Sunday, August 29, 2021




Harvard’s Chief Chaplain Is an Atheist

A spiritual atheist? What a lot of rot

The Puritan colonists who settled in New England in the 1630s had a nagging concern about the churches they were building: How would they ensure that the clergymen would be literate? Their answer was Harvard University, a school that was established to educate the ministry and adopted the motto “Truth for Christ and the Church.” It was named after a pastor, John Harvard, and it would be more than 70 years before the school had a president who was not a clergyman.

Nearly four centuries later, Harvard’s organization of chaplains has elected as its next president an atheist named Greg Epstein, who takes on the job this week.

Mr. Epstein, 44, author of the book “Good Without God,” is a seemingly unusual choice for the role. He will coordinate the activities of more than 40 university chaplains, who lead the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious communities on campus. Yet many Harvard students — some raised in families of faith, others never quite certain how to label their religious identities — attest to the influence that Mr. Epstein has had on their spiritual lives.

“There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life,” said Mr. Epstein, who was raised in a Jewish household and has been Harvard’s humanist chaplain since 2005, teaching students about the progressive movement that centers people’s relationships with one another instead of with God.

To Mr. Epstein’s fellow campus chaplains, at least, the notion of being led by an atheist is not as counterintuitive as it might sound; his election was unanimous.

“Maybe in a more conservative university climate there might be a question like ‘What the heck are they doing at Harvard, having a humanist be the president of the chaplains?’ ” said Margit Hammerstrom, the Christian Science chaplain at Harvard. “But in this environment it works. Greg is known for wanting to keep lines of communication open between different faiths.”

The dozens of students whom Mr. Epstein mentors have found a source of meaning in the school’s organization of humanists, atheists and agnostics, reflecting a broader trend of young people across the United States who increasingly identify as spiritual but religiously nonaffiliated. That trend might be especially salient at Harvard; a Harvard Crimson survey of the class of 2019 found that those students were two times more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic than 18-yearolds in the general population.

Coordinating the activities of more than 40 faith leaders.

“Greg’s leadership isn’t about theology,” said Charlotte Nickerson, 20, an electrical engineering student. “It’s about cooperation between people of different faiths and bringing together people who wouldn’t normally consider themselves religious.”

The Harvard chaplains play an outsize role on campus, touching hundreds of students’ lives whether through Mass offered by the Catholic Student Center or Shabbat dinners at Harvard Hillel. Its leader reports directly to the office of the university president.

To Mr. Epstein, becoming the organization’s head, especially as it gains more recognition from the university, comes as affirmation of a yearslong effort, started by his predecessor, to teach a campus with traditional religious roots about humanism.

“We don’t look to a god for answers,” Mr. Epstein said. “We are each other’s answers.”

Mr. Epstein’s work includes hosting dinners for undergraduates where conversation goes deep: Does God exist? What is the meaning of life? He previously ran a congregation of Boston-area humanists and atheists who met in Harvard Square for weekly services that centered on secular sermons. In 2018 he closed that down to focus his time on building campus relationships, including at M.I.T., where he is also a chaplain. Mr. Epstein frequently meets individually with students who are struggling with issues both personal and theological, counseling them on managing anxiety about summer jobs, family feuds, the pressures of social media and the turbulence endemic to college life.

“Greg is irreverent and good at diffusing pressure,” Ms. Nickerson said, recalling a time he joked that if her summer internship got too stressful she could always get fired — then she would have a good story to share.

Some of the students drawn to Mr. Epstein’s secular community are religious refugees, people raised in observant households who arrive at college seeking spiritual meaning in a less rigid form.

Adelle Goldenberg, 22, grew up in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, where she recalls being told that she could not attend college. In preschool, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, her answer was simple: a bride. It was the only thing she could envision for a girl like herself. When she turned 19, she applied to Harvard in secret and fled the community.

Once at Harvard, she was wary of assuming any religious label, but she still yearned to find people wrestling with issues deeper than academic achievement. She started attending meetings of the humanist group and discovered in Mr. Epstein a form of mentorship that felt almost like having a secular rabbi, she said.

“When the pandemic hit I was like, ‘Greg, do you have time to talk about the meaning of life,’ ” Ms. Goldenberg recalled. “He showed me that it’s possible to find community outside a traditional religious context, that you can have the value-add religion has provided for centuries, which is that it’s there when things seem chaotic.”

Ms. Goldenberg reflected anew on how unlikely her path had been when her mother asked to see the university yearbook: “I told her, ‘I don’t think you’re going to like it,’ ” Ms. Goldenberg said. “It says I was co-president of the Harvard Humanists, Atheists and Agnostics. And you can see my shoulders.”

Nonreligiosity is on the rise far beyond the confines of Harvard; it is the fastest growing religious preference in the country, accord- ing to the Pew Research Center. More than 20 percent of the country identifies as atheist, agnostic or nonreligious — called the “nones” — including four in 10 millennials.

The reasons that more young Americans are disaffiliating in the world’s most religious developed country are varied. The Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith attributes the trend partly to the growing alliance between the Republican Party and the Christian right, a decline of trust in institutions, growing skepticism of religion in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a shift away from traditional family structures that centered on churchgoing.

Mr. Epstein’s community has tapped into the growing desire for meaning without faith in God. “Being able to find values and rituals but not having to believe in magic, that’s a powerful thing,” said A.J. Kumar, who served as the president of a Harvard humanist graduate student group that Mr. Epstein advised.

Other Harvard chaplains have applauded Mr. Epstein’s efforts to provide a campus home for those who are religiously unattached, skeptical but still searching. Some said his selection to lead the group, following its previous Jewish leader, seemed obvious.

“Greg was the first choice of a committee that was made up of a Lutheran, a Christian Scientist, an evangelical Christian and a Bahá’í,” said the Rev. Kathleen Reed, a Lutheran chaplain who chaired the nominating committee. “We’re presenting to the university a vision of how the world could work when diverse traditions focus on how to be good humans and neighbors.”

And for some members of Harvard’s humanist and atheist community, exploring humanism has brought with it a richer understanding of faith.

Ms. Nickerson grew up in a working-class Catholic household where she struggled to connect with rituals like Mass. But during her freshman year at Harvard, she found herself capable of long, lively conversations with her devout grandmother. Ms. Nickerson realized that her involvement with Harvard humanism had given her the language to understand her grandmother’s theology.

Last spring, the two were tending roses and day lilies in the family garden when they got on the topic of surrender. Ms. Nickerson’s grandmother reflected on the aspects of her life that were in God’s hands; Ms. Nickerson agreed that it was important to recognize all the events beyond human control, though she does not believe there is a deity involved. Ms. Nickerson then shared a Buddhist parable that she had learned from the humanist club, which her grandmother later passed on to her Bible study group.

“We understood the idea of surrender in a similar way even though one of those explanations came with God and the other didn’t,” Ms. Nickerson said. “I find I’m more fluid in my spiritual conversations now.”

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The miseducation movement is gaining momentum. Can parents stop it?

CHRIS TALGO

Over the past few years, far too many American students have been taught revisionist history

For several years, not that long ago, I taught U.S. history at a public high school in South Carolina.

Believe it or not, while covering the expansive subject, we dove deeply into the issues of slavery, Indian removal, the South’s antipathy to the civil rights movement, and several other less-than-stellar aspects of our nation’s history.

At the same time, we also studied the many parts of our nation’s past that should be celebrated.

This long list includes everything from the world-changing Declaration of Independence to America’s participation in World War II, which saved the globe from the evils of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Yet, I am struck by what has occurred in the short timespan since I left the teaching profession.

Over the past few years, far too many American students have been taught revisionist history.

This revisionist history, which I began to encounter at the tail end of my teaching career, portrays America as a wicked country. It also misconstrues our nation’s trials and tribulations wildly.

Many point to Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” as the genesis of the revisionist history movement.

Zinn’s book, which was first published in 1980, presented a radically different take on American history. In short, it presented American history through the eyes of so-called “oppressed” groups.

Yet, Zinn’s book, which has been thoroughly discredited, laid the seeds for a new presentation of American history, which eventually seeped into public classrooms, especially in recent years.

Ultimately, Zinn’s book transformed into an educational movement: The Zinn Education Project.

According to its website, “The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. For more than ten years, the Zinn Education Project has introduced students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. With more than 130,000 people registered, and growing by more than 10,000 new registrants every year, the Zinn Education Project has become a leading resource for teachers and teacher educators.”

Here are a few examples of the “accurate, complex, and engaging” lessons offered by the Zinn Education Project:

Students Design a Reparations Bill: In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative.

The Red Dot of Environmental Racism: A teacher looks back on her childhood to discover the meaning of environmental racism. Linda Christensen offers ways to teach about this story with students.

Plotting Inequalities, Building Resistance: High School Students Use Math to Reflect on Social Inequality: An article describing how math teachers in a San Francisco high school shed light on the ways economics and racism affect education, housing, and job opportunities.

Alas, the Zinn Education Project, launched a decade ago, seems tame compared to the new wave of anti-American pedagogy that has invaded so many classrooms in recent years.

From the New York Times’ 1619 Project to the explosion of critical race theory, which has permeated many public schools, it sure seems that the trend is worsening.

Moreover, as our so-called educators push race-based indoctrination, they are abandoning their core mission of teaching America’s youth how to read, write, perform math, and engage in the scientific method.

In July, for example, Oregon’s governor signed a bill that suspends proficiency requirements in reading, writing, and math for high school graduates. Unfortunately, this is occurring in states and school districts throughout the nation.

Yet, I remain somewhat hopeful.

If there has been one silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that more parents have become more aware of what is taking place in their children’s classrooms.

As we have seen recently at school board meetings from coast to coast, parents are calling for much-needed change.

For me, the big question is: Will parents regain control over the nation’s public schools, which their tax dollars fund in the first place? Or will radical left-wing social activists, teacher unions, and education bureaucrats (what I like to call the education industrial complex), triumph in the end?
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Utah Teacher’s Anti-Parent Rant Exposes Broader, Disturbing Education Agenda

On the first day of school last week in a Utah high school classroom, chemistry teacher Leah Kinyon had little to say about chemistry, but a lot to say about what she regards as the stupidity of parents.

In the course of a wide-ranging political tirade caught on video by students, Kinyon said, “Most of y’all’s parents are dumber than you. I’m going to say that out loud.”

She continued: “My parents are freaking dumb. OK, and the minute I figured that out, the world opened up. You don’t have to do everything your parents say. And you don’t have to believe everything your parents believe. Because most likely, you’re smarter than them.”

Parents who saw the video were—as one might imagine—not impressed. And despite Kinyon’s assertion that school administrators “don’t give a crap” what she says in class, her employment was terminated.

As troubling as Kinyon’s comments are, they are also an indicator of a much broader anti-parent, anti-family movement escalating in education and beyond.

Many teachers increasingly seem themselves not as agents accountable to parents, but as activists charged with crafting their pupils into socially, sexually, and politically correct minions, the wishes of their parents notwithstanding.

The anti-parent sentiment so freely expressed by Kinyon reflects the position of innumerable global organizations and programs bent on freeing children from the oppressive grasp of their parents.

The following are five examples:

1. The World Health Organization published a framework for sexuality educators in 2017 that specifically says educators should be willing “to challenge different religious backgrounds” and be willing “to challenge parents and colleagues.”

2. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which considers itself the education czar for the entire world, is likewise not enthusiastic about supporting parents’ rights or values.

In its International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education, it instructs teachers to help students “differentiate between the values they hold, and that their parents hold” and to stress that students should “acknowledge that some of their values may be different from [those of] their parents/guardians.”

It goes on to educate children on a wide range of sexual topics and techniques that most parents would find troubling, if not alarming.

3. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was drafted at the United Nations in the name of protecting the children of the world, provides footing for arguments that decrease the influence of parents.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child asserts children’s rights to:

“Seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds.”
Exercise “freedom of association.”

Refuse “arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy … or correspondence,”

Access “information and material from a diversity of national and international sources.”

While some of these elements might be beneficial to children at times, many of them can limit parental influence and endanger children.

As an obvious example, if children are to “receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds through any media of the child’s choice,” that could include a wide variety of materials, including pornographic and sexual resources and youth recruiters of all sorts, including terrorist groups and sex-trafficking rings.

Further, if children are granted unfettered “freedom of association” along with prohibitions on “interferences with his or her privacy,” then parents’ authority to limit their children’s access to certain materials or to limit their association with people they deem detrimental or dangerous to their children would be diminished or eliminated in the name of children’s rights.

4. UNICEF is the U.N. agency tasked with protecting the well-being of the world’s children. In 2016, UNICEF published a document, “Legal Minimum Ages and the Realization of Adolescents’ Rights,” which says:

States should review and consider allowing children to consent to certain medical treatments and interventions without the permission of a parent, caregiver, or guardian, such as HIV testing and sexual and reproductive health services, including education and guidance on sexual health, contraception, and safe abortion.

Statements throughout the UNICEF booklet position parents as obstacles to their children’s health, make minimum ages essentially meaningless, and negate parental involvement in their children’s medical treatment.

5. Transgender school policies are taking the art of silencing and sidelining parents to new lows.

Many school districts now have official policies that not only allow, but require, teachers and administrators to withhold information from parents concerning their children’s gender identity at school.

A child could have a completely different name and persona at school than at home, enabled and concealed by teachers.

That’s in keeping with international trends. The WHO endorses U.N. guidelines stating that children should be instructed on gender incongruence starting at age 5, without any mention of parental consent.

Increasing demands for children’s gender statements to be honored above all else are paving the way for the dramatic erosion of parental rights. This troubling trend fails to acknowledge that while parents are not perfect, they are almost always the best and most reliable advocates for their children’s long-term well-being and the most tenacious in pursuing it.

While there are still noble teachers in schools today who value parents’ input and seek to strengthen family bonds, rather than destroy them, it will become increasingly difficult for those teachers to stand against the international educational onslaught that seems bound and determined to train teachers to pit students against their parents.

Thankfully, parents in Utah have won a small victory against one activist teacher for now. Let’s hope other victories will follow.

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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