A Deeper Dive Into Harvard's Faith

Everyone on the Editorial Board knows two facts about me. First, my dad is a pastor and my mom is a therapist. Second, my name is synonymous with columns.

I comped the Editorial Board my freshman fall. Sophomore fall, I wrote my first column, “From Houston to Harvard.” From sophomore spring to junior fall, I edited columns for a year. Then, in junior spring, I wrote “A Leap into Faith.”

Now, senior fall, I write my final column, “A Deeper Dive Into Harvard’s Faith.”

The geographic epicenter of my classes has shifted through my time at Harvard.

Freshman year, the bright blue icon of Zoom was my Sever Hall. As classes transitioned to in-person, I found myself in the Science Center and William James Hall, with a class or two in Emerson Hall.

At the end of my four year tenure at this institution, however, my academic locale has shifted to the buildings perched alongside Divinity Avenue.

There are a few debates regarding what Harvard University was like in the 1940s. A 1965 Crimson article declares that, during the ’40s, “Harvard was almost the Berkeley of its time,” while a 1988 Crimson article says Harvard’s 1940s culture was “a bastion of conservatism.”

But one thing is for certain: Radcliffe College was alive and well, educating a legion of bright women in the same classroom as men for the first time. As World War II enveloped the globe, faculty shortages permitted “’Cliffies” to temporarily enroll in classes alongside men.

An unexpected figure joined the men in graduate Government classes: Phyllis S. Schlafly, matriarch of the religious right.

I joke that I can map out my entire childhood by way of religious experiences. I remember the first time I saw snow in Atlanta, Ga. — March 1, 2009 — because that was the day I took my first communion. An art gallery housed my childhood church, and the pastor’s daughters would entertain us all with stories when the adults were catching up after a service.

We interpret the physical and intellectual landscape of Harvard through our own experiences; for me, it’s always been through the lens of Protestantism. Memorial Church, an interdenominational Protestant church, is a predictable feature of the college landscape. The words on the side of Emerson Hall remind me of the song “The Majesty And Glory Of Your Name” I used to sing in choir.

These landmarks are immovable indicators of Harvard’s Protestant past, and by extension, our culture’s Protestant past. But perhaps my childhood predisposed me to picking up on these contours.