Religion and College Professors

Below is an article I wrote for my college newspaper, The Bi-College News, about religion/spirituality and its impact on professors in a liberal arts college environment.  The article was part of a larger pullout section on religion and spirituality in general on Bryn Mawr and Haverford College's campuses. I cannot link to the article because the newspaper's website is being renovated, so I will copy and paste it from a word document. This is the pre-editing version, so it has changed slightly, but the vast majority of it is the same.

“Outside the Classroom: A Look at Professors and Religion”

            Philip Kilbride sits hunched over his desk in a spacious but cluttered office on the second floor of Dalton Hall, twirling the cord of his desk phone in his left hand.

            “Ok, so I’ll be there around 3. Is that ok? Ok. Great. I’ll see you there. Buh-bye.”

            He hangs up the phone, relaxes his shoulders and shuffles some papers on his desk. As he whirls around in his chair to face his extremely crowded bookshelf a tuft of white hair peeps over his shirt collar, and his penetrating blue eyes widen curiously.

            “How are you? I live a complicated life.”

            Enter the realm of a professor outside his classroom. It’s a world most students know only in passing; the occasional question after class or request for extra help may warrant a visit, but nothing more. Few circumstances would call for conversation about personal life; even fewer would call for discussion about something as deep-seated as religion. However, it is exactly this conversation that opens the door to the true personalities and quirks of the professors we know and love, but rarely have the time to get to know better.

            For example, is Kilbride spiritual or religious?

            “It depends,” he says. “I’m Irish Catholic and I find the Church to be only partially in line with what I’ve learned as a human being and anthropologist.”

            As an Anthropology professor at Bryn Mawr Kilbride says he reads theology extensively and plans to teach a course on the anthropology of religion next year. He reaches toward the vast collection of books on his bookshelf and plucks out a slim, brown volume entitled Faith, Morality and Being Irish: A Caring Tradition in Africa, co-authored by himself and Noel Farley. The book tells the story of the lives of an Irish businessman and Irish Jesuit missionaries working in Kenya, and was inspired in part by Kilbride’s cultural value toward generosity, interest in Christian history and fascination with miracles.

            “My religious spiritualism isn’t so much about practicing as it is about being engaged through the subjects I study as an anthropologist,” Kilbride says.

            “Plus,” he adds, “The Jesuits say that if you’re a Catholic at age seven, they’ve got you for life!”

            Seconds later his desk phone rings, and Kilbride swivels around to take the call. Over his conversation a soft tapping sound can be heard coming from his office windows that stretch the length of the ceiling. It’s the sound of ladybugs, hundreds of them, flying in tiny circles and repeatedly landing on the inside of the panes of glass. As Kilbride ends his call, he turns around and nods his head in the direction of the living mosaic obscuring his view of the campus below.

            “The ladybugs are a miracle,” he says, then grins broadly. “I’m kidding. I can’t really get rid of them and the College says they’re harmless, so they can stay.”

            “In other words,” he smiles, “I have a sense of humor.”

            He begins to talk about the importance of having a spiritual grounding through a religious community, and says he has “noticed a silence about religion at Bryn Mawr.”

            Although he does not bring his personal religion into classroom conversation, his selection of class topics is influenced by his religious background. His concerns about poverty and children living in the street, for instance, are just a couple of class topics that were chosen because of “religious motivations.”

            “A lot of what I do is implicitly because of Christianity,” he says. “We’re all Christianized, whether we know it or not.”

            Kilbride describes himself as a “liberal Catholic,” and is worried that western concerns for “big” issues like charity have been lost to “little” concerns about marriage and voting. He sees the Church as an institution that has moved so far to the right, it overlooks big issues.

            He hesitates to say what religion he is when asked, for fear of people being closed-minded.

            Sunlight is streaming into the kitchen of Kenneth Koltun-Fromm’s house on College Lane, its rays just reaching the checkered tablecloth draped over a small wooden table and glinting off the hair of a lazy cat lying on the window sill. Koltun-Fromm’s young son sits fidgeting on his lap, reaching out to pet the cat only a few inches away, while Koltun-Fromm attempts to balance the little boy and pick up a cup of coffee with his free hand.

            “Do you want to get down?” he asks the little boy, rubbing the stubble on his cheeks and running his fingers through his dark brown hair.

            The boy stops wiggling and looks up with smiling eyes similar to his father’s. “No.”

            With that settled, the Haverford Religion professor begins to talk about his beliefs.

            “I’m sure my own religious sensibilities affect my teaching, but they don’t guide it,” he says. “I don’t draw on my religious experience more than any other experiences.”

            He stresses that his Judaism never interferes with his teaching or the way he act in class, and that maintain boundaries is an important part of his profession.

However, outside of class he is different. On certain Friday nights he will invite Jewish students over for Shabbat dinner, but generally he prefers to not get involved with student religious activities on campus. He feels more comfortable inviting students over to his house to share in family rituals, but will attend certain campus events pertaining to religion if asked.

Koltun-Fromm considers himself a “reactive teacher.”

“I see how students react to certain things in class and then teach to it,” he says. “A lot of them are not comfortable talking about spirituality because they can’t make sense of it.”

In fact, the professor himself is still making sense of some things. Part of his interest in what he teaches is finding out what classifies something as “religion,” as well as exploring the distinction between religion and faith or belief.

“For me, religion is a certain component that one has, a sensibility for one’s place in the world,” he says, stroking his son’s hair. “It’s finding out what is human, and who we want to honor.”

Koltun-Fromm’s interests stretch back to his days as a Haverford student, where he studied religion and completed his thesis under John David Dawson, who still teaches in the Religion Department, in 1988. His studies have come full circle, and he is back in the very location where he began studying religion, culture and human practices.

Koltun-Fromm says his religion affects how he creates his courses. He designs his curriculum around what he thinks students should be thinking about and raises critical questions concerning religion’s connections to the broader public, not just its isolated practice.

In the East Wing of Bryn Mawr’s Collier Science Library, Maryellen Nerz-Stormes sits on a red armchair gazing out of the tall glass windows that look down over the front of Park Science Building. As she watches students walking back and forth between classes she turns her head, showing the right side of the scarf she has wrapped around her head. Only a few thin wisps of hair stick out from beneath its colorful edge. Her sunken blue eyes stand out strikingly against her pale skin and pale pink eyelids, and as she speaks they look almost as if they are glazed over.

“Well I’m very Catholic,” she says. “And I raised my children and husband Catholic.”

Her laughter is musical and robust as it resonates throughout this deserted part of the library, dispelling any notion of a fragile woman.

Bryn Mawr has helped her come out of her “Catholic bubble” because so many religions are represented in its student and faculty populations. Acceptance and tolerance are important to her, and she feels that the campus atmosphere has been very welcoming.

“I think the environment is really open to discussion,” she says. “God comes to people in different ways.”

Nerz-Stormes is an active member of her church—she sings in the adult choir and is studying to become a lay Carmelite. The process has involved daily prayer and meditation.

“It’s basically just developing a better prayer life,” she explains. “I wanted to make faith more of a part of my life. I thought it would be kind of weird but it was very relaxing.”

Her decision to become a lay Carmelite came after a medical crisis about a year ago. Her medical treatment had made her negative and her relationship with her oncologist had begun to sour because of it. When she saw a bulletin at Church about the lay Carmelites she decided to take action, and she’s been positive ever since.

Her studies have put her “more in touch with the Golden Rule,” she says. She constantly thinks about others, and her goal is to give to other people every day.

Her faith and attitude toward it has translated well in the classroom environment. As a Chemistry professor who works mainly in the organic chemistry lab, she is conscious of student needs and practices patience. Her religious experience influences her behavior, but not class discussion or topics.

Her fervent religiousness only came after a life-changing incident.

In 2001, Nerz-Stormes was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and told she would have a ten to fifteen percent chance of survival over five years. Those around her were afraid to talk about her disease, and she had not been paying much attention to her faith at the time.

One day, while at Church with her family, she decided to get help. After mass she spoke with her priest about why bad things have to happen to good people and tried to put her diagnose into perspective.

“You have to put yourself in other people’s shoes, even when you have a disease,” she says. “It keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself.”

So she began to pray. Every day she would meditate and try to “live in the moment,” even incorporating a little Buddhism into her daily life.

It’s been nine years, and she’s still going strong.

She doesn’t consider herself a ritualistic person, which is why she didn’t see her survival as a miracle the way the “ritualistic Catholic church” might have.

“The miracle was seeing my sons grow up, using my brain to solve things and staying in the game,” she says proudly.

Although she does not believe in fantastic miracles, Nerz-Stormes says she is afraid of being judged for her faith and believing in “magical” things because of her role as both a Catholic and a scientist.

“Intellectuals sometimes live in fear about being judged because of their religion,” she says sadly. However, she believes that religion cannot be understood until it is practiced.

So far she has not been judged by those in the Bryn Mawr community, and no one has been “offended” by her faith.

“As a scientist you’re supposed to be this cold, logical person who only deals with facts,” she says. “But people question when you have a spiritual side. Sometimes even I question if there’s a God when I’m thinking about science.”

She lives in fear of being judged due to prior experience. Her doctor once told her she “engaged in magical thinking,” and she was deeply upset. She believes that Bryn Mawr is tolerant when it comes to religion, but that an academic fear might exist.

However, the academic environment on campus has not stopped her or her faith. She has proven doctors wrong and, more importantly, she has kept on living and practicing her faith openly.

“I try to pay it forward every day,” she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. “That’s the miracle.”

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