Graduate Study in a Multi-Faith

¶ … graduate study in a multi-Faith environment? When serving a religious community where everyone subscribes to the same faith, with the same level of intensity, it is easy to adopt a kind of intellectual shorthand: there is a common assumption that everyone is on the same 'page' when it comes to their interpretation of the Bible and the mission of believers. While there can be great comfort in such commonality, it can also lead to a lack of debate, dialogue, and intellectual rigor.

Faith and study of scripture is not just about comfort -- it is also about healthy discomfort with one's dearly-held assumptions. I seek such a healthy sense of discomfort at Harvard Divinity School.

While a student at HDS, I might study the book of Job side-by-side an evangelical minister who views the book as a typological precursor of the suffering of Jesus, a Jewish individual who views the book in the context of the Hebrew scriptures alone, and an academic who is interested in how Job stitches together two competing perspectives and understands the book as a historical artifact rather than a religious text.

Our collective debate over the Biblical book might be as heated as the debate over suffering within the text itself, between Job and his friends! Every new interpretation of every religious text brings new level of insight into the study of religion, even if one disagrees with the interpretation in whole or in part.

The diversity of perspectives offered by Harvard Divinity School will ensure that my eyes will not be opened merely by the types of subjects I study, but the many ways offered to study religion by my fellow students and my professors. To study in such an environment requires profound generosity and respect in one's spirit, and I hope to foster these qualities within my soul. Of course, there will always be individuals with whom one disagrees.

But I look forward to the fact that every assignment will be a conversation with many different voices. I as a student must carry the voices of disagreement as well as concordance within me, after every seminar and lecture I attend. The need for respect, however, does not mean a need for trepidation. The fear of offending someone's dearest beliefs should not be so great that there is a timid educational environment, with little real discussion.

The ability to foster true interfaith dialogue, rather than interfaith silence, is one of the challenges of all religious practitioners today. That is why I know I will benefit from the atmosphere at Harvard. Harvard's level of intellectualism and its demand that its divinity students question how feminism, sexual difference, and race must be addressed in the context of religious life today will teach me how to engage in true dialogue with others.

Even if I do not always agree with everyone in the classroom, at least I will learn how such disagreement can inform my own views. To enter into a multi-faith classroom demands a willingness to change, even if one emerges with one's own belief system relatively intact. A comforting, uni-faith environment is not something I seek, nor is it an environment that is likely to be characteristic of my spiritual life in.