Title:The Problem of God

Yet to Be Solved

Reunion 2018 is underway, with a packed schedule of Saturday afternoon activities for returning alumni. Walking tours, social hours, and department open houses abound, all under the sparkle of an early summer sky.

So why are throngs headed to the auditorium in the basement of ICC?

For another hour of Problem of God, of course!

A panel of theology professors has assembled to discuss the required freshman-year course at Georgetown that now celebrates its 50th year. All of the 300 seats in the auditorium are full before the program begins, and standing attendees line the aisle as a few more people seat themselves on the steps.

Alumni gather to revisit a signature first-year experience: taking a critical look at the religious dimension of human existence.

“We invite them to take an interiority turn,” says panelist and beloved professor Otto Hentz, S.J. “We explore what I like to call ‘the basement issues’ and those fundamental questions like ‘What does it all mean?’ It’s critical to a liberal arts education. The Problem of God course asks that question very directly.”

Along with curious spouses, friends, and a few reluctant teenage offspring, alumni of all ages are here. What’s the draw? Apparently, they didn’t get all of the answers to these questions while they were students:

Who am I, why am I here, and where am I going?

Who is God? Why is God?

Backing up a bit: Is God?

Encounter with World Religions

The freshman course began in the fall of tumultuous 1968, on the heels of Vatican II, when the Catholic Church— and the United States—took a renewed look at ethical questions around social justice issues like racism, sexism, poverty, and war. The course was developed by Bill McFadden, S.J., chair of the theology department, in collaboration with colleagues Monika Hellwig, Jim Thomasson, and Jack Haught.

Hentz has watched the course evolve since he began teaching it in 1973. “In the beginning, the problem of God was handled as a Western problem,” he says. “Does God exist? How do we know? Can we know? What is God like? What are the challenges we face, especially the problem of evil? What about religious language, and how can we talk about God?”

Originally taught by priests, today the 50 sections of Problem of God are led by Jesuits and non-Jesuit faculty from different faith traditions, cultural backgrounds, and research specialties, representing the broadening scope of the theology department. They are teaching a generation of students who reflect the religious pluralism alive today, a growing skepticism about the role of faith and organized religion, and the increasingly interconnected global culture.

“When I was growing up, I never heard the word ‘Buddha,’” Hentz says. “Philadelphia was one big monastery in those days—every quarter mile there was this massive stone church, a big rectory, a big convent, and a big school. And life revolved around the parish. All sorts of rules and so forth. It never occurred to anyone to miss Mass on Sunday,” he adds. “But over the years, we have had more encounters with world religions.”

The core questions asked in Problem of God—of ultimate meaning, of God and religious experience—remain consistent, says Hentz.

“We’re not doing catechism here, nor is it a tour of a religious museum—‘Isn’t that charming!’ and so forth. The course is a sophisticated intellectual inquiry and analysis, with a very specific existential challenge. We are engaging in fundamental human questions that need some sort of answer, however tentative.”

Engaging Skeptical Students

According to a 2014 Pew Research study, the number of religiously unaffiliated (widely called “nones”) Americans is on the rise. Those who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, or whose religion is “nothing in particular,” represent 23 percent of adults in the U.S., up from 16 percent in 2007.

Hindu chaplain and Sanskrit scholar Brahmachari Sharan, who has taught Problem of God for two years, says incoming students reflect this national trend. Many arrive at Georgetown with no religious background, along with some arms-crossed skepticism about a required course in theology. However, inevitably Sharan sees a visible shift for many of these freshmen—even within that first 50-minute class period.

“There are always a few who are adamant and upset about having to take the course, and those who are not interested in religion whatsoever,” he says. “But you can see the change in their demeanor after just one lesson. They go from being slouched and saying, ‘I can’t believe I have to be here,’ to sitting up straight in their chairs, engaged.”

Teaching freshmen is a challenge—but also a rich opportunity, agrees Hentz. “You get the first crack at getting students interested in these fundamental issues.”

Like many of the professors, Sharan has the students intro-duce themselves through a personal essay and, based on those responses, guides the curriculum over the semester to address not only the core questions but also the emergent issues of concern for each cohort. The role of religious institutions is one example.

“In one of my classes, the students became very interested in the phenomenon of institutions, especially when we touched upon how many of the founders of religious traditions didn’t intend on setting up a religious institution, and yet some of the most intense and ancient institutions on the planet are religious ones.” Class discussions looked at how these institutions grow up, how systems are actualized, how inconsistencies are dealt with, why there is a need for institutions, and how to modernize them. “All this came up from a couple of comments students made, and it turned into a really interesting part of the course,” Sharan says.

Who am I, Why am I here, and Where am I going?

“The course opens up students who have one fixed worldview to the myriad worldviews that form our society today. Without that knowledge, they could become fundamentalist in their own worldviews,” he adds.

Still Fired Up

“Professor Joe Murphy was blowing my mind on a weekly basis,” recalls Hillary Thomas-Lake (F’88), who came to Georgetown at age 16 from Barbados. Raised in the Anglican Episcopalian practice, she grew up surrounded by a complex tapestry of cultural and religious traditions, such as Obeah and Vodou.

Part of Murphy’s scholarship focuses on the expressions of West African culture and religion in the New World and the origins of adaptive-faith traditions like Santeria and Candomblé. His passion for the subject was infectious. The Problem of God course quickly gained personal relevance for Thomas-Lake and sparked a lively reconnection to family at home.

She recalls studying syncretic religions and “the ways enslaved West Africans with animist religious traditions kept their beliefs alive on plantations, finding alignments between Christian saints and their own deities. I was calling my parents each week to talk about what I was learning. We’d trade stories and send each other books. It lit a fire for me.

“I’m one of seven kids, and at home on holiday I would dominate the conversation with my enthusiasm for this class,” she laughs. “And 34 years later, I’m still fired up!”

New graduate Adam Daly (C’18) discusses Problem of God, which he took with Hentz his freshman year, with similar enthusiasm. Both of his parents—Joan Corsello Daly (N’84) and Patrick Daly (C’84, M’90)—took Problem of God, and Patrick also had Hentz for the course.

Hentz engages with students from all religious backgrounds, Adam Daly says, “not just the Catholic crowd. That helps us think more critically about our own traditions. At Georgetown, you have to relearn what you thought to be true. I’d gone to public high school and had never taken a theology course or been challenged about what I thought I knew about religion. But this course put a critical lens to it.”

Daly enjoyed the couple of times during the course when Hentz, in a longstanding tradition, invited the students to class in his Village A apartment for a spaghetti supper. “He let us guide the conversation more, and it changed the way we students interacted with each other. We became more comfortable listening to polarizing views, because we could let our guard down in that informal setting.”

Thomas-Lake has discovered that the content of the course grows increasingly relevant with each passing year. “It’s like a little note granny tucks in your suitcase, and you only find it later when you’re home cleaning out your bag. And it’s full of goodies and wise words and a treat or two or a gem of some kind, all these years later.”

The Stuff of our Lives

Theology professor Erin Cline has been teaching the course for 10 years. Trained in classical Chinese texts and comparative religion, Cline divides her Problem of God course into three parts—whether God exists, whether God is always central to religious life, and challenges to faith and responses to them.

Who is God? Is God? Why is God? Is God?

She begins by introducing students to classical arguments for God’s existence in the Christian tradition, looking at works by St. Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, William Paley, and others, then moves into Hinduism, Confucianism, and Daoism, and Augustine’s confessions, concluding with the Jesuit tradition.

“A big part of what we’re trying to do in the course is to get students to reflect not just in an abstract way on these interests,” Cline says. “We want them to think about these issues in relation to their own lives, their own spiritual lives, their own religious journey.”

“Professor Cline transformed us,” says sophomore Amber Stanford (C’21), a government major who now plans to minor in theology. Raised a Protestant in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, she enjoyed the discourse among students that Cline fostered in the classroom. “I realized that it isn’t about finding one answer, but about the search for your answer that matters,” Stanford says.

Putting students into small discussion groups, Cline ensured a mix of beliefs in each subset, and through her own example nurtured their sense of compassion and empathy through deep listening, adds Stanford. “Her expertise in Chinese philosophy and her teachings on filial piety created for us a really personal connection with the content.”

At the reunion-weekend panel, Cline notes that teaching Problem of God is both a challenge and a gift—something that became particularly evident to her last semester when, two weeks into the term, her father passed away suddenly. She traveled back to Alaska to help plan his funeral and bury him, and when she returned to teaching, it was a struggle.

“I realized that in Problem of God, we are also talking about death and loss. We talk about some of the deepest sources of pain we experience—and also the deepest sources of love. It’s the stuff of our lives. The class can be a painful experience, and I see that in my students as well, as we touch on different topics and they are reflecting on different experiences, and it becomes a collaborative and cooperative endeavor.

“It impacts all of us.”

Swimming in the Gray of Today

In a classroom in the Walsh building, on the wall near the door, a crucifix hangs next to a fire alarm, a thermostat, and a clock. Students wearing sweats, earbuds, and headscarves trickle into their morning section of Problem of God holding coffee cups, iPhones, notebooks. They nod to the priest professor and settle in for what becomes an engaging discussion of readings on deep ecology and ecofeminism.

At the same time, another section of Problem of God is underway down the street, through the Healy gates, and across the lawn in White-Gravenor. There students gather in Taraneh Wilkinson’s class to explore ideas of God as nature, and science versus religion. Like the students, Wilkinson is new to Problem of God this year. She earned her doctorate in 2017 from Georgetown in religious pluralism and brings her background in Turkish theology and comparative mysticism to the course.

She notes that many students struggle with ambivalence.

“I am frequently dumping students into the gray areas, and I tell them, ‘It’s okay! You can swim!’ ” she says. She expects them to come away from the course religiously literate, having engaged in arguments that don’t always represent their own thinking, learning to listen to their peers and analyze cultural artifacts for religious themes.

“The Problem of God is elusive,” says her theology colleague Hentz. “These students are used to dealing with stuff, so to speak, that’s ‘out there’—cutting up frogs or analyzing models of government or learning facts of history. They are not used to engaging what cannot be empirically mapped or calculated. It’s a whole new way of thinking for them.”

Hindu chaplain Sharan adds that “Georgetown wants students to develop a lifelong connection to the spirituality of the Jesuits. I’m not talking about the religion of Catholicism— a person might be a very good Catholic—but the Ignatian approach to spirituality asks for a little more critical engagement than basic ‘I know how it is: This is black and this is white, there is no gray.’

“Ignatian spirituality says to find the gray and live in it,” Sharan said. “And this will result in progress that the world desperately needs at this time.”

Exercising Your Spiritual Mind

At the reunion panel, several alumni asked faculty for recommendations on how to keep exploring the Problem of God questions after graduation.

Theology professor Erin Cline suggests finding one of a growing number of Ignatian retreats available around the country or looking for events at a nearby Jesuit school or parish. Online resources are also available:

• Videos, meditations, and writings on the Ignatian spiritual exercises from the late Georgetown community member Howard Gray, S.J., to Kevin O’Brien, S.J. (C’88): https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises
• Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Library
• Irish Jesuits and Sacred Space daily prayer: https://www.sacredspace.ie
• Social media, including the Pope’s Instagram, the Facebook feed of James Martin, S.J., and weekly homily podcasts from Catholic Women Preach, founded by Elizabeth Donnelly (F’78)

Back on the Hilltop, Georgetown’s Office of Mission and Ministry offers alumni retreats, MAGIS programs, and daily email devotionals during Advent and Lent.

Finally, Georgetown faculty members recommend the following books:

• The Confessions by St. Augustine
• A World on Fire: Sharing the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises With Other Religions by Erin M. Cline
• The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama
• Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by Kelly Brown Douglas
• Silence by Shusaku Endo
• The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin, S.J.
• The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi by Elif Shafak
• Exploring the Philosophy of Religion by David Stewart