Religion's role in public life and the university

Religion and its role at the university level are not usually mentioned in the same sentence.  On Nov. 19, Dr. Richard Rosengarten, Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago, was the keynote speaker at the 11th Annual Interfaith Conference to discuss why religion should be incorporated in a university setting. 

Rosengarten started out the lecture with an anecdote about a colleague who often spoke about religion between the 1960s and 1980s and how it affects our society.  To prove that point, his colleague would use the local newspaper and show how each of the stories on the front page had to do with religion.  He then said how even though it seems like a "parlor-trick" to us now, the point was that "religion matters more than we realize." 

"In the world we live in today we don't need to have parlor tricks like that," said Rosengarten. "We really understand religions' force in the world, and the front page is literal testimony to that fact, often in ways that are vexing and troubling." 

Rosengarten used the Latin poet Horace's quote, "to see all the ways of humanity," to explain the university's mission. He also talked about how to "create a space to think and talk about religion in a very different kind of world" and thinks that it is a "new kind of challenge." 

However, Rosengarten was also confident that there are tools available that are exciting and interesting to facilitate that discussion.  Rosengarten explained how  he believes that there is a place where religion, public life and the university intersect.  He emphasized that this discussion was limited to the American experience, and acknowledged that this left out many other world ideas. 

He used the tales of "Gulliver's Travels" to show the way people think when it comes to beliefs and values.  Rosengarten explained the part of the story when Gulliver ends up on the island of the Houyhnhnms (pronounced whinim), who are a race of horses, and how there is a system on that island only based off of reason.  Then there are the Yahoos who are "human-like" creatures and are considered to be lesser beings because they are not Houyhnhnms. 

Rosengarten talked about how Gulliver sided with the Houyhnhnms, even though the Yahoos look similar to himself, but the Houyhnhnms exile him after a meeting because they believe he is just a Yahoo with a brain and a potential threat to their society.  This story was used to show that being uncritical is a danger to societies in general.

"There is no better compliment or form of respect one person can pay the ideas of another person than to submit them to the most searching and rigorous criticism," said Rosengarten.  The purpose of the university is to make the people there aware of their surroundings and question why something is the way it is, even in the case of religion.