Being a Wesleyan University chaplain draws some serious questions from people who have a sense that modern universities, especially Wesleyan, are “too” liberal and therefore unsuitable for religious people. Thomas Merton, Trappist, peace advocate, contemplative, became a Catholic while a student in the 1930s at Columbia University. It was then and is now, a challenging and creative, productive place, the very model of a modern major univerity and located in New York City no less.

Merton would have found even the modern Wesleyan too tame compared to Columbia in the 1930s. The diversity required of a university makes it possible for the mother of universities, the Church, to find a home. And what educated person can ignore the relevance of so much art in so many fields, so much literature, so much philosophy, so much engagement socially as well as personally within such an ancient and still abiding conglomaration of individuals, cultures, and communities?
Merton was born in 1915 {January 31 is his birthday} and died in 1968. If students today find him hard to read it is not because he is a relic but because he was ahead of us even now and because he encompassed so much in his truly catholic Catholicism. One student told me that he found Merton fascinating but that Merton was too much for him because of all the cultural references in so many different fields. Merton was the kind of person that university officials dream of attracting. Indeed, check out Columbia University’s website and search for famous alumni. Columbia is very glad to claim him today.

Tags: culture and faith, Merton, university