HDS Dean David N. Hempton launched the Campaign for Harvard Divinity School on April 4, 2014, with an address that laid out a bold vision that builds on the School's tradition of religious education, service, and scholarly excellence. What follows is the text of the dean's remarks.
In 1640, the first European settlers in the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote an account of the founding of what was then Harvard College four years before. Their words may be familiar to some of you:
“AFTER GOD HAD carried us safe to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and led the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.”
My aim here is not to give the impression that Harvard was founded as a theological seminary for those called out of society and into religious life, but rather that it was the other way around. Harvard was grounded in the belief that human activity in all spheres ought to proceed from an experience of the transcendent, with the greater good as its ultimate goal. As the late Rev. Peter Gomes wrote, “the nurturing of all society… not just the church, was to be the central work” of Harvard.
Unfortunately, the close relationship between religion and the values of Harvard is often presumed to have died with the puritans almost 400 years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth! The recently published history of religion at Harvard by George Williams runs to over 1200 pages. There you will find some of the less well known stories sitting together with some of the great landmarks of Harvard’s and the nation’s history. The landmarks include: the formation of Harvard, the third English university and the oldest corporation in North America; the authorization of the College seal, Veritas, in 1643; the establishment of the oldest endowed professorship in North America, The Hollis Chair of Divinity in 1721; the preaching visits of the great evangelical revivalist George Whitefield in the 1740s (the Harvard faculty, incidentally, disowned him!); the resignation of President Langdon in 1780 after a student strike complaining of his long prayers and tedious sermons (President Faust beware); the founding of the Harvard Divinity School in 1816 (Harvard President Kirkland’s stated justification was that “an enlightened minister is the only barrier against fanaticism”); Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous Divinity School Address in 1838; and going into the 20th century, the formation of Memorial Church, the Center for the Study of World Religions, the Religious Pluralism Project, and the Women’s Study in Religion Program.
George Williams’ monumental history of religion at Harvard suggests three things:
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Harvard’s history has always been linked with religion, mostly for good and sometimes for ill. We need to learn the difference.
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The Divinity School has played a significant part, sometimes pioneering, sometimes, alas, a little slow, in some of the great progressive movements of the last two centuries: the rise of transcendentalism and movements of religious experience; the study of world religions and the embrace of religious pluralism; the improvement of relations between Jews and Christians in the aftermath of the holocaust; and the serious study of the importance of women, African Americans, and minorities of all kinds to the religious history of the United States and the wider world.
- From humble beginnings in the new colony, Harvard has become a world leader in the generation of new knowledge and the Divinity School has been extraordinarily influential in shaping discussions about religion, culture and civilization.
That is our heritage. What about our future?
In the nearly 400 years since the founding of Harvard, the world has seen astonishing advances in science, medicine, technology, and countless other fields of knowledge. Harvard has contributed greatly to this progress. We now live in an age of unprecedented material prosperity – but also one often focused squarely on the material, on the mundane, and on instant gratification. The transcendent – so central to Harvard’s founders – is often ignored or devalued. We moderns are too often satisfied with superficial notions of morality, and make do with shallow judgments about the importance of nature, community, beauty, justice, and virtually every other aspect of human experience.
Today’s world desperately needs leaders who think deeply about the most important questions of life, including time, death, the natural world, values, spirit, and meaning; and who strive to illuminate, engage, and serve humanity; people who, as the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote recently, “have achieved a quiet, dependable mind by being rooted in something spiritual and permanent.” In short, the kind of people who come to Harvard Divinity School, and even more, the kind of people who graduate from it.
HDS plays a critical role as custodians of the University’s earliest and most precious legacy. To this heritage, however, we add bold aspirations for the future. We want to make a difference. First among these is to advance knowledge of global religion in an age of division and extremism, when the inability to understand and take seriously the beliefs of others, as I know only too well, often fosters misunderstanding and conflict.
Around the world, religion matters (arguably some conflicts emerge because it matters too much, or at least in the wrong way). A 2009 Gallup poll of 114 countries indicated that “the global median proportion of adults who say religion is an important part of their daily lives is 84%.” Last February, a Gallup Poll revealed that issues with a strong religious component dominated people’s perceptions about threats to U.S. vital interests. And only last month, the Pew Research Center reported that strong majorities of citizens in 22 of 40 countries – including the United States – say that belief in God is necessary to morality. We need to understand better these convictions about religion and how they work.
Yet, as former secretary of state Madeline Albright and others have noted, the religious issues at stake in international relations are usually the least understood, take the longest to sort out, and have the most enduring consequences. In the United States, we engage with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and now Russia and the Ukraine armed with the best information that seasoned diplomats and ambassadors can provide, but still with very limited understanding of cultural and religious sensitivities. HDS cannot by itself reverse these unfortunate handicaps, but it can help remedy them – as it has in the past and aspires to do even more in the future.
At the same time, HDS can play a critical role in clarifying the religious issues at stake in our own pluralistic democracy. As a historian of American Protestant Evangelical movements, I’m often disappointed to hear members of this great tradition respond to the threat of secularization with moral majoritarian or legislative remedies. We can easily forget that the most ardent early supporters of the separation of church and state — and of religious freedom (even for Muslims as new work tells us) — were evangelicals? In fact, Thomas Jefferson got much of his support on this issue from populist evangelicals, who were very keen not to have established churches because it gave them more freedom to preach and worship as they saw fit. How many of us remember these roots of religious freedom in the US?
We at HDS want to help drive the public conversation on religion. The first step to achieving this goal is to knit HDS more seamlessly into the vast intellectual city that Harvard University has become. Anyone who cares about making improvements in economics, politics, law, medicine, education, environmental sustainability, and many other fields needs to understand religious beliefs and practices. Moreover, the study of the humanities is inadequate without an appreciation of lived religion and its enormous impact on culture and civilization. The Divinity School’s teaching and research has the potential to extend the impact of virtually every type of work that goes on at Harvard – from undergraduate education to stem cell research. We can be a resource that enables students, faculty, colleagues, and finally the public at large to think better about religion in all its manifestations.
Finally, we aspire to educate religiously literate leaders in all fields and help equip them to be a force for good. As professor Mark Jordan once said, there is an “ultimate commitment to improving human lives—that’s written into [HDS’] DNA.” Whether working to end torture, bring enslaved women to freedom, provide disaster relief, lead faith communities, or teach new generations of students, our graduates give of themselves and inspire others to follow suit. Through them, this small school has a big impact on the lives of people around the world. I have just spent one of the best mornings of my life conversing with such people.
The Campaign for HDS aims to bring the School’s heritage and its aspirations into the future. We seek to advance the study of religion not only through work in one faith or two, as was the case for much of the School’s history, but through world-class research and teaching in all of the world’s major, and not so major, traditions. We seek to transform public understanding of religion by inspiring dialogue, learning, and reflection among people of all faiths. And we seek to build a better world by enabling extraordinary women and men obtain the knowledge and skills to serve humanity, and then to go where they are most needed.
This is an ambitious vision for a small school. Its realization will require unprecedented resources, support, and participation from our community. But a School that takes on the biggest questions of the human experience could hardly have a vision less grand. I leave you then with the words of the Rev. Professor Francis Peabody, a former Dean, who, on the occasion of HDS’s 100th anniversary (we will soon celebrate our 200th), expressed both the optimism and humility with which I hope we may conduct this campaign:
"In this hope for the world’s future, then, we take our place, trusting that from this School… may come, as in other times have come, those who shall greet the new age with a fraternal hope, and that we, in our own place may commit ourselves with a new patience to our little charge in the creation of a better and more peaceful world." It could not be said any better.