Using the Power of Religion for Positive Change

Dr. Gregory E. Sterling (PhD, GTU 1990) is The Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School.

As a graduate of the GTU and Dean of Yale Divinity School, I know that religion is a very powerful force in human lives. It can work for humanity or it can work against humanity. What I think the GTU offers is an opportunity to think across the lines of specific faith traditions to help us think about how we find answers to the big questions of our times.

I have a colleague, Gus Speth, who was formerly dean at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. In a BBC radio broadcast, he once said something to the effect of (and this is not an exact quote), “I used to think that the greatest problems that we face in terms of the environment were the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and climate change. I thought we could solve those with thirty good years of science, but I was wrong. The greatest problems we face are greed, apathy, and a lack of initiative to actually address the problems that we know exist. We scientists don’t know how to do that.”

And I would say to Gus and to others: That’s what religion can do. Religion can motivate people and move them to act in interests that may transcend their own personal interest to a broader communal interest. And that’s what I think needs to happen—not within the framework of one religion or two, but across the board. And that’s what I think the GTU offers: a chance to think across the board and address those issues.

One thing I have always greatly appreciated about the GTU is that it is deeply interreligious, with a very broad cross-section of religions represented in the faculty and student body. That kind of religious diversity helps you to think globally and beyond a single religious tradition, something that is necessary if you are going to take religion in in the 21st century seriously.

When I was pursuing my PhD at the GTU, I was a student of both ancient Christianity and ancient Judaism, and it helped me not to think of those in a parochial way, or within a hermeneutically sealed frame, but rather to try to think of them as they related to the larger world. This was actually the focus of my dissertation. I will often point to the role of Judaism and Christianity in the Civil Rights movement of the sixties or think about the movements in Great Britain and the United States in 2000 with the year-long Jubilee and the efforts to provide debt forgiveness for developing countries. And to this day, I still try to ask those same kinds of questions, both in my scholarship and as Dean of the Divinity School here at Yale. Questions like, how do we intersect and interact with a global community?

I believe deeply in the work the GTU is doing, and I believe anyone who is interested in or who appreciates the power of religion to move people would as well. Not only am I grateful for the education I received, which introduced experiences and opened doors that I may not otherwise have experienced, but also I know that to address the most critical issues of our time, we need to move people—not just in one religious tradition, but in multiple religions in a global context. This is why I give on an annual basis to the GTU, the potential for what this community can do is enormous.