Dear Gloria,
After reading your Wespeak, I was struck by a need to respond to your suggestions. I have a few thoughts of my own on the subject that I would like to share with the community in response to yours.
If I understand your point correctly, what you seem to want is a more unified campus community. In this respect, I agree with you completely. I came to Wesleyan because I wanted a diverse college experience where a variety of different opinions could co-exist and debate each other in a civilized fashion. I’m proud of Wesleyan’s anti-war movement, and of Mytheos Holt’s one-man conservative revolution, and of our many active religious communities and of all our other countless groups. I want to see these groups come together for a more positive dialogue, and it seems you do too.
Where I disagree with you is the means by which you suggest coming together, namely prayer to Jesus. That call proves to me that you’ve missed the entire point of the Wesleyan experience. This community is not about all of us rallying underneath a single figure, be it Jesus, Ronald Reagan, or L. Ron Hubbard. Our different viewpoints are what makes this community valuable, rather than simply a very expensive echo chamber. If you want us all to talk to Jesus then, to paraphrase a line from “Casablanca,” I’m afraid you’re going to find the conversation a bit one-sided.
I myself (much like Jesus) am a Jew, as is around thirty percent of this campus. Like Christians (and those of other faiths) we desire nothing more than peace and harmony among all peoples of this earth (and, by extension, this campus). We have, however, a distinct tradition and a distinct faith, and we are very proud of both. We are interested in coming together with others; we are not interested in coming together under Jesus.
To put it simply, if you want to pray for a more unified campus, that’s a fine thing and entirely your business. Don’t, however, try to project your values onto others, and in the future try harder to respect the views of those who believe differently from you. After all, if you’re going to ask Jesus to help unify this campus then, to use an old Yiddishism, zol gornisht helfen.
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