One of the most memorable figures from my time at Brown was then University Chaplain Charles Adams Baldwin. "Chaplain Charlie," as we called him with affectionate irony, offered counseling, conducted discussion groups and hosted dinners for students in his home, among other important campus activities. He and the staff of the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life contributed significantly to my personal growth and awareness during those crucial years. The chaplaincy was particularly prominent at the time, as this happened also to be the age of the campus-wide "Dannenfelser controversy" when Dick Dannenfelser was on the chaplaincy staff while also being a practicing sex therapist. Charlie, in fact, gave me what undoubtedly is one of the greatest gifts I ever received, helping make it possible for me to marry the love of my life, Buffy (Stoloff) Vehse '83.
During a recent return to campus, I had a welcome opportunity to participate once again in an activity sponsored by the University chaplain, a dignified and meaningful memorial service for a friend. On this occasion, I found myself more acutely aware than ever of the official capacity in which the chaplains function at the University. It struck me forcefully that behind every word and gesture lie the considerable stature and moral authority of Brown. The institution not only inherits but shapes and transmits the religious heritage of our country. These facts are known and entirely appropriate to the setting. They are a reflection of what it means that Brown, despite a very high public profile, remains private.
I also happen to teach religious studies at a public university. For equally well-known constitutional reasons - the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment - here there is no University chaplain. This situation is interesting as a matter of comparison and worth considering.
It may strike others as surprising that I, as a student of religion, find the secularism of the American public university conducive to my profession. It certainly is not the case that religious life ceases on an officially secular campus. Quite the opposite. One is surrounded daily here by a veritable tumult of religious activity. There's even an off-campus "campus ministry." It is, rather, that precisely the moral strength and authority of the institution do not stand behind any word or gesture of all this that carves out precious space for a certain species of inquiry.
The modern study of religion is not a religious avocation, per se. At its best it is "Wissenschaft," a knowledge-based, scientific endeavor. The historian Jonathan Z. Smith has observed, "It was not until the rise of programs in state universities, a development which followed the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the School District of Abington v. Schempp ... that the parallel course of religious studies in the academy, instituted a century ago in Holland, became possible in this country." The decidedly secular approach to this occupation depends for its success upon the neutrality characteristic of an institution that takes no official position on matters like the existence of the supernatural or the nature of mystery.
Demystification, in fact, is much of what modern religious studies is about. The secular, public university sets the stage for the emergence of an uncompromisingly secular humanism. This type of humanism routinizes the supposedly exceptional. It exposes mysteries and dethrones cherished beliefs and practices without promise of their immediate or even eventual replacement. It is the precondition for what Marx called "the premise of all criticism," namely the criticism of religion.
It is, in my view, an open question whether such a type of inquiry is likely to originate unfettered or ultimately flourish in an academic environment that takes a generally affirmative stance vis-Ã -vis religion and religious life. Institutions have power, and their policies and structures influence how people act and think. I suspect the rigorous, uncompromisingly secular humanism of which I speak might not have come to define my field if every university had a chaplaincy. Were there only universities in this respect like Brown, I am doubtful we would have gained the humanly valuable insights of this kind of religious studies.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that a test of intelligence "is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." I am personally indebted to and grateful for the Office of the University Chaplains and Religious Life at Brown. I am professionally grateful, as well, to live in a country in which not every university has a chaplaincy. Call it, if you like, a secular blessing of the American way of life.
Ted Vehse '83 holds both an MA and a PhD from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He teaches religious studies and general humanities at West Virginia University.
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