Word: germer
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...Mattie J. Germer ’03, that was exactly the matter. Raised Lutheran, she had briefly considered converting to Catholicism in high school, but eventually abandoned the idea. She stopped going to church completely and considered herself an agnostic. “I thought religion was a sham,” she recalls. “An interesting sham, and a culturally relevant sham, but not something I really wanted to believe...
Last year Germer took a religion elective with Diana L. Eck, professor of comparative religion and Master of Lowell House, where Germer lives. Though she says her initial motivation was to get to know her House Master and to enroll in a “cushy elective,” she found that she was doing her religion homework before anything else. She eventually added religion as a joint concentration with government, her chosen field, but says the readings in the religion tutorial, which focused on “religion as a psychological crutch,” as she puts...
Last summer, while interning in Washington, Germer began spending time with other rising Harvard juniors who were also working in the city, three of whom were committed Christians: Halvorson, Grizzle and Heather A. Woodruff ’03, another leader of Christian Impact. Germer, who says she had been going through difficult emotional times with her friends at school, began asking questions about their faith and their lifestyle...
...just answered her questions,” Woodruff remembers. She says she told Germer, “I don’t know if this is how you feel, but this is what I feel like in my life. This is what I believe. This is what I know to be true in my own life. I’ve seen God work radically in me and do things that I couldn’t do on my own. And I’ve seen His love...
This past fall, her curiosity piqued, Germer came to Grace Street Church with Grizzle and Woodruff. She had begun to shift away from her political involvement on campus and from the friends she had made there. “I thought [church] was going to be totally nerdy, or be all like, ‘I love Jesus, you should love Jesus too!’” Germer says, adopting a high-pitched, mock-passionate voice. “And it wasn’t like that at all! These people are smart. They?...