Strings Attached
The graduate theological school I serve, Andover Newton Seminary at Yale, endeavors to educate inspiring leaders for faith communities. Two of the challenges we face, and about which we hardly ever talk, are (1) today’s students aren’t as interested in serving congregations as the world needs them to be, and (2) Yale surrounds students with faculty role models who have PhDs, giving the impression that the tenure-track life is the pinnacle of intellectual pursuits.
I have a PhD, and I work in higher education, but my greatest aspirations are for the church and her ministry. I believe that writing and presenting original theological discourse every Sunday, and guiding whole communities to build their lives on the solid rock that is Christ, is a high and worthy calling. But what do I know? I’m just a lady minister and a woman dean, lacking the capacity to set students straight on anything.
Whoa, Sarah; where are you going with this? I’m going to point out some invisible strings that pull people who believe themselves to be independent thinkers to go along with the crowd and perpetuate stereotypes. They’re strings I can’t unsee, so I’d rather not see them alone.
Last week, our seminary hosted a visit from an alum of our school who chairs a religion department at a large Catholic University. He teaches theology to college students and also serves as a congregation’s pastor part-time. We billed the event as “Reverend Professor?” The hope was that students who love scholarship might come and learn about what it’s like to live out that love from both podium and pulpit. We co-hosted the event with the graduate fellows who mentor students applying to PhD programs. Very, very few students came.
I didn’t take the low turnout personally, although I was mildly irritated that publicity hadn’t made clear that we were providing lunch. That information would have driven up numbers, but instead we ended up with leftover sandwiches to feed an army. The professor-pastor’s presentation was lovely, and those who came asked thoughtful questions. Extrovert that I am, I tried not to say too much, despite the fact that I have lived at the intersection of Professor and Pastor Avenues for my entire adult life.
But then I went on a bit of a rant; and when I say “a bit,” I really mean an America Ferrera Barbie movie-level diatribe. First, let me tell you why: I felt compelled to point out the marionette strings that are painfully visible to me in academic settings. In the 1970s and 80s, theological education scholar Edward Farley called out the hierarchy of disciplines that govern religion departments and graduate schools of theology. He wrote that the more abstract, lofty disciplines that require multiple ancient languages are at the top. The practice of ministerial leadership — earthly, messy, inconveniently intermingled with humans — is at the bottom.
Since I write about ministerial leadership, this pecking order is well known to me; I can see it from my seat under the bleachers. I’m used to it in the context of, say, faculty meetings. Where I get ornery is when students mimic their professors and embrace the hierarchy while simultaneously claiming themselves to be class warriors, ready to rage against the machine. Background established, here was my rant:
Students think that getting a PhD is the greatest and best use of their minds and their time, but they don’t realize how many invisible factors influence their esteem for academic achievement over religious service. They think, “PhD programs must be important because they’re really hard to get into.” Folks, that’s buying into capitalism, which tells us winning at a competition is the highest human pursuit. They think, “I have to take this road because, given all the options, it’s the most difficult one I could choose.” Um, that’s the Protestant Work Ethic talking, which distorts Christ’s mandate to follow him by recasting it as a call to work unquestioningly for whoever is in charge. “If I have a PhD, everyone will look up to me,” they say. Perpetuating the idea that those who get their hands least dirty are the ones to be admired and emulated? That’s not original thinking. That’s the hierarchy of disciplines. That’s Ancient Greece.
Okay, I probably came on a little strong. I had some negative energy to expel, not just flowing from my frustrations with the hierarchy of theological disciplines, but related to the news. I’m observing all around me other strings that pull on people in a way that negatively affects my peers: women in higher educational administration. Evidently, stirring together frustrations with the academy, and constant exposure to scapegoating of women who lead in the academy, created a combustible mix in my mind.
Has any among you noticed that all the university presidents Congress is summoning to testify about what colleges are doing to protect students from antisemitism are women? Most university presidents are men, yet all who’ve testified are women, including women of color who are new to their jobs. Politicians scold them for failing to get their students in-line, as though university presidents were university police. The unmistakable subtext is that women shouldn’t be in charge because they’re not tough enough; they’re too easily swayed by sentimental fondness for students and fear of conflict.
The morning Donald Trump was elected, I was in a hotel room in Pennsylvania from which I called my husband to say, “Everybody hates us.” I’d seen our nation choose an unqualified, arrogant tough guy, thinking he’d make them feel safe, especially safe from loss of privilege. Those strings were as visible to me that morning as the hand in front of my face, which I was using to slap my forehead, trying to awaken myself from a terrible dream. I didn’t participate in women’s marches, but I did notice how quickly they stopped.
And then, I think on Jesus.
John 8:31–38
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there for ever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word. I declare what I have seen in the Father’s presence; as for you, you should do what you have heard from the Father.”
Congressmen want to kill women university presidents, not literally of course… I hope? They wish to erase those who aren’t quashing protests that lay bare their complicity with an unholy war, and women in leadership are an easy target. The same students who protest arming Israel to level Gaza privilege the academy over the church. They do so without realizing how many layers of manipulation are occluding their view of where theological meaning-making is most worthy and most needed. Strings, strings, everywhere, and I’m surely as strung up as anybody in ways that I can’t see.
Such is the nature of sin: anything to which we cling that isn’t God will hold us in bondage. When we cling to God, and God alone, we’re set free and can know the truth. The truth hurts, and ignorance is bliss, but freedom from sin — as painful as it can be to see the strings, all the time — is worth the spiritual work. That work provides us with holy clarity, which ratchets up our sense of urgency to serve while also increasing our capacity for wonder and awe.
