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Carlyle Stewart, MDiv ’20

“I know that the people in that church are praying for me all the time—even when I was sick and lost and messing up, doing dumb stuff, there was somebody praying for me. I think, to be able to dedicate my life to those people, there is no greater honor than that.”

Carlyle Stewart, MDiv ’20, is working toward becoming a minister in the United Church of Christ.

P.K.

I was born in Detroit and I spent my formative years there. My dad’s a pastor, so I’m a P.K. (preacher’s kid). A big part of my life was spent in the church, the United Methodist Church, which has about 4,000-5,000 people. It was interesting growing up in that environment because I went to a very secular school and spent a lot of time in secular spaces, but I also had my church community. I wasn’t a rebellious kid, but I was very turned off by church and religion because it was so present. Nothing was ever forced on me, but being a P.K. in that setting feels very limiting because there are a lot of labels and expectations put on you. I would say that I was really fortunate to be raised in an environment where I had the opportunity to ask questions and to really figure out what it is that I believe. My father was a big part of my development because he allowed me the space to come into my own.

I went to a private high school outside of the city, which was an adjustment, but I think it was good for me. It disciplined me and it taught me how to take school seriously. My senior year, I was awarded full Army ROTC scholarship to go to University of Michigan. So I did ROTC for a few years and I was in the process of training with the military with hopes of becoming a combat and infantry officer, which was an interesting experience. I enjoyed the discipline and the life of the military, but I was always pushing up against the structure and bureaucracy of it, recognizing that the military is not a place where’s you’ll thrive if you’re a free thinker.

In the beginning of the third year of the ROTC program you have to sign a contract and that is the concrete commitment to that path for a set number of years. If you drop out of college after that, or flunk out, then you are enlisted. When it came down to it, the day I was supposed to sign the contract, I just didn’t show up. I had a crisis of conscience—I thought there was something telling me not to do it. I think I had a small awakening where I thought that if I were an infantry officer or combat officer in the U.S. military then I would probably be asked to do things that I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing. I never wanted to put myself in a position to jeopardize my own freedom, and I recognized that I wouldn’t be able to make decisions that needed to be made. I also needed to be real with myself and say, “I don’t think I’m the type of person who would thrive in this environment, and I don’t know if it would be good for the military or for myself, so maybe I should save them the trouble.” So I ended up not signing the contract, and I had to pay a lot of the money back from the scholarship.

After that I was kind of floating around and didn’t really know what I wanted to do, because I had been so committed to the ROTC plan for three years. I ended up majoring in psychology in undergrad. I also took a lot of philosophy courses. I took a class on the cognitive science of religious thought. This was during a period of time when I wasn’t going to church. I had completely abandoned the church, and when I went home I refused to go. My family obviously felt some type of way about that, but they let me do what I needed to do.

That class kinda blew my mind and uprooted my world because I thought, “Wow, this whole religion thing is fascinating.” It made me do a lot of my own research about faith, religion, existentialism, and secular humanist thought. Approaching my junior and senior year I was still really skeptical of faith and religious institutions in general. I went through a pretty tough time spiritually. I was lost, and I didn’t really have any grounding. I recognized by taking that class that I thought the whole faith conversation was interesting, but I wasn’t really courageous enough to really delve deeper into it, and all the time I’m forgetting about my roots and where I came from. I was just actively pushing up against it the entire time.

After I graduated, I worked for a year. I ended up taking an extended trip to Alaska, which was life changing and transformative. I got to this point where I had this insight that started to come to me about God and faith and that’s when I started looking at divinity school. I thought I wanted to go to div school, but not so that I would be a minister or a pastor. I just wanted to study religion academically. I was going back, mentally, to growing up in the church saying “I want nothing to do with it, I don’t want to be a pastor.” Every man in my family for the last five generations has been a pastor, so I thought that was the last thing I wanted to do.

Who We Are / Where We Come From

I came to HDS thinking I wanted to be a professor. When I got here, my first week into a philosophy course I was taking, I realized: “I don’t want to do this.” I couldn’t see myself as a professor. Not because I don’t value the type of work that they do—I love the intellectual work of theorizing, studying, researching, connecting things—but I needed to root it in the real world, to bring it back to my community, to the people who are dealing with these theological questions on a daily basis.

Then I worked on a research project in my second semester on African Spiritual Traditions in Yoruba spirituality. The project was about ancestors, and the importance of recognizing who we are and where we come from. In these traditional religious traditions, ancestors play a huge role. Around that time, I was thinking a lot about my pops, and my grandfather and great-great grandfather and the people in my family. And I started thinking, “Am I struggling with the call to ministry, is this why I’ve been lost for so long? Should I be a minister?” It took me a long time to think that through and mentally and spiritually I was in a really low place. Saint Ignatius called it a place of “spiritual desolation.” I had no idea what I was doing, and I was searching for something but I didn’t know what it was. I came to those short moments where I thought: “you know what, I’m just gonna go with this whole ministry thing.”

I ended up switching my degree to the master of divinity and heading down the pastoral ministry track, and it wasn’t until then that this overwhelming sense of peace came over me. I feel like now, I found what I’m supposed to do, even though before I didn’t want to do it. It’s funny how sometimes the things that we don’t want to do end up being the things that we are the best at. I think I had to stray away from it and to figure out who I am and what I believe in order to come back to it without it being forced upon me. I am thankful.

It wasn’t until I started preaching and working with the congregation here and back in Detroit that I recognized that this call is real. I spent a lot of time praying and meditating about it to make sure it was authentic because I thought, “who am I to be ‘called to ministry?’” It’s a sacred task that I don’t think should be entered into lightly. I was really confused and wondering why I felt compelled to do this when I don’t have the skills or life experience yet. There’s a lot of things that I don’t know. But I think it comes back to having faith and recognizing that despite the doubts and uncertainty you just gotta keep walking even if you don’t know where you’re going. When I started preaching and doing ministry work, it felt like where I finally wanted to be. I’d never felt this before. It really gave me a sense of purpose and direction, and my faith has strengthened probably a hundred-fold since I’ve been here.

Making Meaning

What they call it is theological reflection—thinking about what things mean to you within the context of our own faith and beliefs and the traditions that we come from—how do we make meaning? Sometimes I look up and I’m like, “I’m at Harvard University, how did I get here? What did I do to deserve to be here when so many people I know didn’t even get to go to college or barely even graduated high school?” Part of me feels incredibly blessed to be in a place like this, but I also feel a huge weight on my shoulders not to take this education or opportunity to gratify or edify myself for granted, but to take something and be productive and bring the knowledge and skills back to my community to help the people who need it.

I preached on my dad’s birthday this year, which was a surprise we planned for him. It was probably the best day of my life because of the sense of inspiration, revelation, insight, fulfillment, the peace and purpose that I felt. All these words embodied what this experience was for me. After doing that, I almost had this vision where I was like, “Okay, this is what I’m supposed to do with my life.” And it was so clear. It was an intuitive sense that I had. When I started to feel that, I thought that it made sense that I had felt before like I had to go away and be forced to come back maybe by God, it seemed like he was telling me: “Look, you want to do what you want to do, but you’re about to do what I need you to do.” When I really started to come deeper into my faith, I started to rely more on prayer, and it wasn’t until I started doing that, that I was able to clearly listen.

Returning

Going back to that church at home and experiencing the love that people showed me and the appreciation that people gave me was immense. When I looked into the eyes of some of the people after preaching, I felt that these were my people. They have supported my dad and the church, they’ve been there since I was born. After preaching that day, and seeing what it did for people and what it did for me, and recognizing that it was only by the grace of God that I was able to stand up there and say what I said and really connect with people, I thought, “This has nothing to do with me, it’s all God.” Now I know that it’s only by the grace of God that I’m here at Harvard, that I was able to give that sermon, that I’m even alive, that I’m healthy, that I’m where I’m at in my life. I feel like it’s my duty and responsibility to dedicate my life to service of God and God’s people. I feel like I wouldn’t be alive if there wasn’t somebody praying for me. And I know that the people in that church are praying for me all the time, even when I was sick and lost and messing up, doing dumb stuff, there was somebody praying for me. I think, to be able to dedicate my life to those people, there is no greater honor than that. There’s nothing better than that.

I think that before, I was so preoccupied with doing things that haven’t been done before. But now I recognize that, while you may walk a traditional path, that doesn’t mean that you have to do it in exactly the same way that somebody else has. I truly believe that we all have some sort of purpose or something we’re supposed to be doing. I could live my life for myself, I could seek to accumulate wealth, fame, recognition, but at the end of the day, you can’t take any of that with you. In my personal belief, the only thing you can take with you is your relationships and the way you treated people. I think that’s the stuff that lives in eternity: how we love people while we are here. When we forget that there is a purpose that we should be striving to find, that’s when we fall into the depths of despair and of meaninglessness. I think that we find that purpose by coming into faith in God. And I think it is beyond religion, it has to do with faith in something greater than ourselves. It’s not until we come into that faith that we start to see that purpose and life makes more sense. Living becomes easier, it becomes clearer, and I think happiness resides in that realm, too. For the first time in my life, after really discovering this, I feel truly happy and joyful and like I have peace.

Rising Up

At the end of the day, even though people may have their frustrations with the School, I think the beautiful thing about HDS is that you get here, and they just throw you into it, and they’re like, “Do your thing.” Nobody’s going to force you to believe anything or force any doctrine or faith tradition down your throat. You have to find out who you are and why you’re here. I’m one of the people who had to search. Once I found it, it became easier to be here, it became less of a confusing and alienating place to be. Everything got better.

I also recognize that if I were in a place that were more firmly rooted in a particular faith tradition, I may not have realized what I did. By being in a more secular institution that’s predicated on the academic study of religion and not necessarily forming ministers, I was forced to recognize that I don’t want to be like that. I was forced to figure out who I was and what I wanted. I think if I were in a place that handed me everything then I wouldn’t have had that experience. I feel blessed and thankful to have had all these things happen.

Right now, I’m working on the process of ordination at the United Church of Christ. In the UCC, in order to be ordained you have to have a call, like a specific offer from a congregation. So I don’t know if I should go home and be with my home congregation or look for somewhere new. I think it’s going to require a lot of reflection. I know it’s all part of my development, though, so I’m just gonna roll with it.

Interview and photos by Anais Garvanian