October 6, 2011
No, Hamilton promotes a freedom of conscience:
by Stephen LaRochelle '14
With the recent Bicentennial publication of Professor Isserman’s wonderful book On the Hill, many Hamilton students are paying closer attention to the people, events and ideas that shaped our first 200 years. Isserman’s book touches upon one aspect of that history, religious life, which deserves greater consideration. When considering the question of religion on campus, students should realize that the religious dynamic on the Hill today is the ideal dynamic for a community representative of American pluralism.
Samuel Kirkland, preacher, missionary, and founder of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, had a vision of creating an educated class of Native American leaders who would return to their villages and proclaim the Gospel to the depraved masses. Yet his great experiment in the education of the Oneidas was a failure, insofar as only two Native Americans were full time students between 1798 and 1808. Interest was greater from the white settlers, and by 1812, the Academy evolved in to a college for Central New York’s whtie Protestant “men of property and standing,” as it would remain for the greater part of the next century and a half.
Kirkland’s missionary legacy lived on in the newly-founded college. All Hamilton presidents were Protestant ministers until 1917, and the College even trained a great number of students for the Protestant ministry. Hamilton produced the educated ministers who were reviled by the heart-religion revivalists of the Second Great Awakening, a national movement which swept across Central New York’s “Burned-Over District” beginning in the 1820s. The College’s leadership remained unwaveringly theologically conservative throughout what was arguably the most important religious movement in American history — a movement which occurred partly in its own backyard.
Ironic it is, then, that a proselytizing Christian missionary like Kirkland is the namesake of the institution that arguably contributed the most to the rise of religious pluralism at Hamilton. But such an irony is representative of the sharp turn the College has taken away from its Protestant roots in the last half-century. Isserman notes that Kirkland attracted a lot of students “from the Upper West Side,” which he uses euphemistically to note the relatively larger number of students of Jewish faith at Kirkland. Protestant hegemony at Hamilton began to recede as early as 1964, when students staged a sit-in on the Chapel steps to protest compulsory church attendance, which the Administration banned later that year. But it was the nascent Kirkland that pushed further against Hamilton’s traditional establishment and helped integrate women of different backgrounds into the social order of the Hill.
Today, Hamilton inherits the legacy of the Kirkland merger, and we are a more vibrant religious community because of it. Student attendance at religious services is proportionately small, but those who regularly observe do so in a tight-knit, actively engaged community of believers. It is in the spirit of free conscience that students are drawn toward or away from religious life at Hamilton. Students are free to choose where, when and how they get involved, and they have the luxury of a talented chaplaincy staff that fulfill the needs of all Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims.
The idea that the Hamilton administration can do something different to attract more religious students is antithetical both to the aims of education and to the aims of faith. It is the role of the Office of Admissions to attract qualified and capable students on the basis of their academic merit, whereas it is the role of the student to decide the extent to which religious life will inform his or her Hamilton experience. Hamilton has concrete policies in place which excuse students from class when the academic calendar conflicts with religious observance. But more importantly, the College’s environment is openly conducive to and respectful of students who take their faith seriously.
Religion at Hamilton is extremely present in the lives of those who want it be. As history has shown us, such a liberty of conscience is best for all involved.
Yes, religion is essential to Hamilton's diversity:
By Jeremy Adelman '13
Like many of her sister institutions, Hamilton College has recently developed an obsession with diversity. However, for the most part, this diversity is limited to superficialities—skin color, country of origin, socio-economic background—rather than substance. Essentially, Hamilton finds herself welcoming a student body of individuals who look different but think very much the same. One of the areas where this homogeneity is readily apparent is with respect to religion—the number of Hamilton students who are devoutly religious is pitifully small, and those few who slip through the cracks find an environment that is at best ambivalent and at worst openly hostile towards the practice of religious orthodoxy.
To begin, there is no question that few fervent practitioners of any creed call Hamilton home, a problem with wide intellectual repercussions. Simply put, the deeply religious bring to the table ideas and arguments widely divergent from those of secular thinkers; by failing to actively court religious students, the College is missing out on these ideas. The resulting intellectual void leaves numerous campus tenants unchallenged. For instance, there are quite a number of rational arguments against the legalization of homosexual marriage, but, by excluding those willing to make said arguments, the College allows the prevailing viewpoint to hold without a thorough vetting. College is a time to debate beliefs, not cement them for want of a devil’s advocate.
Secondly, though Hamilton suffers from a dearth of theists, the world does not. By failing to interact, understand and appreciate the religious while attending college, Hamilton students are missing an important and necessary facet of a proper liberal arts education. For, without interacting with the fervent believers, how can a Hamiltonian truly understand the willingness of Chinese Catholics to risk disappearance into the gulags by attending mass or the wave of riots following the publishing of cartoon depictions of Mohammed in the Jyllands-Posten? For good or for ill, religion has long played an important role in the history of humanity, a trend not likely to change over the next few generations.
However, despite the numerous benefits for attracting religious individuals to the Hill, Hamilton has fallen short in providing for her students’ religious needs, often showing almost comical ignorance of religious practices.
For instance, last year’s Open House for Accepted Students was held the day before the first night of Pesach. As preparing for the first Seder is usually an all-day activity, the College essentially ensured that observant Jewish families living more than an hour from Clinton could not attend; if Hamilton wished to tell prospective Jewish students that their religious needs would be ignored, I can think of few better ways short of open anti-Semitism.
Thus, I contend that the Hamilton community, when questioning the lack of religious conviction among its students, really has no one else to blame but itself. The most frustrating aspect is that the College could so easily ameliorate what discourages observant applicants—namely, the College’s apparent ambivalence toward religion. The solution is simple: emails wishing students Chag Sama’ach or Merry Christmas and the prudence to avoid scheduling programs on major religious festivals. However, I doubt very much that the Hamilton community even knows what it is missing.