Page 30 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 3 Spring 2013

t’s one of those questions that just about every-
one asks and everyone at the School knows is
coming, whether from prospective families, alumni,
or the occasional reporter investigating the land-
scape of modern independent school life:
What does it mean to be a “religious school” in the 21st
century? The answer can be hard to find, and can make
individuals rejoice or retreat, depending on one’s comfort
level with discussing such issues. Religion is plagued by
its conflicting roles of bringing people together and its
potential as a divisive force.
“I used to think it was a great challenge to talk about
being an Episcopal school,” admits Rector Mike Hirsch-
feld ’85, who served from 2003 to 2006 as SPS director
of admission. “I used to be nervous
about what it meant when I was in
that admissions role. But now I think
our Episcopal identity presents more
opportunities than challenges. I think
there are people who see the name of
our school and say, ‘Wow. It could be
a Catholic school; it could be a really
religious church school,’ in a way that
we are not. The number of applications
hasn’t decreased, and nobody is citing
that our Episcopal identity is a prob-
lem. I think, rather, it’s a positive. Stand-
ing for anything presents challenges,
but also opportunities.”
Current Director of Admission Scott
Bohan ’94 is faced with the same under-
lying question about St. Paul’s and its
religious affiliation, with follow-up queries aimed at
understanding just what happens on those four morn-
ings each week when students and faculty face one
another in the Chapel.
“The fact that our name starts with ‘Saint’ pushes some
people away immediately,” Bohan says. “When they hear
we have Chapel four mornings a week, they are some-
times scared away. But if they truly understand what
we mean when we say we are an Episcopal school, they
become more comfortable with what we are doing.”
Prospective families are not being pushed away, ac-
cording to admission data from the most recent process,
which reported a 10-percent increase in applicants for
the 2013-14 session. That number, 1,580, is the largest
the office has ever seen.
Still, it’s not always easy to tackle the religion question.
“How St. Paul’s is different comes up all the time,” says
Bohan, “and our Episcopal heritage is one way we are
different. But parents want to make sure they have an
understanding of what happens in Chapel. If Jewish
families heard we were praising Jesus every day, it would
be different from what is really happening – readings
from Jewish or Muslim traditions, or a poem from another
tradition. We embrace all faiths – that’s who we are and
that’s what they need to hear.”
This winter, the SPS chaplains, as part of an internal
review of the Chapel Program, conducted a survey about
religion to which more than 65% of students responded.
That survey revealed that 74.2% of students identify as
actively religious, with 60.7% identifying as Christian
(21.08% Episcopal, 19.66% Roman Catholic, 9.97% Pro-
testant, and the remainder split between more specific
Protestant religions, including Lutheran, Methodist,
Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Unitarian).
Other declared religious affiliations include Buddhist
(3.7%), Hindu (0.28%), Jewish (3.98%), Muslim (0.385%),
and Zoroastrian (0.28%). Most
telling, however, is that 13.6%
of students identify as agnostic,
11.1% as atheist or atheist/
humanist, and 3.7% as none.
It’s within those percentages
that the challenge lies.
Rabbi Irwin Kula, who has twice
visited St. Paul’s from New York
City, including as a member of the
2013 Chapel Review Team, says
that religious institutions in the
21st century must meet the chal-
lenge of recognizing those who
are not religious. “None” is the
fastest-growing religious identity
in America, says Kula. The rela-
tionship between wisdom and
the practice of religion and human flourishing needs
to be explored, Kula explains, emphasizing the need for
St. Paul’s and other similar schools to create safe spaces
for this generation to reveal their deepest doubts and
uncertainties on the way to personal religious fulfillment.
“The biggest change in context for church schools
today is that we live in a multicultural and pluralist
society,” says Kula, who serves as president of the National
Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. “We are the
most religiously diverse country in the world, so what it
means to be religious in America has shifted. When you
have diversity and devoutness, the challenge is how to
create social capital. How do people preserve their par-
ticularity so it is not diluted in the diversity? How do you
use the diversity to actually build social capital? Those
are the questions religious schools are always asking.”
Chapel is one of the safe spaces to which Rabbi Kula
refers. A look at any of the weekly programs for morn-
ing services reveals a wealth of religious exploration,
grounded in the School’s Episcopal roots. In one week
in September 2009, Chapel services featured a reading
from the Islamic tradition to recognize the Muslim
I
The question
for schools
like St. Paul’s
is how to
appropriate
the tradition to
those changing
realities.
“
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