The Holy Spirit in Academia

 Fifteenth Friday after Pentecost

Today I want do deal with the last part of Joe's comment from a couple of days ago. Here it is:

"In your considerable spiritual experience over the years through to the present, how do you perceive or how have you experienced religion such as the Holy Spirit? Has the Holy Spirit revealed itself to you in your research or academic efforts? It seems to me the Holy Spirit and religion generally is associated in large part with emotionalism. Is that emotionalism inconsistent with the clarity of thought associated with academic research? Or is it helpful, providing insight into such events like Pentecost? What was your experience?"

First, I'm not sure I would characterize my spiritual experience as considerable, maybe a little more than the average person. In Academia, Religious Studies and spiritual experience don't intersect. Religious Studies profs tend to approach their subjects from a totally rational viewpoint. Scientific method is the model for Religious Studies. They tend to be defensive about their place in academia. Other departments tend to look down on Religious Studies as something like an extension of Sunday School. Religious Studies profs tend to do everything they can to prove the opposite. To have a professor of New Testament who is an atheist, like Bart Ehrman at Carolina, is not unusual. Likewise, Carolina's Religious Studies Department would not hire anyone who is an ordained minister. I should note that this tendency is much less in private universities. I should also note that most public universities do not have Religious Studies Departments at all. 

When I taught at University, I followed this understanding. I did tell the students up front that I was a Christian and that I was ordained, but that I would be teaching the New Testament in the same way I would teach any other piece of literature from antiquity, say Homer's Odyssey or Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. And I did. Teaching Disciple at Church, on the other hand, was very freeing. I could talk about our relationship with God all I wanted, and it was totally acceptable. 

Research was similar. Scholarly books and journals in Biblical Studies are not oriented toward any particular understanding of faith. We might study and write about what Paul's letter to the Romans meant to the ancient Romans but not what it could mean to us and our faith today. That kind of stuff was for Divinity School. All of which is to say that there is not a lot of room for the Holy Spirit here. Nonetheless, the Holy Spirit is always at work in a Christian's life, sometimes in ways not noticed. Learning about the New Testament, it's historical background in Judaism and in the Greco-Roman world in the first century, its language and literature, is all ultimately helpful in developing a spiritual life.

 

I don't have Joe's association of the Holy Spirit with emotionalism.  Granted that the Pentecostals have very emotional worship services and place a lot of emphasis on the Holy Spirit, I didn't grow up knowing anything about Pentecostals. I understand the Holy Spirit as the person of the Trinity who operates within us, who inspires us spiritually. Being spiritual is not necessarily being emotional. I associate spirituality much more with silence than with emotional expression. On the other hand, I think we United Methodists could use a little more of emotion, perhaps at the very least allowing us to feel comfortable praying and singing with uplifted hands, as is the common practice in the Bible. 

A relatrd subject that I might speak of at some time is the serious, I could really say academic, study of the Bible and theology in the Church. Disciple was the United Methodists best effort at this. Much more is needed. The Church essentially gave over the scholarly study of the Bible in the eighteenth century. It's time that we started claiming it back.

Faithfully,

Christian