Professor done with organized religion

Photo Courtesy of Whitney Bauman

Vanessa Gallardo /Contributing Writer

Photo Courtesy of Whitney Bauman

At a young age, Whitney Bauman, assistant professor of religious studies, gave up on religion.

Reared in an Episcopal Church, Bauman became very involved with the youth group and choir. But he challenged everything he was taught, questioning theology and the idea that Christianity was right and all other religions were wrong. Things got worse when Bauman was 16.

“Growing up in the South—if you’re different at all—religion is not very nice to you,” Bauman said.

The choirmaster, who Bauman was very close to because of his involvement in the choir from such an early age, was fired for being gay.

Bauman said the priest at the time accused the choirmaster of doing things he had never done. Bauman was in awe as the church community split over the issue.

“After that, I was kind of done with organized religion,” Bauman said. “I decided that whatever existed was definitely not to be found in any church.”

About three years later, while studying psychology at Hendrix College in Arkansas, Bauman found himself reading philosophy. The questions these readings asked and discussed inspired Bauman to look for answers.

“They asked and taught me in ways that didn’t necessarily involve some sort of long, grey haired guy in the sky,” Bauman said.

Before he knew it, he was enrolling in a religion course titled “Religion, Animals, and the Earth.”

This course addressed how religious ideas—whether Christian, Buddhist,

Muslim, or Jewish—shape the ways that we think about and treat other humans, animals and the rest of the natural world.

For the first time in a long time, Bauman found himself thinking that “perhaps religion isn’t all that bad.”

He continued to study religion, graduating with a master’s in theological studies with an emphasis on ecological concern from Vanderbilt, and then earned a doctorate in theological and religious studies from the Graduate Theological Union.

“We all question religion. People have a natural tendency to wonder and question things in life,” said Danielle Kong, one of Bauman’s current students. “If we didn’t, science wouldn’t exist.”

Kong and Luis Figueroa, a current youth leader at a local church in Miami, say it is better to question your religion, no matter what religion that may be, than to just believe what you are told and take it as it is.

“By asking questions about religion, we’re able to better understand our own as well as other religions,” Figueroa said.

Bauman recently went to Jakarta, Indonesia, where he taught and studied the hybrid nature of religion in the largest Muslim population in the world.

Bauman said the people in Indonesia practice a form of Islam mixed with Buddhism and Hinduism as well as local practices.

The mixture of religions has occurred over time through globalization, he said. This process of globalization has become one of Bauman’s main focuses.

While teaching globalization to American students, Bauman tries to get across the fact that we are consuming the world around us.

While discussing globalization in Indonesia, the students have inadvertently taught him as the ones who have lost their trees, rainforests and natural resources in the globalization process.

However, this process is “not all that bad,” Bauman said. It allows us to connect and share our ideas with people from around the world.

Globalization and religious hybridity are both important topics Bauman covers in his classes, but his job is not done unless he has sent a life-changing message to his students.

“We are born into historical traditions of meaning-making, and we can reject those and make our own or we can buy into them,” Bauman said. “However we choose to make meaning, we should take responsibility for how that then affects other people and the rest of the natural world…”

This story was researched and written for JOU 3300 Advanced News Writing taught by Dr. Fred Blevens in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. You can see this and other class work by going to thenewswave.org

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