A few weeks ago, I received a letter that changed my life forever. It read:
Dear Krista Dalton,
On behalf of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University, I am delighted to offer you admission as a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religion, beginning in the Fall 2013 semester. I am also pleased to inform you that you have been named a Dean’s Fellow, the highest honor conferred upon entering graduate students in the Department of Religion, in recognition of your impressive credentials as well as the promise that your department identifies in your future development as a scholar, pedagogue, and researcher.
My eyes blurred as I read the words, my head spinned, and I all I wanted to do was run down the halls shouting my good news. I was finally settled in a PhD program, at a prestigious school, with full funding.
But then the feelings I have long accepted as “the story of my life” arrived in force.
You see, my whole life the message from the Christian adults around me has been the same: Scholars have no place in the Church.
I remember the day as a young girl when I raised my hand oh so eagerly to debate my Sunday school teacher regarding a passage in the book of Luke. I had no idea what I was doing, only that what my teacher was saying didn’t make sense to the way I was reading the text. But when my teacher told me to be quiet, that I shouldn’t “say such things,” he effectively crushed my spunky 8 year-old spirit.
Then came my youth group phase. I was the academic kid, involved in all sorts of nerdy clubs, and eager to learn more about the biblical text. I dreamed of college, becoming a Bible major, finally “understanding” it all. But I was surrounded by a series of reprimands: “God’s ministry is more important than college” “There is nothing a scholar knows that the Holy Spirit can’t reveal to me” “We must come to Jesus like a child, not like a Pharisee.” The summer I left for college, I was the only student in my youth group to do so.
Finally in Bible College, I thought I would have a place. But I soon learned there were boundaries: questions I couldn’t ask, interpretations that were too far. Now it wasn’t the church versus academia, but my professors versus those “liberal scholars.” You know, the scholars at conferences, who doubted the authorship of certain Pauline epistles, who embraced different textual interpretations, those scholars had no place in Bible College.
And now at the biggest moment in my life, I feel like I have to hide.
Yes, I am one of the “them.” Those scholars who “can’t tell you anything” “who seek to destroy your faith” “who have no regard for the Bible,” yes, I am one of “them.”
I have no grand scholastic contribution with this post. I have no scathing critique and/or answers for the Church. Instead, I give you my story. I allow myself to be vulnerable and share how the words of so many Christian leaders in my life have deeply affected me. I expose to you the inner voice, planted within me time after time, that tells me there is no place in the church for me.
Those voices from my past are still there. They are still present in the Church today. There is still a suspicion and unease around biblical scholars. My own family has at times joined the refrain, repeating the anthem: “God did not intend the Bible to be a mystery solved only by the experts; your words have no place here.”
And so I ask, is there room in the Church for ME?
