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Web Exclusives: More... October 25, 2000: Sacred
vs. secular
Williamson came to Princeton from Seattle, where he had been pastor at a United Church of Christ. Before that he was involved in academia when he taught at Boston University and at the University of Massachusetts while he was affiliated with a church in downtown Boston. He left Seattle for Princeton, he said, because he was getting restless just doing pastoral work. "Because so much of my time had been spent in an academic environment, when I had the opportunity to come to Princeton, I thought it was exactly what I would like." At Princeton, where he is fully immersed in an academic setting but does no teaching, he does do pastoral work through his connection to the chapel, where he is responsible for the services. Two of his colleagues, Sue Ann Morrow and Deborah Blanks, help with that. Though working among the more than 4,000 students on campus, Williamson doesn't actually see many of them in pastoral way. And not many seek him out for counsel. "Sue Ann Morrow is responsible for the Student Volunteers Council, and she has a much more intimate relationship with students because she's with them a lot in a way that I'm not." And does this bother him? "I have some wistfulness about that," Williamson said. "I wish I did have more opportunity of interacting with students." Even though Princeton's enrollment has increased over time, the number of students actually seeking relationships with pastors seems to have dropped, Williamson noted, "but it's hard to generalize." There are about 25 religious groups on campus, both denominational and nondenominational." As times have changed - compulsory chapel was dropped in the 1960s - so has the language of religion on campus. Williamson, who succeeded Frederick Borsch '57, now the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles and a member of the university's Board of Trustees, has worked to make the language of the university's religious services and public events where prayers are delivered more inclusive. The Baccalaureate service, for instance, now includes people representing t he four major religious groups: Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim. Williamson, who writes the prayers delivered at these services and events, also prepares prayers of dedications for new buildings, or for occasions when a prayer seems to be called for. From time to time Williamson, who doesn't have to submit his prayers for approval to anyone, gets feedback. "After one Baccalaureate service, a faculty member came up to me afterwards and said, 'What about the rest of us? People who are not Hindus, Jews, Christian, or Muslim?' I said, 'That's an important question.' She added that she would like to create a prayer and have someone read it at the service as a nonsectarian presence. She did create the prayer, and it was used, I think, on two occasions." Since that time, Williamson has created what he calls the nonsectarian prayer. Personally, does it take a toll on his spiritual life to always have to acknowledge the possibility of another religion? Does it disturb him to pray to the Spirit instead of God? "It depends," Williamson said. "It depends. I use God language, but I also use the Spirit language. Both of those expressions have substance in the Christian Biblical tradition. I say sometimes 'Please me join with me, or, I invite you to join with me in the spirit of prayer.' I make a distinction between the prayers that I do in the Chapel service on Sunday and the more, what shall I say, the more secularized, or at least pluralistic, so that people who hear that prayer are not angry about it. They can dismiss it, but I don't think they can say that it is judgmental in its message. It's a fairly difficult compromise, a fine line. For instance, in the services on Sunday at 11 o'clock I pray in the name of Jesus. I don't pray in the name of Jesus when I do the Opening Exercises or at Baccalaureate or at Commencement." Even if the number of students who participate actively in religious organizations on campus is dwindling, and the language is becoming more inclusive, there is still a reason to have a religious voice on campus, Williamson says. "I believe that everybody has a yearning for some kind of spiritual depth, some sense of something larger, or greater than ourselves, and that that takes on a whole variety of expressions. But I don't want to be critical. I would say that people who come here need to, are in some sense are obligated, not just to think about this as a place to go to Goldman Sachs, or something like that. But a place to explore the profundities of life, the meaning and purpose of life. So I don't have to use language which is explicitly theological, but I think I have to use language that raises questions about those issues." Being in an academic setting throws him, a believer, up against nonbelievers, as some of scientists are. But Williamson understands them. "I know where they're coming from. One of the most exciting things for me is that for many scientists, especially astrophysicists, instead of objectifying something, instead of demystifying it, there is a willingness to affirm the mystery of science, the mystery of the cosmos, as well as the awe of science." By Lolly O'Brien
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In
today's world, when so many people seem not to believe in a higher
power, how does a clergyman on a campus founded by Presbyterians
handle the divide between the secular and the sacred? Joseph C.
Williamson, dean of religious life for the past 11 years, doesn't
think secular is a bad name. "What I thrive on is the interaction
between the secular and the sacred, so it's not compartmentalization.
It's a kind of dynamism that stimulates me, gratifies me, because
of the questions it raises."