Religious awareness at Vassar on the rise

Dennis Farr Guest Writer

Popular Vassar attitude towards religion must continue changing or students face isolating themselves from nationally significant issues. Creationism, intelligent design and evolution are being weighed this week in a Dover, PA courtroom, and the losing side will surely appeal all findings, or face extinction. Eleven Dover residents and the ACLU have filed suit against the school district’s mandate to offer intelligent design as an alternative theory of human origins to evolution. As a nationally influential institution, we must participate, but it seems that much of Vassar’s view on religion involves a lot of teeth sucked, eyes rolled, shoulders shrugged and giggles. In fact, most discussions I have with others about religion begin with the uncomfortable assumption that I’m secretly proselytizing for some religion practiced only by I and religion department elders. Maybe we’re atheistic Satanists.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose, having only been recently released, has already suffered widespread panning for its fictionalized portrayal of a young woman’s death after religious authorities advise her to forego medical treatment and undergo an exorcism. However, the film is ingeniously promoted on the Internet by sneakily aligning itself with our nation’s current revisiting of insufferable issues that never go away. Much of the film is played out in a courtroom, drawing immediate connections to “activist judges” and, fortuitously, the Dover Eleven case. The film’s website features a link, “Faith/Science,” by which you can decide whether Emily Rose either “walked away from medical treatment that could have saved her” or was “possessed by demonic forces.” Run your cursor over “Faith” and it branches out into links for “Possession,” “Evil” and “Decay,” or over “Science” and get “Epilepsy,” “Seizures” and “Hallucinations.” How odd that the film would have such a startling affinity to Vassar’s current discourse on religion.

Last presidential election, several students milled about the College center, making it clear to anyone within hearing range their dismay as to religion’s influence over the result, thus displaying amazing abilities of underestimation (a chronic problem for Vassar students). A sophomore told me how, in discussing her intent to major in religion, she was asked if evangelicals and ‘hardcore atheists’ dominated the department. At Zorona’s, I once overheard a student impress another with an incredibly oversimplified misrepresentation of what constituted ‘church’ and ‘state.’ Even learned scholars like our professors have gotten in on the act. Once, I introduced religion into a political discussion with a certain professor. She responded by babbling incoherently.

The Miscellany New’s recent coverage and analysis of creationism, intelligent design, evolution and Islam represents a positive development on a campus too frequently hostile to religion and its students. However, the reporting remains scant, and I hope Vassar’s other journals will also participate. The religion department organizes fantastic discussions. Last semester, attendance at the religion department’s “Gods, Guns and Gays” exceeded expectations. We should pay attention to similar events. Vassar can only stand to benefit.

I know we live on a campus proudly ranked high on lists like “Rarest Occurrences of Christmas,” “Largest Collection of Failed Suicide Notes, Penned by Atheists, Mentioning God as Primary Cause,” “Greatest Penchant for Amorality, Just to Prove God Doesn’t Exist” and “Humans are Bastards, So God Must Be Too,” but scoffing at religion and to view its study as quaintly anachronistic has lost its radical chíc. Ours is a “President of Good and Evil,” as philosopher and Yale professor Peter Singer put it. The United States includes several religious organizations as satellites, employing faith-based initiatives as networks of transfer between it and its constituency. The vernacular of the war we are currently engaged in is steeped in ancient religious modes. It reflects poorly on us that all these things exist, and yet we do not more fully appreciate the intellectual investigation of the apparatus behind them.