The following is a copy of a commencement address given by Susan Campbell at Hartford Seminary in May, as printed in the seminary's magazine "Praxis."
I think her speech is worth reading on several levels but primarily because of the way she honestly reports how being in seminary forced her, now matter how uncomfortable it was, to confront and analyze and assess her own beliefs and preconceptions as a "nondenominational, fundamentalist
Christian."
As she puts it so well, "Once you understand that religion isn't an easy chair into which you relax, you can accomplish amazing things."
-- David
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Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished faculty, administrators, friends, family, and —
of course — relieved graduates: I am honored to be here on several levels.
I once sat where you graduates are sitting and never in a million years would I have thought to
have considered the possibility of my being up here, speaking.
I trust next year you can find a real speaker, and my apologies in advance
for my deficits at the microphone. I will say right now that I’m a writer, and not much of a public
speaker so that when I am finished, you don’t need to turn to the person next to you and say, “You know what? She’s not much of a public speaker.” She
knows that already.
Susan Campbell addressing graduates of Hartford Seminary, May 29, 2009.
I collected my Hartford Seminary degree in the fall
of 2001, post 9-11, an interesting time about which
I still don’t know what to think, save for this: While
all around me people were telling me to be fearful,
to be cautious, even to hate, I couldn’t. I’d just come
off of six years sitting in classrooms with people who
physically resembled me only slightly, who hadn’t
grown up reading my sacred text, as I hadn’t grown
up reading theirs, yet with whom I shared the most
basic commonalities to the point that during some
breaks in my classes — most of which were at night
— I would wander outside and stare up at the stars
and think about what just happened.
Who knew a little boy growing up in Pakistan would
have the same questions as a little girl growing up
in the Missouri Ozarks? Who knew we all shared so
much?
If you look at the percentages of faith groups
represented here, Congregationalists are about neck
and neck with Muslims. You have to run your finger
far, far down the list to find people like me, nondenominational,
fundamentalist Christians, and yet
at no point in my time here was I made to feel like
an outsider. If anything my — let’s call it “unique”
— religious perspective felt even more welcome
because I was coming from a theology many in
my class hadn’t experienced, or even seen from a
distance.
So while all around us in 2001 I read and heard and
saw the message to crouch down and be fearful,
I couldn’t and wouldn’t. I had just completed a
course of study at a school with the country’s oldest
center for the study of Islam and Muslim-Christian
relations. I had taken an eye-opening course on
Jewish-Christian misunderstandings through the
centuries. I’d read the sacred text of other religions
until I could read no more. And then I kept reading.
My experience at Hartford Seminary taught me
there’s shockingly little to fear — save for silence. If
we don’t talk to one another, we will be fearful. And
if we don’t get each other’s perspective, we’re sunk,
because while that little Pakistani boy and that
little Missouri girl may be pondering the same life
questions, we only know that if we share that.
I also learned that you have to be brave enough to
risk asking stupid questions. The seminary taught
me to go ahead and ask. We’re all friends here.
I don’t know what brought you to the seminary,
but I came for context. I’d grown up in a strict
Christian religion and the vestiges of that, for me,
were the afore-mentioned fear, and a freakish ability
to quote the Christian scriptures. I knew my Bible
backward and forward — or, rather, I knew how to
quote scriptures from my Bible, but what I wanted
— ached for, really — was some context of what
I thought I knew. To be honest, I wanted to come
to the seminary and have someone tell me what to
think of all that Bible study, those Sunday school
lessons, those church camp Bible bowls. I wanted,
frankly, to have my theology spoon-fed to me, and
it wasn’t until somewhat deep into my career here
on Sherman Street that I realized that just wasn’t
going to happen. I trust you came here with a more
mature faith. I was only looking to get comfortable.
How very young was my faith, that I expected
it to make me comfortable. The faith I found
in the white building behind me made me most
uncomfortable — deliciously so. Hartford Seminary
gave me the gift of discomfort and I shall be forever
grateful.
As it turns out, I didn’t get comforted and I didn’t
get the context I sought, though I was shown how
to find it for myself. No one was going to tell me
how to think or interpret sacred text. I was, instead,
going to learn how to do that on my own.
Ah, but I am hard-headed and it took me a while.
I’ve told this story before. Let me tell it one more
time and then maybe I’ll retire it: I signed up first
for a New Testament class because, well, I wrote the
New Testament and I figured it would be an easy
A. I walked into my first class taught by a then-new
teacher, Efrain Agosto — now the dean. I was pretty
sure I would impress him with my mad Bible skills
and I was wrong. He dove right in and within 15
minutes I suspected I’d do us all a favor if I quietly
left the room.
But I didn’t leave. I grew to love the classes and the
readings. I drank in the lectures and even enjoyed
writing the papers — and yes, I know how weird
that sounds.
I don’t know the mechanism for learning — how the
brain absorbs and retains information — but over
time the seminary kicked the doors open for me and
made me think for myself in a way I hadn’t thought
possible. I will be forever grateful for that, too.
Maybe in your time here, you had child-care issues.
Or work issues, or trouble balancing your schedule
to make it here on time for class. I had that. It was
always on class night when one of my sons would
pull up lame and my husband would be at work
and the full weight of my family would fall on my
reluctant shoulders. Maybe your spouse was a little
nervous about you going off on this particular
tangent. Mine certainly was. He grew up culturally
Catholic; the weight of the old rugged cross rests
only slightly on his back, and he feared I would
become enmeshed in a cult, I suppose, or become
a televangelist with big hair, as that was his only
exposure to Protestants in action.
As it turns out, he was right to be nervous. I did
not become a televangelist and that’s not even on
my long list of career goals. As it turns out, I came
to learn to ask questions for myself and once you’re
free to do that, you are a dangerous being, indeed.
Once you understand that religion isn’t an easy chair
into which you relax, you can accomplish amazing
things.
I can’t guarantee you will remember all your
classmates’ names, but I guarantee you that in the
near future, you will be in a discussion with someone
and you will harken back to some classroom
discussion and you will be grateful that you had the
opportunity to take a moment, sit a spell, and think
hard about your approach to the holy. That, along
with the discomfort, is the gift the seminary keeps
on giving. Or you’ll read something in the news, or
you’ll hear someone talk about something remotely
religious and you’ll have much-needed perspective.
We need people who can freely move between faith
groups and help us understand one another. You
just may be that precise ambassador to make all the
difference.
To be honest, I’ve done shockingly little with my
degree — if you measure using your degree by
how you earn your living. I work at the same job
I worked when I started as a seminary student. I
wrote a book that came to me while I was a student
here, but if you’ve ever written a book you know
that unless you’re among a select few, you don’t earn
a living from writing a book.
I didn’t get my answers here — at least, I didn’t get
my answers the way I’d expected, in a thunderstorm
with God reaching down to hand me a list of do’s
and don’ts. I got, instead, the understanding that
I will always have questions and the answers won’t
always come easily. And that the answers might not
make me comfortable.
And that’s O.K.
I found a new God here, a God that was more
inclusive, a God that allowed me to be a sinner
and fall short. I was exposed to a radical kind of
theology here that demands your entire being. It
was like feeling my heart open and for that, too, I
am grateful.
I am also grateful for the gift that comes with
knowing that neither I nor my theology has all the
answers. For some of those answers, I just may have
to come to you.
You are walking out of here with the highest kind
of degree, a degree of the soul. Maybe you already
know what you’re going to do with it. Maybe you,
like me, are going to fold it into what you’re already
doing. Whatever your choice — or whatever the job
market forces upon you as a choice — I guarantee
that your life will be fuller for the time you spent
here.
I maintain that the will to connect with the holy is
as basic as our need to eat. We ask, as did one writer:
“When shall I come and behold the face of God?”
Searching for the theology that drives our nation, we
can at least comfort ourselves that its impetus is not
entirely greed-based. Our need to connect with God
— however we define God — is so great that we will
find God, one way or another. The holy calls us and
we must answer. We will connect, be it through our
mosques, our temples, our churches, one another. In
some way, we will connect.
Eileen Guder wrote in her book, “God, But I’m
Bored:”
“You can live on bland food so as to avoid an ulcer,
drink no tea, coffee or other stimulants in the name
of health, go to bed early, avoid all controversial
subjects so as to never give offense, mind your
own business, avoid involvement in other people’s
problems, spend money only on necessities, and save
all you can.”
To which I would add: “And you can settle into a
comfortable corner of your theology until you die
and they say nice things about you at your wake.”
Back to Guder:
“You can do all those things [avoid stimulants,
save your money, keep your hands to yourself, live
a careful life] and you can still break your neck in
your bathtub. And it will serve you right.”
I’d rather be uncomfortable. I hope you’ll join me.
Susan Campbell, M.A. ’01, spoke at graduation ceremonies
on May 29. She is a columnist at The Hartford Courant
newspaper and author of “Dating Jesus: A Story of
Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl.”
