"Old time religion" baffles, comforts PSU students
By KAREN BOUGHTON
Collegian Staff Writer
"If God did not exist, it would be
necessary to invent Him."
—Voltaire
Penn State students' attitudes about
religion are just as profound ,' as
Voltaire's. Their enthusiasm for
religion; however, is debatable.
In the laid 60s, the "Jesus movement"
swept college campuses. According to
"Christianity Today," the movement
begin in the summer of 1967 when
"hundreds of young people forsook
drugs, free sex, occultism, and Eastern
mysticism to follow Jesus." •
Recent studies, however, indicate this
enthusiasm for religion-has apparently
diminished on campuses in the '7os.
"Christian Century" magazine stated
that "institutionalized religion is held in
low regard by the majority of • college
students today." A 1973 study showed
that only 28 per cent of the college
students surveyed indicated that
religion was a "very important personal
value, "a decrease of 11 per cent since a
previous poll in 1969.
The religious attitudes of students at
Penn State, as seen by professors and
the clergy on campus, contradict some
of these statistics. Most of these people
feel religious interest and attendance at
services are on the rise at University
Park.
Professor Yoshio Fukuyama,
Religious Studies Department Head, has
noticed a declining enrollment ,in
religious studies classes. This decline in
fall 1972 ended a peak of interest which
began in the late 60s. •
Professor Fukuyama • feels the
enrollment in religious studies classes
declined because of the type of student
on campus. "Students are more career
oriented now. They'd rather take
courses that prepare them for a job,"
-
said Fulalyama.
Despite this declining enrollment,
courses in Eastern religions still attract
students. These courses have the highest
enrollment of all religious studies
classes. Professor Fukuyama explained
why students tend to take courses in
religions other than their own:
"Students may be afraid to study their
own religion because they may find
there is more to their religion than they
thought. They may even find that their
own religion is, not the right one for
them. Students, however, can take an
Parishes
Women
By JANIE MUSALA
Collegian Features Editor
A young priest knelt at the altar of Manhattan's Riverside
waited
Church on Reformation Sunday last November and
waited to receive communion from the Rev. Carter Heyward.
As he sipped wine from the chalice held out to him, the young
priest dug his fingernails deeply into Heyward's hands.
Heyvk%ard winced, but said nothing, not wishing to disrupt
the sacred ceremony, Only when Heyward began to bleed did
the young priest stop. Looking at Heyward coldly, he slowly
whispered, "I hope you burn in Hell.' ;
As a recently-ordained Episcopal minister, 27-year-old
Carter Heyward had a problem. Her sex.
Heyward's drama began on July 29,_1974, when she and 10
other women deacons defied 1,900 years of church history and
tradition to become the first females ordained to th 9 Epis
copal. priesthood. The controversial ordination, which took
place in the diocese of Philadelphia against the orders of its
presiding bishop, brought to a head one of the most fiercely
debated issues in the three-million-member Episcopal
Church. •
One month after the 11 women were ordained, the Episcopal
House of Bishops comparable in church authority to the
U.S. Senate held an emergency meeting at O'Hare Inter
national Airport in Chicago. Charging that the women had
failed to be approved for ordination by the bishops in their own
home dioceses and that the ordinations were performed by
other bishops who had no formal jurisdiction in the
Philadelphia area, the House of Bishops declared the or
dinations invalid by a vote of 128 to 9.
But Heyward refuses to believe that the decision was made
strictly on legal grounds.
"If over there was a bunch of people qualified for or
dination, it's us," she argued. "If we were men, we'd have
been ordained a year ago, three years ago, 50 years ago. All
we lacked was male anatomical appendages."
In a recent interview with Ms. magazine, Heyward said she
wants straight talk from the House of Bishops:
"I'd rather have a bishop say to me, 'Look, I just can't hack
this; I got upset at the idea of a woman priest.' But when they
spout off about how our ordination is strictly a law-and-order
issue, that's poppycock. It's strictly a woman's issue,"
While many of the 11 women continue to perform their
priestly duties, Presiding Bishop John M. Allin has asked their
no further action be taken against them until the question can
be decided once and for all at the ChurCh's General Con
vention in 1976,
The issue threatens to tear open this year's biennial
meeting. It has the potential, many . church leaders say, to
either make or break relations between the Episcopalians and
their closest relative, the Roman Catholic Church.
While the Episcopal bishops maintain that Church law is
unclear regarding the ordination of women, Catholic Canon
968 plainly states that "only a baptized person of the male sex
may receive Holy Orders," the Catholic ordination rites.
Although Heyward believes that ordination of women in
both faiths is inevitable, she is unwilling to wait. .
"The God I believe in is calling women to the full ministry
right now," Heyward told the Ms. reporter. "You • don't
respond to God by saying, 'Well, okay, but I'll wait until
everybody else is ready for it.' "
Heyward and her 10 companions are not alone in their fight
against second class status and male-dominated church
leadership.
Two years ago, Mary Daly, author and Boston College
professor, was the first woman to deliver a sermon at the
Harvard Memorial Church. When she had finished, Daly led a
walkout, protesting the Catholic Church's attitude toward
women. Asked if she had left the Church, Daly replied, "The
Church has left the modern woman."
Though most major Protestant denominations have of-
Collegian living
the
daily
Eastern religion course like Buddhism
and know that they do not have to get
involved. There are no Buddhist temples
here that they could go to if they decided
they wanted to practice Buddhism. It is,
therefore, something interesting to
study not something the student has to
practice.!'
Father Leopold Krul, one of the Catho
lic priests on campus, said that students'
attendance at Mass has increased in
relation to the '6os. He estimated that
3,200 out of 4,500 students attend Sunday
mass. There are 9,100 students who have
Identified themselves as Catholics in the
University records, but Father Krul said
half of them are expected to go home
each weekend. •
Father Krul is pleased with the at
tendance at, daily masses. He said at
tendance has increased from about 75
per day in the '6os to 125 a day now. "I
think this is a very good sign of interest
in religion. These students are not being
forced to come on weekdays. They want
to come."
According to Father Krul, the Roman
Catholic Church as appeal 'to some
students. "Throughout time the Catholic
Church has maintained that it is Christ's
church. The Church puts down rules on
which to hang onto and many people,
including students, need this today," he
said.
Many -students come to Father Krul
and question their faith. He said he is
glad about this because it shows "they
are thinking more seriously about God in
their lives."
Problems concerning peer group
pressure and worldly talk confuse many
students, in Father Krul's opinion.
"They hear everyday that such things as
shacking up, abortion, and, fornication
are okay. This confuses many students
on just what is right and wrong," he
said,
He believes that ' most Catholic
students tend to keep their religious'
beliefs to themselves. It is wrong, he
thinks, that ,"Catholic students do not
seem to give solid witness of their faith
to other people as they come in contact
with them everyday. They believe that
religion is a private affair."
The Rev. -Robert Boyer is one of the
campus ministers involved in the United
Ministers in Higher Education which
serves seven denominatiOns
Presbyterian, Methodist, United Church
of Christ, Baptist, Mennonites, Society
and pulpits favor males;
still occupy back pew
ficially opened the doors of ordination to females, less than
five per cent of all Protestant ministers are women.
The 10-million-member United Methodist Church, for
example, has ordained women since 1956. However, in 1971,
less than one per cent of its 40,000 ministers were female. A
similar percentage holds for the United Presbyterian Church,
where 107 women can be found among the denomination's
13,000 ministers. Even in the two-million-member United
Church of Christ, which has ordained women for more, than
100 years, less than three per cent of the Church's 9,000
ministers are women.
Traditionally, women have been discouraged from breaking
into major institutions not by law, as one minister com
ments, but by attitude. The church is no exception. "So much
of what the church does is just a reflection of society," says
the Rev. Richard L. Christensen, pastor of St. Peter's United
Church of Christ in State College.
In some denomications, women were actually better off
years ago than they are today. In 1908, 20 per cent of the
ministers in the Church of the Nazarene were women. By 1973,
that figure had fallen to six per cent,
"Wives, be, subject to your husbands,
as to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife as Christ is the head of
the church."
, "While the Church was once considered progressive in its
treatment of women, it now is found to be reactionary," wrote
the editors of Christianity Today in 1973.
According to a 1975 report from the Auburn Theological
Seminary, educational training was not always required of a
minister. But as seminaries became established and the
ministry became a respected profession, women were quickly
excluded.
Even in denominations such as the United Church of Christ,
which routinely accepted women into their seminaries, a
subtle pressure directed women away from the pastoral
ministry and encouraged them to become directors of
Christian education;
"Women seminary graduates were glorified Bible school
teachers," Rev. Christensen says. "This was absolutely un•
fair, but those were most often the only jobs they could get,"
Revently, however, women are - entering the nation's
seminaries in record-breaking numbers. And they are a new
breed of women.
In 1974, 40 per cent of the freshman class at the United
Church of Christ's Andover Newton Theological School in
Massachusetts were women. Within two years, 700 women
already qualified as ministers. The Lutheran Church in
America approved the ordination as late as 1970. But already,
one-third of the students enrolled in the Church's two major
seminaries are women, one minister estimates.
In the next few years, large numbers of women seminary
graduates will flood the job market. And; unlike female
graduates of an earlier period, these women will not be
satisfied to teach Sunday school, direct church choirs or
sponsor bake sales.
They were trained for the pastoral ministry, and that's what
they want, says the Rev. LaVonne Althouse, a Penn State
graduate and one of the handful of ordained women in the
American Lutheran Church.
Whether they will get what they are after is a different
story. And that is when the real trouble will start.
of Friends, and Church of the Brethren.
The Methodist and Presbyterian
religions involve the most students at
Penn State. There are no church ser
vices for these religions on campus, but
students attend the churches in the area.
Rev. Boyer said the late '6oi brought
rebellion against formal religion, but
that the last few years there has been a
return to church and formal religion. He
said students are "idealistic, but frus
trated by the economy and world situa
tion." •
"Most students take a vacation from
their religious orientation while they are
students," said Rev. Boyer. "Students
do not get Involved with religion
because their religion was their family's
concern. They, come here without any of
their own religious sense."
The Rev. Boyer also sees the students'
problems in coping with life on campus.
"One problem students have is how to
enjoy being a student," he said. "It's
hard to see how anything they do here
—From a letter of St. Paul
to the Ephesians
relates to their religious orientation.
Other problems we try to deal with is
how to help people feel they have some
worth, and how to counteract loneliness,
which is a major problem on this
campus."
The United Campus Ministry, of which
Rev. Boyer is a part, tries to help
students with their problems by offering
programs like the Buddy Program, in
which Penn State students spend two
hours a week with an elementary, or
junior high school child, "Seminar in
Silence," a Free U course where people
learn to meditate, and residence hall
programs such as "How to Become a
Virgin" and "I Love You vs. I'm in Love
With You."
The Rev. Boyer said these programs
are helpful to the student because
"although they may . not be brought
back to church, it reminds them that
they should be involved in some
disciplined effort, which may turn out to
be religion."
In a 1974 survey of 700 persons in the United Church of
Christ, 68 per cent of those questioned said they would choose
a male pastor over a female one. Typically, residents of large
cities, persons over 60, and those with no college education
found it hardest to accept a woman pastor.
But even when a similar survey was taken among a more
liberal group of students, teachers, college deans and
magazine editors, the results still did not show an over
whelming acceptance of women. Sixty-two per cent said they
would agree to hire a female pastor.
As one unidentified editor put it: "Mentally my mind says
yes. Emotionally I hesitate, and theologically, I don't know."
"Things are so structured culturally that people
automatically look for a man in a position of authority," the
Rev. Christensen explains. "But there's going to be a real
stink in the United Church of Christ and in the United
Presbyterian and the United Methodist Churches when a lot of
the women now in the seminaries can't get jobs."
At present, only 10 per cent of the women ministers in the
United States have parishes of their own. As one Baptist
minister puts it, "We have always ordained them, but we have
not always employed them."
Protestant women are not the only ones frustrated by a
male•dominated church.
According to Monsignor Andrew McGowan, head of the
National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors, Catholic
nuns became increasingly dissatisfied with their situation
after the Second Vatican Council, Rev, Vincent O'Keefe,
second in command of the Jesuit Order, explained the post-
Vatican sentiment to feminist Betty Friedan during her recent
visit to Rome:
"All of a sudden the roof fell in. The nuns running the
schools, the hospitals, the colleges, doing the work they
were tired of taking orders from creepy old men who knew
nothing about women except to keep them at a distance, as a
danger, the temptation to sin,"
While Catholic seminary enrollment was down 55 per cent
since 1985, McGowan reported that
.enrollment in schools
which train women for the sisterhood dropped by 81 per cent.
From 1984 to 1974, the number of Catholic priests declined by
less than one per cent. In that same 10-year span, the number
of sisters fell by 22 per cent.
Anne E, Patrick of the National Assembly of Women in
Religion suggests that the shortage of nuns is due to the
Church's refusal to adapt to the changing status of women.
Despite the declining numbers of nuns, "Church leaders have
yet to demonstrate in a significant way that they are con
cerned," she says,
Patrick says, for example, that the National Bishops
Conference recently gave 8500,000 for a study of the American
Catholic priesthood. Even though four times as many nuns as
priests are leaving the religious life, when the National Sisters
Vocation Conference wanted to conduct a similar study of
women in the religious life, they received $4,000.
"Sisters were and still are 'minors' in Church law, subor
dinate to men at all levels of the Church Structure," says
Sister Annette Walters, a leader of the Sister Formation
Movement.
Father O'Keefe warns that the Catholic Church .cannot
afford to view the situation lightly: "You can't make a go of it
without the nuns. You have to meet them on a profound level.
You do it with them or it won't get done, the work of the
Church."
Even at the Second Vatican Council, which was to eliminate
much of the narrow-mindedness of the Catholic Church,
women were excluded. In her 1968 book, "The Church and the
Second Sex," Dr. Mary Daly states that women -were not
permitted to attend the sessions until the fall of 1964, two years
after the Council convened. At no time, Daly says, did women
have a voice in any decisions that were made.
(continued on page 8)
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He also said that "religion and church
cause negative feelings in students but
they can relate to and want to talk about
good and bad."
Rabbi Chaim E. Schertz, director of
the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, said
Jewish students comprise 6 per cent of
the total student population at Penn
State.
According to Rabbi Schertz, 30 to 50
students attend services regularly at
Hillel. "This is an increase over the last
•couple years," he said. "Those that have
an interest in religion to begin with,
come to services regularly. It is very
hard, however, to generate religious
interest in students who have negative
feelings toward religion. Those who have
no interest at all must be turned on to
religion by an emotional experience or
their intellectual curiosity."
"One of the facets of the Jewish reli
gion that appeals to students is the Jew
ish sex laws," said Rabbi Schertz. "Most
religions are very negative and
repressive towards sex. The Jewish
religion, however, hds a very healthy
attitude toward sex. Students may also
find that what they thought were novel
ideas have been expressed by Judaism
for years."
Rabbi Schertz finds that students
come to talk to him about Judaism. He
said there is an increase in those in
terested in finding out about Judaism.
He also finds that students who are in
termarrying outside of the Jewish faith
have much difficulty in coping with this
situation. "Also there are the routine
problems such as not wanting to take
exams on Saturdays and having dif
ficulty in keeping to the dietetic laws,"
he said.
Students' feelings toward religion are
as varied as the views that have been
expressed by those who come in contact
with students at Penn State.
One Jewish student said her religion is
not just a religion; it's a way of life.
"It's a close-knit group with the common
bond of being a minority," she said.
She keeps her religious beliefs to
herself. "That's one thing about'
college," she said. "People force their
religion on you." '
"A religion should not involve itself in
social issues. A religion is what you
choose to believe in you shouldn't be
under any strict rules," she added.
"Christ's teaching about a life
hereafter and that one day we'll all be
tfiL
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ii vtlAK , 4g?
! } h`" •
"The myth of Eve as Adam's rib and
the images of women as temptress,
virgin or mother had more to do with
keeping us subordinate than almost
any other factor operating in the course
of Western history."
Feminist author Sheila Collins
Friday, April 2, 1976 7
saved is what appeals to me about my
religion," said one Catholic student.
She also said, "I'm not a strict
Catholic, but I'm not eating meat on
Fridays and if someone questions me
about my religion I'll throw answers
back at them."
She said attending a Catholic school
for 12 years influenced her religious
beliefs, but she does find weaknesses in
her religion. "I think priests should be
able to get married and you should be
able to go at any time during the week to
fulfill your obligation of going to mass,"
she commented.
Jan (sth-speech pathology) was
christened a Methodist, went to a
Presbyterian church when she was
younger, but now attends Methodist
services. She changed churches because
she liked "the openness and pleasant
ness of the Methodist church."
structured. I don't think going to church
proves that you are a Christian. To be a
Christian you believe in God and you
pray."
Barry Taerbaum (12th-folklore) said,
"My desire to practice my religion is
increasing as I become more aware of
my Jeitishness. I feel I want to keep my
ethnic identity, and my religious identity
follows that. As I meet more Jewish
people, I feel like I want to be more in
volved than I am."
Barry said he is very open about his
religion and ethnic background and
some people tend to think he is too proud
of his ethnic heritage.
Stef is a Catholic who goes to church
once every three months. Her reason for
not going to church regularly is "when I
.was going to make my Confirmation, I
was made to memorize 100 questions
from the catechism. Then the nun scared
us by saying the bishop would throw us
out of the church if we didn't know the
answers to the questions. This was the
first thing that turned me off of my
religion."
Stef also said, "My family made me go
to church when I was younger and I don't
like anything that I'm forced to do."
She said nuns and priests should be
allowed to get married and the Catholic
church should not involve itself in
controversial issues such as birth
control.
Stef added a reflective thought about
religion. She said, "Sometimes I think
that man created God, instead of God
creating man."
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