That Ol' Time Religion

THE BOSTON Church of Christ makes Harvard nervous. This semester the United Ministries issued an anti-cult handbook to protect students from the church, which aggressively recruits those eating by themselves in the dining halls. Despite the church's tactics, though, there is a disturbing subtext underlying Harvard's response.

The Boston Church of Christ is about hand-clapping, hosannah-saying, old time religion. And religion that hasn't been defanged and coralled in stately Memorial Church is something Harvard is never comfortable with.

Watching churchmembers go table to table in the dining halls, one could sense a sort of horror. These people had breeched a rule of decorum by bringing religion into the sanctity of the dining room. It is not that religion has disappeared as a topic of conversation at Harvard. But how often is religion discussed in terms of what people actually feel and believe rather than as an abstraction?

CATHOLICS who want to discuss Catholicism go to the Catholic Student Center, where they know they will be with other Catholics. Jews go to Hillel. Religion may be a part of many peoples' lives around Harvard, but it is not really a part of Harvard life. To a great degree, religion is something for like-minded people to share, or something to be snuggled in nicely before brunch or dinner.

In an English section last week, the section leader asked if anyone believed that Christ actually rose from the dead. Although there were a large number of Catholics and Protestants in the room, the teaching fellow was greeted with muffled silence. Harvard students, for some reason, are embarrassed about religion. And the unease comes to the fore when someone is so thoughtless as to discuss religious beliefs in public.

This reticence is especially ironic on this campus, founded to educate future Puritan ministers. Puritans found religion a part of every moment of their lives. They discussed and debated their beliefs endlessly, not just amongst themselves but with the world at large. In college, they learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, both to read the Bible and to become familiar with other faiths.

The Puritans believed that everyone was intolerant. People differed only in what they held important. To a Puritan, religion was supreme--to be tolerant therefore was to be untrue to one's own faith. Today, however, open-mindedness can easily become apathy. The best way to really learn what one believes, of course, is to find out what others believe--and then judge.

In this school where diversity is the highest good, religion has a constricted place. That is why the Boston Church of Christ seems so out of place. The church brings religion into the open. Members believe strongly enough to want to share their beliefs--in the Boston Garden or in a Harvard dining hall is a more than fitting place to seek converts.

THE INABILITY of Harvard students to talk about their faiths may be part of a general trend in the United States. And it may not be all bad. When religion wasn't the private matter it is now, Quakers were hanged on Boston Common.

If the Boston Church of Christ takes advantage of the insecurity some people feel here, then the church should be controlled on campus. Harvard, however, should be sure it is acting to safeguard students' rights to make their own choices. Otherwise, efforts against the church might have more to do with Harvard's arrogance, and with its unfortunate feeling that those who talk about religion are just a bit too impolite to be endured.