Word: klingensmith
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...Klingensmith's junior year at Woodrow Wilson H.S.--a preacher from England arrived at the United Methodist Temple, and began to preach "marvelous fiery sermons," drawing big crowds on three consecutive nights. Each evening, while the sweat cooled on his brow, the minister held question-and-answer sessions with the congregation. "I would go and just sit," Klingensmith remembers. "As I was walking out of church one night the preacher accosted me, and told me he was God's messenger to me and that I was going to be a minister. I said, 'Well, what if I don't want...
Proof exists, in the admissions office file marked Klingensmith, of his longstanding plan to become, a preacher. "I wanted to be a minister before I came here, but I had also always been interested in pure academic studies. I came to Harvard specifically because I wanted to study Reformation history." He might have gone to Dartmouth, except that "Harvard had tutorials," and, "having grown up wearing Harvard sweatshirts. I thought this would be the place...
...this era, despite a national religious revival. Harvard does not do much at all about the problems of the illiterate ministry. "A lot of the people who want to become a minister know that before they go to college," Klingensmith says, and "frequently, and unfortunately, religious young people are not critically minded. They're not concerned with studying things properly and being introduced to challenging ways of looking at things that could impair their own religion." And so, they steer clear of Cambridge...
...Klingensmith, who says he arrived in Wigglesworth a "wishy-washy liberal Methodist," Harvard has meant substantial shifts in his religion. At first, eager for friends who were "both religious and could articulate exactly what it was they thought about religion," he "started associating with 'religious' people." With some exceptions, though, "most of them didn't really have things well thought out, and they were not tolerant of non-evangelical Christianity. And I've never considered myself an evangelical...
That in itself is something of a story, for if West Virginia is not the buckle of the Bible Belt, it's not far from it. But evangelicalism--or, more precisely, fundamentalism--has never much appealed to Klingensmith. "My Methodist church was liberal in its beliefs, and was often attacked for it; fundamentalists are a very bigotted bunch. My father's religion is generally undogmatic, and tends toward ethical, not theological matters," he explains. "The fundamentalist God seems to be an American: if he's not white, then he's a very nice Black man. An idiot. For all their...