New podcast: Harvard head chaplain is an atheist and Gray Lady covers half of that story

Perhaps you saw that New York Times headline the other day that proclaimed: “The New Chief Chaplain at Harvard? An Atheist.”

That led, during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) to a logical question: Is it really surprising, and newsworthy, that the office for chaplains at today’s Harvard is led by an atheist/humanist rabbi?

For me, this was a totally valid story. However, I do wish that the Times had followed through and fleshed out the two big themes mentioned in this feature.

You can see one of those themes in the sub-headline: “The elevation of Greg Epstein, author of ‘Good Without God,’ reflects a broader trend of young people who increasingly identify as spiritual but religiously nonaffiliated.”

Ah, another story about the young “religiously unaffiliated” folks who have received so much ink in recent years, following in the footsteps of the “spiritual, but not religious” and “Sheilaism” trendsetters of previous decades. But how many of the “nones” are actually atheists or agnostics? Hold that thought.

The other big idea here is that Epstein was a popular choice among the Harvard chaplains, in part because of his abilities to build bridges between a wide variety of religious brands — including evangelical Protestants and Christian liberals. Hold that thought, as well.

I found myself, while reading the Times piece, wondering: What is the dominant religious worldview at postmodern Harvard? I am sure that there are more than a few atheists and agnostics there. But people I know with ties to the campus tell me that a kind of “woke” liberal faith is the norm, which actually fits with the school’s roots in mainline Protestant New England. Also, there are more than a few evangelicals in the mix (look up “The Veritas Forum”).

I was reminded of the debates almost a decade ago at Vanderbilt University, as campus leaders tried to push evangelical Protestant student ministries off campus because of tensions over You Know What.

Veritas Forum invites college students to think through 'life's hardest questions'

It’s back to school time, and how’s this for a bracing lineup of campus lectures in just the past four weeks?

At Yale University, distinguished philosophy professor Shelly Kagan, who is an atheist, hosted a top theologian, Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright, from Scotland’s University of St. Andrews to jointly ponder “Living Well in Light of Death.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat visited Ann Arbor to advise University of Michigan students that “Faith Is Not a Sideshow.”

At arch-rival Ohio State, a panel on “Living and Dying Well” consisted of a physician, a biological ethicist, and a specialist who helps patients with end-of-life planning.

Bob Cutillo, a physician working with Colorado’s homeless, spoke at the Mayo Clinic and its medical college on “The Doctor’s Gaze: Some Ancient Opinions on How We See Our Patients.”

Then it was celebrated attorney Rachael Denhollander, leader of the sexual abuse victims in the Michigan State and USA Gymnastics scandals and among Time magazine’s “100 most influential people.” Her double-header this week at New York University, then Columbia University Law School, addressed how justice can be reconciled with religious faith and forgiveness.

So began the season for the Veritas Forum of Cambridge, Mass., which organizes campus lectures to address “life’s hardest questions” from traditional Christian viewpoints that it believes academe neglects. To date there’ve been Veritas events at 185 colleges and universities, including at all but one of America’s top 25 schools in the new Wall Street Journal rankings.

Lecture topics run the gamut, for example “What Does It Mean to be Human?? “Is There Truth Beyond Science?” “Does Science Point to Atheism?” “Is Tolerance Intolerant?” “Contradictions in the Bible?” and “What Makes Us Racist?”

The concept is particularly intriguing due to heavy involvement of conservative or “evangelical” Protestants, often depicted in the media as anti-intellectual or at best mediocre thinkers.

The journalism hook?