"Finding God at Harvard"

Harvard chaplain Kelly Monroe speaks with Kim Shippey, news Editor

A couple of years ago, ABC television news-anchor Peter Jennings asked whether there is a proper place for God in American universities. "Are the teaching of faith and reason incompatible in the classroom?" he asked. "Many students who have deep religious faith feel as if their perspective has been squeezed outside the margins."

ABC's religion editor, Peggy Wehmeyer, whose report Mr. Jennings was introducing, said that the young believers she had interviewed didn't want more religion classes, which reduce faith to little more than a cultural phenomenon. "They don't even want their views to dominate," she explained, "but they do want their belief to be taken seriously in courses where they believe religion can make an important contribution."

Ms. Wehmeyer drew attention to the irony that many of America's great universities were founded as distinctly Christian institutions. "It was assumed then that God existed and that there was harmony between faith and reason."

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