(PresidentialWire.com)- In August it was reported that Harvard University’s forty chaplains unanimously elected an atheist humanist, author Greg Epstein, to be the new president of the chaplains’ organization. Naturally, some people had concerns.
What kind of “faith-based” organizations would place a man with no faith in a position of leadership? This is like a vegan organization electing as their head a steak-lover who thinks vegans are deluded fools.
In an interview with the New York Times, Greg Epstein explained that there is a “rising group of people” who don’t “identify” with any religion. And those people still need to talk to someone or get support.
Then go to a psychiatrist or a counselor. Why go to a chaplain if you don’t “identify” with any religion?
Epstein explained that these people don’t “look to a god for answers.” Instead, they are each other’s answers.
With fortune-cookie responses like that, it’s difficult to understand how Epstein was elected unanimously.
According to the New York Times, Epstein teaches students “about the progressive movement” centering on people’s relationships with each other rather than a relationship with God.
Then he shouldn’t be a chaplain. This isn’t hard.
Apparently the New York Times report has rankled the Harvard Catholic Center and the Harvard Christian Alumni Society.
The Catholic Center’s director of marketing and media, Nico Quesada, said last week that the New York Times mischaracterized Epstein’s role in its report. Quesada explained that Epstein was unanimously elected to an administrative position only.
Epstein is nothing more than a liaison between the Harvard Chaplains and the President of Harvard, Quesada said, and in this role, he will have no impact on the Catholic Center’s mission.
Then why elect him?
Quesada was deployed because the Catholic Center received a barrage of angry emails from those concerned over an atheist becoming President of the Harvard Chaplains.
But both the Harvard Catholic Center and the Harvard Christian Alumni Society are blaming the New York Times for getting the story wrong, calling the report “misinformation.”
Jordan Monge Gandhi, secretary for the Christian Alumni Society, said the Times’ report was nothing more than an attempt to portray Epstein’s election as “a way to prompt secular triumphalism and to provoke Christian outrage.”
