Do Jesuit schools turn students into atheists?

Do Jesuit schools turn students into atheists? July 23, 2016

As media report on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine’s ties to Jesuit institutions, I guess this joke was inevitable.

Kaine attended a Jesuit high school and served for a time with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

I know enough Jesuit-educated people who are no longer involved with religion to get why the joke is funny.

I would like to push back on a few points.

First, Jesuits run a number of schools and colleges that, either by design or evolution, cater to an elite constituency that is seldom Catholic, Christian, or even religious at all. Plenty of people who care nothing about the depth of Saint Ignatius’ spirituality send their children to Jesuit schools for the prestige or the reputation for academic rigor and quality. To say it another way, many young people who went to Jesuit schools but are now atheist elites in business, academia or government were never very religious to begin with.

Second, many Jesuit-educated secular elites regard their teachers and priests with great honor and respect. Even though they are disconnected from religious communities, they think of Jesuits as the very best of what faith can bring to scholarship and service. Relatively fewer, I would confidently say, credit Jesuits with pushing them from belief to atheism.

My third point is really just a personal anecdote. I began a doctoral program at Georgetown University as an agnostic with a modest amount of hostility toward religious faith, and toward the Catholic Church in particular. I was assured that Georgetown’s affiliation would not unduly interfere with my scholarly pursuits.

Quite happily, as it turns out, the Jesuits did encroach on my education. Though I only had one priest as a professor, he was a model Jesuit and easily one of the best teachers I ever had. Almost from the start, Georgetown’s religious identity and its dedicated commitment to people of other faiths warmed me toward religion in general, and to Georgetown’s Jesuit tradition in particular.

As someone who studies and writes about faith in public life, I am very grateful to approach my subject with openness and some appreciation rather than hostility and scorn.

While I am not a practicing Christian in any meaningful way, I bristle at the assumption that Jesuits turn students into atheists. For me, their influence in the opposite direction has been significant.

Image credit: Pixabay
Image credit: Pixabay

I have written appreciatively about Georgetown’s approach to controversial issues here. I also wrote a piece about belief and doubt for The Washington Post.


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