Finding Things in Common at the Veritas Forum

The apprehension in Roone Arledge before the Veritas Forum began was plain. Religious clubs sat in groups, and students examined the handful of pamphlets and questionnaires they were given at the door rather than facing their classmates. I sat with friends, excited but affected by the somber atmosphere. My friend Alex tried to break the tension by joking, “How about, ‘what is the role of religion in a pluralistic society?’”
“What is truth?”
“Is there a God?”
“ ... and if so, what does he prefer—”
“Boxers or briefs?” asked Juan, who had been listening. We cracked up.
“Does God have a penis, and if so, how big is it?” I said, quoting playwright Eric Bogosian. A friend of ours, who is a practicing Christian, turned his head at the laughter, and we stopped abruptly. But our reaction betrayed us, and the friction grew.

The event began, and the panelists began defining the terms “exclusive religion” and “pluralistic society.” Dr. Mark Lilla posited that an exclusive religion is orthodox religion that has a well-defined set of beliefs and values that form a coherent, logical system, and he defined a pluralistic society as one that is, like ours, constituted of subscribers to many very different belief systems that must somehow be reconciled in political policy. Professor Andrew Delbanco and Pastor Timothy Keller were able to agree, with some commentary, and the moderator moved on to what she clearly hoped would be a more incendiary topic: evangelism.

Is there something about Christianity that is essentially missionary? Lilla and Delbanco tossed the question back and forth, and Delbanco asked whether there was anything wrong with wanting to convince others that what you believe is truth—or whether the prejudice against evangelists is actually a thinly-veiled prejudice against their vision of truth. He pointed out that the etymology of the word “professor” has its roots in the idea of professing to know something.

“But it’s not the same because religion asks you to accept things on faith,” I whispered to Alex.

“Yeah, that’s true,” he said. “ And professors don’t tell you that if you don’t believe them you’ll go to hell.” I thought it over—while teachers offer you ideas and hope they’ll appeal either to your experience or your sense of logic, in the U.S. there are no repercussions for disagreeing in an academic setting, whereas many Christian evangelists only offer the choice between believing them and facing eternal damnation. However, most nonreligious people maintain an ethical code that they can’t rationally justify that they try to pass on to their children and condemn others for lacking. With Christianity so malleable in the U.S., can it be treated as an elaborate justification for a system of normative ethics?

On stage, the moderator’s attempts to stage a brawl were proving ineffective. At one point, she turned a question to Keller after Delbanco and Lilla had treated it, and when he said, “I have to agree with them on this one,” she sighed and said, “Okay, I guess I’ll try again!” The audience’s laughter was painfully thin—her frustration seemed to resonate. The tension had given way to confusion—after all the whispered debate, were they just going to sit there agreeing about things?

As the conversation turned to politics, Keller volunteered that Christians who try to convince others to convert to avoid an unhappy afterlife, no matter how loving their intentions, have to take responsibility for the way their message is received. To what degree, he wondered, can we create public policies that we feel are for the best but that others resent? Any political policy we make is based on a belief system, and no moral belief system truly has a rational basis in an observable phenomenon, so to what extent can we justly create political policy based on religious belief?

Keller declared that religious belief is as valid a basis for policy as intrinsic ethical beliefs, but Lilla pointed out that certain religious convictions, like attempting to convert others to aid in their salvation in the afterlife, would be considered unacceptable in international relations as well as internal politics. The current presidential candidates all profess to be Christians but do so in a very broad way to include rather than exclude voters, and the panelists pointed out that evangelism and orthodoxy are very alienating terms (they agreed that Huckabee is an exception to this trend).

An audience member finally brought forward the question we were all waiting to hear: “Do you believe in absolute truth?” Alex nudged me. All of our earlier questions, except for the absurd ones, were being addressed. Lilla and Delbanco both argued that no absolute truth is possible, and even if it were, sorting it from popular misconceptions would be difficult. Surprisingly, Keller agreed with them. Astonished, presenter Dale Hanson Bourke asked him whether this view was at odds with his evangelical Christian beliefs, and Keller responded that he was trying not to represent his personal views, leaving everyone, including the professors, confused.

As the house lights went up, the atmosphere was one of bewilderment, disarray, and sleepiness. Keller, known for his energetic preaching style, seemed to be tempering his beliefs to avoid alienating his largely secular audience, and many who arrived expecting a fight were disappointed. Others, like myself, were inspired by the degree to which the three speakers seemed united in seeking understanding. With their accord in mind, much of the antagonism between the religious and the secular in America seems to arise from the adoption of beliefs for reasons other than the personal quest for understanding. I remain convinced that if everyone could approach theology and philosophy in this way, we’d see less schism and more of the respect and intellectual cooperation we saw on Wednesday. If we live deliberately, adopting only beliefs that we choose for our own reasons, and hold insight and practical solutions as our goals, then we will have everything in common.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.