March 2005

MIT's Burgeoning Faithful

Continued from page 3

By David Cameron

Science and Religion: New Ardor Between Old Foes?
Evangelical Christians have been making national headlines lately for their tug-of-war with science. The pressure-cooker controversy that has emerged in the last few years over embryonic stem cell research joins the long-standing conflict over whether it is appropriate or desirable for public schools to teach religious-inspired interpretations of life's origins, such as "intelligent design" theory, alongside Darwinian evolution. So then, how do religion and science coexist among MIT's more conservatively minded faithful?

Baskaran, who is one of the key student leaders in Campus Crusade, provides insight into the mindset of MIT's crusaders. The Indian-born chemical engineering student is the daughter of a geophysicist father and a mother who studied microbiology. While half of her extended family is Hindu, Baskaran was raised Plymouth Brethren, one of the most conservative Protestant denominations. When she was a child, her family immigrated to the United States.

While always a star student in the sciences, Baskaran read the nonfiction theological writings of C. S. Lewis, along with some St. Augustine, when she was 13. Upon entering high school, she says, "I knew that Christianity needed to be completely integrated into my life."

Today, Baskaran believes that premarital sex and homosexual activity are sins, and that women should not be allowed to be leaders in church. She also believes that those who have rejected Christ will be eternally lost—that they can never go to heaven.

Turning to matters more secular, however, Baskaran steps out of line with the stereotype of evangelicals as hard-line proponents of  right-wing policies. When she talks about incorporating her Christian worldview into politics, she talks about things such as raising the minimum wage and lobbying the government to regulate businesses that run sweatshops. And while she doesn't agree with homosexual marriage, she believes same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children, arguing that it is immoral to deny a child a family.

And above all else, Baskaran sees science as Christianity's ally, two ways of examining and understanding the world that coexist in a seamless unity. "When people here express an interest in religion, faith versus science is the last thing to come up—if it comes up at all," she says.

This willingness to accept both science and religion caught MIT Campus Crusade director Mike Bost off guard. Before coming to MIT a year ago, he spent a lot of time boning up on the history of religion/science conflicts, expecting that if there were any place on earth that would put up a good fight, it would be MIT. He was wrong. When students unaffiliated with religious groups come to him with questions, they typically want to know things like, What is my purpose in life? or, How can I find community? They are rarely, if ever, conflicted over how their desire to believe in God butts heads with the claims of, say, physics. "Frankly," he says, "I really wish the subject came up more than it does."

Few people have spent more time thinking about this than Harvard theologian Harvey Cox. In his most recent book, When Jesus Came to Harvard, Cox looks at how today's undergraduates are reconciling religious worldviews with the culture at large. "The enclosed scientific universe of a few decades ago, where everything can be measured, simply no longer exists," he says. "Today, the universe has a lot more openings here and there." He sees this exemplified in his undergraduate course at Harvard on the life of Jesus, where he no longer has to brace himself when he begins to discuss the healing narratives and the resurrection. "This is a new era," he says.

Cox believes that today's generation of college students is largely backpedaling against the secularism of its baby-boomer parents, who, in turn, likely backpedaled against their own religious upbringing. "These kids aren't ready to take on the full package of Grandma's religion," Cox says, "but they have the sneaking suspicion that Grandma was onto something."

That shift is something that might, on first blush, appear to be the jackpot for the average college chaplain. "There's something about this undergraduate generation right now that's beginning to look for spirituality, for something other, even more so than the Generation X-ers preceding them," says Reynolds. "I see this in the interests they have, in the questions they raise, in their attitude in general."

But some are worried that an uncritical acceptance of the resurrection may signal that "truth" is becoming a bit too relative and personal, leaving little room for transcendence. Back in the 1990s, groups such as Intervarsity often brought to campus speakers who specialized in defending the rationality of religious faith. The purpose of these presentations would be to engage nonreligious students in a vigorous question-and-answer exchange. "Students would love to stop and engage him," says Kevin Ford. "Today, that sort of thing is greeted with a yawn."

Ford wishes that students would apply the same rigor they use for science and technology to all areas of their lives—including interrogating the tenets of religious faith. "I'm worried that truth has become very stretchable, very relative," he explains, confident that faith is resilient enough to not only survive such questioning but also to be strengthened by it.

In the meantime, the campus chapel continues to buzz with activity every Sunday. Rumor has it that the moat surrounding this 50-year-old structure was unofficially meant to signify the separation of science and faith. However, through an architectural sleight-of-hand, when sunlight shines on the surface of the water, it reflects inside the chapel, creating a shimmering effect along the red brick interior and suggesting that the separation between science and faith is a very thin one indeed.