Harvard Gets Religion

The much awaited Harvard University proposal to revise its aged core curriculum has been released. So far, two details have gotten most of the attention:
1) The committee did not follow Larry Summer's suggestion to increase core requirements for science. Students would still have to take one course each in life science and physical science.
2) The committee has added a mandatory course on religion, dubbed "Reason and Faith". From the WSJ:

The proposed religion course would address topics from personal beliefs to foreign policy to the interplay between science and religion. The report, which calls traditional academics "profoundly secular," seeks to place Harvard's students and faculty in the center of contemporary religious debates.

"I think 30 years ago," when the school's curriculum was last overhauled, "people would have said that religion is not something that everyone needs to know," said Louis Menand, a Harvard professor and co-chairman of the committee that drafted the report. "But today, few would disagree that religion is supremely important to modern life."

While I'm disappointed Harvard didn't beef up its science/math requirement - I think everybody should have to take basic statistics and a course in the history of science - I applaud their attempt to get religious studies back in undergraduate education. I'm a proud product of the Columbia Core Curriculum, which makes every student spend a few weeks reading the Old and New Testament. (They come right after the Iliad and Aristophanes.) Needless to say, those classes were challenging. The true believers saw their religious belief put through the meat grinder of historical knowledge - The Bible has multiple authors, none of them God - and the atheistic cynics, who loudly complained about having to read such a regressive and tedious document, were mesmerized by the narrative and literary power of the ancient texts.

There was also something wonderful about putting aside all the commentary and politics and just reading Luke, or Leviticus. For example, I was deeply struck by the Rashamon-like contradictions of the New Testament, in which all the different gospels gave the Jesus story a slightly different slant. Here was a narrative deconstructing itself, reminding its readers that it was only a book, written by a few men, and that the eyes of men are fallible. (I remember writing some terribly annoying essay entitled: "Jesus: The First Postmodern?") Before I read the Bible, I expected the book to be a list of clearly annunciated laws - homosexuality is bad, and that sort of thing - but here was a document that embraced its ambiguity, and had the cadences of great poetry. As Richard Dawkins might say, I understood why this meme had survived. Plus, it's always helpful to remember that Jesus was a Marxist - the meek shall inherit the earth is his only political platform - and not a conservative Republican.

Those few weeks of Bible study inspired me to spend a year studying theology and science at Oxford, where I became both more skeptical of religious claims and more entranced by the religious documents. Love it or hate it, these sacred texts are an essential part of Western civilization. No amount of reason will ever purge them from our culture. At the same time, what the Bible needs now is more analysis and less faith. I applaud Harvard for starting the process.