The artists performed for us. They contrasted an academic seminar that was a cacophony of jargon and cross-talk with a very moving and authentic public confession of past failures to speak truth.

Of course, we had wonderful talks by former fellows doing exciting work and Margaret Thompson (Eileen's sister) gave a wonderful charge on Sunday to the fellows. There was warmth and inspiration from the Bakke's, lots of hanging out in the hospitality suite at the hotel, and new friendships developed. I think God heard our prayers to handle the logistics, prepare the fellows for the time, and send them out marked back to their homes. Thank you for praying with us about this event and please join us in thanking God for his goodness and the privilege of being able to work with him in this world.

Harvey Fellows Regional Coordinators

One of the great benefits of being a Harvey Fellow is staying connected to the network of Fellows around the globe. In each region, fellows gather a few times a year to meet, converse, attend lectures, art shows or performances, share a meal or simply pray for each other. This fellowship can be a rich time of connection. Each area has a point person facilitating these meetings.

Look below to find you regional coordinator and get in touch to find out about upcoming gatherings.

New York Metro

Alex McDonald - alexsmcdonald@sbcglobal.net

Boston Area
Amos Tai - pkamostai@gmail.com
Samuel David Perli - samuelp@mit.edu

Yale/New Haven

Imran Barbar - imran.babar@yale.edu

Chicago
Bryan McGraw - btmcgraw@gmail.com

Greater SF Bay Area
Jacquelline Fuller - jacqfuller@gmail.com
Kristen Gustavson - kristengustavson@yahoo.com
Kristina Fauls - kfaul@mills.edu

Southern California

Naomi Haynes - nhaynes@ucsd.edu

UK/ EU

Trudy Ko - tk325@cam.ac.uk

David Lines - D.A.Lines@warwick.ac.uk

Asia/South Pacific

Evi Syariffudin - thetall1@gmail.com

If you don't see your region on this list, would you be willing to maintain contact with the fellows in your area and organize 2 gatherings a year? Please let me know!

Corrie Francis Parks

corrie@corriefrancis.com

Conversing with Aotearoa/New Zealand, by HF Corrie Francis

Corrie Francis '04 writes:

At long last, "Conversing with Aotearoa/New Zealand" is officially out
on dvd. And not only do you get a copy of this great documentary on
the kiwi wilderness experience, you get 12 other films from around the
world as well! Be sure to get your copy on the following website!

Don't forget to send us your news and prayers!

Please send us your latest updates, prayer requests, comments and ideas at harveynexus@gmail.com. Thanks!

Harvey Fellow News

Emmanuel Chang '04 and his wife Kiran would like to announce the birth of their first son, a healthy baby boy named Luca Nathanael Chang on December 9, 2009. The family is doing well and enjoy parenting.

Corrie Francis '04 celebrated her marriage to Thomas Parks on May 1, 2010, in a lovely celebration on the shores of Lake Tahoe, CA. They are excited to be headed to New Zealand in June for an extended working honeymoon.

Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe, '06 wants to thank HF brothers and sisters for their prayers and support. On June 1st, 2009, by the grace and unfailing love of God, she defended her dissertation, "The Battle Before The Souls of Black Folk: Black Performance in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition" and began a two-year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Dept. of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at University of California, Berkeley. Her students are now calling her "Dr. Amma" or DrAmma, thus confirming her vocational calling in the arts. On August 8, 2009, she formally became engaged to Kenneth Nana Yaw Osei Kootin in Accra, Ghana in the presence of immediate and extended family. God willing, the wedding will be held in 2010. Kenneth and Amma covet your prayers as they begin this new chapter in their lives.

Ryan McDermott '09 is pleased to report that he has been appointed Assistant Professor of Medieval Literature and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh, a tenure-track position. He plans to defend his dissertation in July, and has an article on ethics, biblical exegesis, and literary invention forthcoming in The Yearbook of Langland Studies.

Laura Schram '08 and her husband Jeff welcomed their first child, Lydia Anne, on May 4. "It is a beautiful experience," they report, "but overwhelming!"