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In the thirty-sixth episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Jennifer A. Herdt, the Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics and the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at Yale University Divinity School. Herdt opens by discussing how the focus of her research, particularly as focused on the German traditions of Wissenschaft and Bildung can serve as means by which faculty members and students can engage in common moral conversations. Such conversations are often hindered by specialization and reductionistic organizational structures and policies. Herdt contends the university is a place in which the cultivation of expertise is rightfully needed and highly valued. She also asserts, however, we need to create pathways between curricular disciplines as well as between those disciplines and the variety of co-curricular offerings. Those pathways then allow specialization to be cultivated in environments that can also fulfill their commitments to whole person education. Herdt transitions to sharing her experiences as an undergraduate and how a love for biology then also found expression in a love for theology—a love that found its fullest expression in Christian ethics. The most recent form of that expression, one that also draws upon insights from biology, is found, for example, in Herdt’s forthcoming The Great Wheel of Being: Ethics Beyond the Human. Herdt explores how she weaves together her commitments as a teacher, a scholar, and an educational leader into a coherent understanding of the academic vocation and then closes by exploring the ways Christian ethicists and the Church can be of greater service to one another in the years to come.
- Jennifer A. Herdt’s The Great Wheel of Being: Ethics Beyond the Human (Yale University Press, 2026)
- Jennifer A. Herdt’s Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 2019)
- Jennifer A. Herdt’s Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
- Jennifer A. Herdt’s Religion and Faction in Kant’s Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Jennifer A. Herdt, the Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics and the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at Yale University Divinity School. Thank you for joining us.
Jennifer Herdt: My pleasure. Looking forward to our conversation.
Todd Ream: In 1963, Clark Kerr, then the president of the University of California system, offered Harvard University’s Godkin Lectures, which were eventually collected and published by Harvard University Press as “The Uses of the University”, a volume that has gone through five editions, and leaders such as Hanna Holborn Gray, the president of the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1995, contended was the most important work on the university published during the 20th century. Perhaps the most pointed claim Kerr offered in his work is today’s university is more aptly described as a multiversity, an organizational expression oriented toward greater division and subdivision than a university.
As a student of the Enlightenment and German Idealism, in what ways, if any, can the rapidly expanding curricular offerings populating today’s research universities converge as parts of a common moral culture?
Jennifer Herdt: Well, thank you. Just start with a, with, with the challenging questions right away. So since you connected the question with my research in German thought, I mean, I would say that there are two important concepts that come out of German reflection on education that are critical here. And one is Wissenschaft, so science, but a very broad notion of science that’s connected with the whole vision of the research university as specialized focused areas of research. And the other is Bildung, and I’ve written a book on the Bildung tradition. So Bildung you could translate as an ethical formation, but maybe the best way to think about it is the idea that education is about forming whole persons, so forming fully human people. And I think they’re both important.
So if we think about the research university today, I think there’s really no way around disciplinary specialization. We actually need and want those specialists to be out there, you know, finding the cancer cures and, you know, digging deep into their specific molecule that they’re researching.
The danger, though, is that the disciplinary specialization gives license to people to not take responsibility for anything but their narrow area of expertise. So it’s this idea that each scholarly sub, sub, sub-discipline is autonomous and doesn’t need to have any responsibility. And that’s where I think we really need this kind of complementary idea of Bildung, which even though it’s not directly connected to the old notion of the liberal arts college of the American early republic, it’s actually has something in common with it. So the early liberal arts, American liberal arts college was formation for leadership. Often it was, you know, leadership either for Church or for state. And the capstone course was a course in, in, in ethics, in, in moral philosophy taught by the president of the college. It was very formational.
And so the idea of Bildung is historically a somewhat different notion, but it’s still very much concerned with, let’s think holistically about what is involved in a flourishing life, how do we live together in flourishing ways. And how do we live together in flourishing ways. And that, I really think is the piece that needs to be in the conversation. So don’t try to undo disciplinary specialization, but let’s think about how, how whatever disciplines we inhabit, we are inhabiting them in ways that serve the common good and that enable people to flourish as whole humans.
Todd Ream: At the same time that disciplines have become more and more specialized, there’s also a rapidly growing investment in co-curricular programming that populates today’s research universities. In what ways, if any, can the same moral tradition which you’ve been describing be of service in terms of creating a common moral culture in which those offerings, those co-curricular offerings, can then be expressed?
Jennifer Herdt: Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting question because it can mean so many different things, co-curricular. Uh, you know, thinking about acapella groups and sports and also maybe Christian organizations at a secular university. So I’m just going to assume we mean all of those things.
Todd Ream: All the above.
Jennifer Herdt: Okay, all of the above. And I think that they play an important role in, in terms of, again, helping, helping students be whole human beings and keeping in view that they are not just a future workforce. So I worry very much about a notion of education that is so narrowed down to let’s think about the what the market needs in terms of workers. We should never lose sight of the whole human. And these co-curricular things are often all about the whole human, that we need, that we, that we need to be caring for our physical health, our mental health, our spiritual health in order to be learning and in order to be in, in a, in a healthy community.
Um, and in particular, I do think that at secular schools, to have sites where people of faith can be thinking intentionally about how what they’re learning in the classroom speaks to their ultimate commitments their faith commitments is really valuable. And, and we shouldn’t expect that to be something they’re getting in the classroom. So is that something that can be supplied from without? Absolutely.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Drawing from this same tradition then, are there ways in which we can create pathways for integration for those offerings that may be described, however diverse they may be, as co-curricular, also with the curricular components, so that what we’re offering students can come closer to approximating what we may mean by whole person education?
Jennifer Herdt: Yeah. Well, I inhabit a kind of special space at a divinity school, so we, we just introduced a new curriculum for our Master of Divinity students, where they’re not only they are, are they moving through their core courses as a cohort, taking the core courses together, but they also have an integrative seminar, which is really designed to give them a, a, chance to think about all of these pieces and how they relate together. So that’s a great model, and I think that that could be something that some of these co-curricular institutes could be intentionally offering to students. Something that is, is trying to be not just a space, an, an alternate space for thinking, but an integrative space.
Todd Ream: If I may, before we move on then along this note, and you mentioned the divinity school, can you describe then the living-learning community in which Yale Divinity School has recently invested?
Jennifer Herdt: Absolutely. Our Living Village. We’re very excited about it. So, and this is a, it’s essentially a dormitory, but it’s, it’s been constructed at the highest standards for environmental sustainability but also this, this standard, which is the Living Building Standard, has many dimensions to it, including that the buildings must be beautiful, and the buildings must cultivate community. And we don’t necessarily think of that as, “Oh, that’s an environmental commitment,” but that is how this standard envisions it.
And so in a host of ways, this is designed to encourage community. So for example, very large hallways with a whole wall of windows so that you actually want to spend time in the hallway talking to people instead of, you know, the typical hallway with rooms going off on both sides where you just want to get out of the hallway as quickly as possible.
Todd Ream: Closed doors as much as.
Jennifer Herdt: And a lot of the units don’t have kitchens, they use a shared kitchen, so you build community in cooking meals together and in eating together. And it’s only been open since this fall, but we are absolutely seeing how it does build community, and people love to be in these spaces. And it just, it gives you hope, gives you a sense of what’s possible just by thoughtfully designing spaces which we don’t always think about being so important.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. I want to transition now to asking you about your own story and your own journey in relation to the academic vocation. You earned bachelor’s degrees in biology and religion from Oberlin College, a master’s degree in religion from Princeton, and then a PhD in religion from Princeton.
To begin, I need to ask, what happened to biology?
Jennifer Herdt: All right. Well, sure. So I think my, you know, from early childhood, my, my two loves were thinking about and worshiping God and, and experiencing the natural world. And for me, they were also connected. I mean, I felt very close to God outside and wandering the woods and going hiking and sitting by the stream and, and so on. And so, I would say I did a lot more reading in theology when I was a kid and a young person than in biology. Biology was all about just actually experiencing the world.
But when I went to college, I thought, “Oh, okay, do something useful. I’ll major in biology.” So I started off with a biology major, and I really enjoyed studying biology and learning everything that has been learned about the natural world. I did discover after some summer jobs and lab experiences, that I didn’t necessarily enjoy biological research that much, felt very repetitive to me and uh, it just wasn’t feeding my soul.
Uh, and at the same time, I had kind of fallen into a second major in, in religion, just reading the course descriptions and just finding them absolutely irresistible. I realized that I had enough space in my schedule to add a second major and, and in a sense you know, without even having taken a class, I said, “I’m, I’m going to do that. I’ll do a second major.” And fortunately just had wonderful teachers and never looked back. Just absolutely loved that work.
And unlike the biology where I liked the finished product but not the process, I realized in religious studies, I just loved the process of reading and thinking and writing and discussing and, and so on. And, you know, at some point realized that a few lucky people get to do that their whole lives, and that I would see if I could give it a shot.
Todd Ream: As a kid then, as you said, who read theology, and I want to linger on that, as a kid who read theology uh, any particular experiences that accelerated that interest that then your undergraduate experience was able to provide you with more specific language and understanding and depth of understanding?
Jennifer Herdt: Well, I, yeah, I, I didn’t read a whole lot of theology. I read C.S. Lewis. You know, there’s so many people do find their way into theology through reading fiction of C.S. Lewis and then finding the nonfiction and finding that very exciting. And so that was certainly going on. And in seventh grade, I read the Bible. I decided I should do that from cover to cover so that I recommend that. At the age of 12, it really sinks in and, it’s a, it’s a great thing to have in your tool belt.
Uh, so yeah, I, I think, though, when I got to college, really, it opened up some new horizons for me. I remember just being excited by the line of thinkers that we would be reading in modern religious thought, so Lessing, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Barth, Bultmann. I mean, I just, I had barely heard, you know, I’d heard of these names and just was so excited to engage with them. And I really felt that I was finding people who were asking the questions that I had just, you know, thought of as we do, right, you know, as, as children are often very philosophical and theological and ask hard questions that the adults don’t want them to bother with. Uh, I found my people who were, who were asking these questions and making them legitimate to ask.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You mentioned authors there who proved to stimulate your thinking and help with that discernment. Mentors along the way, some of whom may have introduced you to these authors. I’ve got to imagine that I couldn’t have understood Hegel unless I was reading Hegel with somebody who could explain Hegel to me.
But yeah, any mentors that helped accelerate your discernment process in terms of your vocation?
Jennifer Herdt: Yeah, absolutely. I had two teachers who really stand out in my college days Gordon E. Michaelson, Mike Michaelson, who is a Kant scholar and the teacher of, of this modern religious thought class. Um, just incredibly smart and funny, and everybody loved his courses. And Gilbert Meilaender, who is a very well-known Lutheran ethicist. I took a few classes with him. Then only later after I graduated from college did I start to read his work, and he became kind of an influence on me after the fact. Um, but of course, it makes a difference when you know a scholar whose work you’re reading, you feel more of a connection.
So I was lucky to have those two, along with other remarkable teachers at Oberlin. And then uh, should I launch into the graduate school part of the story or…?
Todd Ream: Absolutely, if you would, please, yeah.
Jennifer Herdt: So at Princeton, just continued to have really wonderful mentors and teachers. And Jeffrey Stout, who is an atheist who thinks the Civil Rights Movement would have never happened without Christian leadership. Uh, and so he was just unsettling in all of the right ways, all of the best ways for me.
Victor Preller, who is a Wittgenstein, was a Wittgensteinian Thomist, introduced me to Thomas Aquinas and really formed my thinking in, in very, very significant ways and, and was at that time at, at Princeton, the most theological voice and so important for anchoring me theologically. And then Cornel West, who opened my horizons in, in all sorts of ways just one of the most remarkable, African American social critics of our era. So just to have that constellation of people to work with was, was really quite, quite significant.
I will say that by the end of college, I went through, you know, a crisis of faith, which is not that unusual to have happen in college. I felt that after Kant there weren’t really good options for theology, and that theology had kind of gotten into a sort of fideistic, irrationalist mode. I wrote my senior thesis on Kierkegaard. I, I mean, I loved Kierkegaard, but I did, I wasn’t sure that Kierkegaard offered a viable path forward. Uh, and so I was entering graduate school in love with the questions, but very unsure whether there were answers to be had. And it took me a couple years there to find my way back.
And I, and I think that it was really preparing for grad school, the summer before grad school, I read some Jeffrey Stout because I thought I should read the people that I’ll be working with. Because he was engaged with Alasdair MacIntyre’s thought, I read MacIntyre’s After Virtue. And I would say that that text was absolutely decisive in terms of giving me of new directions and new possibilities eventually kind of pointing me toward, very broadly narrative theology. But I had a new sense of possibilities for paths forward for theology.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. After graduate school, your first faculty appointment was at New College of Florida. And during that season in its history, New College as a public liberal arts college perhaps shared some characteristics and aspirations that were in common with your undergraduate alma mater at Oberlin.
But after five years at New College, you accepted an appointment at the University of Notre Dame. Would you describe the discernment process that led you to embrace that opportunity and that appointment at Notre Dame?
Jennifer Herdt: Yeah, well, you know, it’s true that New College had, had some commonalities with, with Oberlin, but sometimes you take the job you get out of grad school, right? And I was, I was actually very lucky. I loved New College. It was, the students were very smart, very quirky and they were not privileged. This was not a private college, this was a public college, and I loved that opportunity to work with students who so appreciated the opportunity to have a liberal arts education.
So I wasn’t really looking to leave, but I had the classic two-body problem, and my husband was offered a position at the University of Notre Dame. And Notre Dame was going through a period of very robust spousal hiring initiatives. And so I was offered the opportunity because there were a couple champions of my work in the theology department to join the theology department at Notre Dame.
I was very excited to go. I was excited to be in a faith-based university. It, it, I like to say that at Notre Dame theology is still the queen of the sciences, and that was a very invigorating thing to be able to explore. And because my graduate education had been in religious studies, it really was just an opportunity to dive into theology and to acquire a lot more theological education uh, even though I was, I was in the classroom on the other side of the desk. So I really embraced that.
Todd Ream: Thank you. After 11 years then at Notre Dame, you accepted an appointment at Yale University Divinity School, which is where you are still today. Would you describe that discernment process that led you then to the Northeast?
Jennifer Herdt: Yeah, absolutely, so Yale came knocking. Again, I wasn’t really looking to leave, but when they approached me, it’s true that I think I had always, idealized Yale at least since my graduate student days, that I had seen it as a place that was nourishing the kind of theological reflection that I found exciting and promising. So there that lure, I will say. And also that at Notre Dame, there was a sense that I would always be a little bit on the margins as a non-Catholic during a time when Notre Dame was very understandably doing a huge push to hire Catholic faculty members and retain its Catholic identity.
There was a sense that I would always be a little bit, you know, on the edges of the room looking in at, at all, all of the controversies. It didn’t really matter what side I took on the various debates. And that was frankly kind of convenient when I was an assistant professor. Uh, but then as-
Todd Ream: A junior faculty member.
Jennifer Herdt: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
But then as you go along, you start to feel as though you want to have a stake in these conversations. And so it seemed to me that Yale would be a place that would more reflect my own ecumenical Protestant identity.
Uh, and then there were personal factors as well. My parents were on the East Coast and so it was a chance to get closer to them.
Todd Ream: Thank you. From 2013 to 2015, you served as associate dean for academic affairs at the Divinity School, and then in 2015, you were appointed senior associate academic dean for academic affairs at the divinity school. After almost 20 years as a faculty member, what discernment process then led you to begin to embrace administrative responsibilities, which you still retain to this day?
Jennifer Herdt: You make it sound so scary.
Todd Ream: In some circumstances, it can be.
Jennifer Herdt: Well, it didn’t come out of nowhere. So I had then tapped for various administrative roles even at Notre Dame. So in that sense the way I’ve been prepared, and nor, nor has it been an unbroken thing. So essentially, I did two terms as academic dean and then extended it by two years because of COVID. So it became eight years, even though my intention was to do two terms, which would’ve been six years. And I had three years away. And then I’m in the second year of a new role as a senior associate dean of faculty affairs. So it’s a different role.
That I was not looking to do administrative work, and I said no multiple times, but it turns out that I’m not very good at saying no. Or another way to put it is, if you’re familiar with the Big Five personality traits, I’m very high on conscientiousness so really it was this sense that there is institutional work to be done, and someone has identified you as having the gifts, the skills, the traits to be able to do it well. I found that in, in the end, very difficult to say no to.
And over time, this did, this did take some number of years, but over time, I came to enjoy at least some parts of this work. So it is really gratifying to be part of a team that is working toward shared goals that I think are valuable. I mean, I’m very lucky to be at a school that I can identify with the mission and that the school is thriving and there’s a lot to be excited about. So it’s really very rewarding to be enabling that and to be enabling your colleagues’ work so that you’re not just focused narrowly on your career success, which unfortunately is a danger.
Um, and even if it’s not being drawn in by those external goods of, of pure success, even if it’s, it’s engagement with your students and your research, there’s a kind of narrowness to just being a faculty member. It can be kind of isolated actually. And so, you know, I’ve grown to appreciate that, but I wouldn’t want to give up the teaching and the research either. So I’m also grateful to have been in roles that have allowed me to keep all of those things alive.
Todd Ream: Thank you. For junior colleagues then who are considering whether or not their calling may include service as an administrator especially an academic administrator, what advice would you offer them?
Jennifer Herdt: Well, I think it’s great. Um, there are some people who, unlike me, really do feel a calling to this. And we’re lucky that there are some people who feel that calling, and certainly would encourage anyone who, who thinks it sounds appealing to grab the opportunity and try it out. There are so many ways to serve and, and you will learn a lot in any role that you do inhabit.
And for those who are more reluctant, well, at least take your turn. Uh, take your turn, serve, serve as we all should somehow take our turn at these responsibilities, and do your best and then see. Maybe, maybe actually you will learn to enjoy and, and find that you can flourish in these roles in ways you hadn’t imagined.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Despite the demands that come with serving as an academic administrator, your scholarly contributions have continued at comparable rates as when you were a faculty member, if not perhaps even at a greater rate. Um, in what ways do you structure your time then to exercise your calling as a teacher, as a scholar, but also as an educational leader?
Jennifer Herdt: Well, I think a lot of people will say this, that I, I got a lot more efficient after my kids were born. And then I got more efficient again after I started doing the administrative work because there was just no choice. So I had tended to be somebody who really over-prepared for my teaching, I’m sort of an anxious teacher. And so you just want to go over the material again and again and again, and you become more, more and more anxious. That didn’t necessarily translate into better teaching. I think I discovered that I actually taught better when I invested less time in preparing and was more responsive to the moment and to what was going on in the classroom. So that actually was a gift to discover.
And I think as, as far as the research is concerned, certainly a major challenge to find time for research but I am a staunch advocate of what I call brief, daily sessions. Uh, there’s empirical research out there that shows that the most productive writers are people who treat writing like walking the dog. You do not sit around and wait for large blocks of time. You don’t wait for inspiration. You do it every day on a regular basis no matter what And for some significant periods when I had young children at home and I was doing administrative service of a major kind, it might actually have only been 15 minutes the very beginning of, of the day, getting up early but even that amount of time allows you to stay engaged with your projects.
I think of it like you have a pot on the stove, and it’s on the back burner and it’s simmering. But as long as it’s doing that, then you can get back into it. Like, you don’t have to warm up the pot. It’s warm. The ideas are flowing. Um, there’s a, a, a trick that I learned, if you’re writing, stop writing in the middle of a sentence because then when you start, you’ll know at least know how to finish that sentence. Or I’ll sometimes end by writing just a couple bullet points of where I’m headed next, so that, again, when I start the next session, I don’t have to wait half an hour to figure out where I’m going. Oh no, I’m doing these bullet points. And, and so that has really been it, it has worked.
Todd Ream: In terms of what’s worked then, you’re the author of approximately 40 articles and 30 book chapters. And when you look back over that body of work, is there an arc to those contributions, themes that you might notice, questions that you have come to sort of return to and find maybe more compelling than maybe some others?
Jennifer Herdt: It’s a great question. It’s great to have a reason to, to look back and, and ask what it adds up to, and I wish I did it more often, so thank you for asking the question. I think that I have I mentioned MacIntyre’s influence on me, so I think that I have been concerned with some pretty basic questions all along the way. So questions about secularization. So I’ve been very interested in the history of modern moral thought secular moral philosophy in relationship to Christian theological ethics.
So a question like, was secularization inevitable? Did it result from wrong turns that were taken, theologically that were contingent, that might not have happened? Um, not so much that I want to write a counterfactual history, but I think doing, thinking through these historical narratives allows us to recapture possibilities that we might not otherwise be sensitive to. So that’s one.
Another is to ask whether Christian theology can avoid being fideistic, whether it can avoid just trying to insulate itself from critique, whether there are ways in which it can remain in conversation, um and, and living. So one of the critiques that’s sometimes made of McIntyre is that he thinks that you can defend the rationality of a tradition by showing how it can overcome its own challenges and the challenges facing other traditions. But that seems to require that traditions be these neatly bounded entities, that you have A over here in this sphere, in this bubble, and then you have B over here in that bubble.
And I’ve spent quite a lot of time in my career thinking about how these traditions are not bubbles and there is no pure Christianity that was cut off from other traditions and ways of thinking. And, you know, Christianity is formed from the confluence of, of Hebrew biblical traditions and from ancient pagan thought and, and that’s, that’s how it comes into being. And so trying to think about paths forward that are equally engaged, culturally engaged in that way.
And then just third and last, just looking back, I’ve been concerned with human agency human moral agency in relationship to divine agency, throughout my career in different ways. And so I think increasingly, I’m thinking about how can we understand human moral agency as a response to divine goodness, and how can we understand the world as an expression of divine goodness? So very, very basic questions, but in some way, I think they have fueled projects that end up being pretty specific and uh, about some things that may not seem on the face of them to be about those big questions.
Todd Ream: Thank you. To date, you’re the author of four published books. In November 2026, your fifth book will be released, speaking of human agency and divine agency, the title of that work being The Great Wheel of Being: Ethics Beyond the Human, a book that will be published by Yale University Press. Would you please offer an overview of the argument that you make in that book to begin?
Jennifer Herdt: So that book is in a way, you said, well, you asked me at the beginning, what happened to biology? Well, in a way, this is going back because I’m interested in that book in thinking about fundamental features of, of human moral agency that we share with non-human animals. And for me, this is significant because it does find a way of articulating that we are not, ethics is not a human, not merely a human creation. We’re not alone in the universe as ethical creatures.
I’m interested in things like empathy, things like cooperation, social roles, and social norms, even emotional reactions that express our social expectations of one another. So kind of fun, very basic features of responsibility, relationships that, that in humans become explicit, become reason-giving, become our ways of articulating why we’re acting the way we’re acting, and calling into question whether our reasons are adequate so it becomes this thing that is very cognitively sophisticated, but it’s rooted in something that we share with a lot of other, especially highly social animals.
I think we distort our ethical lives when we give them these overly cognitivist interpretations, and miss this sort of shared, shared part of the iceberg that’s, that’s under the water.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. In what ways, if any, then do you believe the Church stewards resources that are capable in an ongoing way of addressing even previously unforeseen challenges that may come to us in terms of morals or ethics?
Jennifer Herdt: Those resources, they ultimately come from God. The, the fact that the world is loved into existence by God, and the Church is a site of where human consciousness affirms that to be in the Church is to love the world that’s as, as it’s loved by God, and to try to respond to that love, and to invite others to respond as well. Uh, and of course, in particular, the Christian Church affirms Jesus as an expression of God, God with us, right, that, that coming to be of God in, in human experience, in human life. Certainly people of faith in the churches are stewarding something that is words of, of, of faith, words of hope, words of love that are so needed, I think.
Todd Ream: Yeah, that have been found in Scripture, but also in those who sought to explore and mine its depths and share them with the Church through now going on to three centuries.
Jennifer Herdt: Right. So I, I would say that I am engaged now in a form of what you could call natural theology, but it’s not a natural theology that’s trying to somehow be independent of revelation or independent of the work of the Church. Um, and I think it’s a form of natural theology that is rooted in patristic theology, so it’s very much rooted in a theological tradition.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As our time then now begins to become short, I want to transition to asking you about the contours of your calling as an ethicist and what practices have nurtured it, what opportunities have advanced it, and then, you know, what, if anything, perhaps has also proven to threaten it as you’ve sought to continue to cultivate it and develop it?
Jennifer Herdt: Well, Christian ethics is not flourishing as a field, which is a, a, a sad thing to say. Um, so I think Christian social ethics really was born out of the conviction that Christians have a responsibility to make the world more just, and I absolutely agree, and I feel convicted by that.
It’s not personally been what has fired me intellectually, and it’s not what I was formed by in my, in my education. I mean, you could just say I’m a bad ethicist. I wasn’t formed as an ethicist. I was formed more as a philosophical theologian or as a, you know, a broadly philosophical theologian, that may be the best category.
Um, and then on the other hand, so you think Christian social ethics, I think is, is very much was really designed to be an activist field of, of advancing, advancing a more just world. Then you think about Catholic moral theology, which unfortunately got very narrowly focused for some extended period of time on sexual ethics issues, and I think that, that was not helpful for the, for the field. So, so I think that, that, that’s not been generative, let’s say, for natural flourishing of the discipline.
But there are forces then beyond that, which have to do with decline of the humanities, decline of theological education, and the reality then is simply that more and more departments, more and more schools can’t devote a faculty position or faculty positions to Christian ethics or theological ethics. So that is obviously a sad thing because, it’s very important for people to be asking questions about how are we to live in relationship to what God has done and that’s essentially what I take to be the heart, heart of ethics is yes, theology does a lot of God talk, but how do we respond? How do we live our lives in response to that?
So yeah, I, I, you know, I mourn the shrinking of the theological academy and yet, I do feel that we have words of hope to speak that that the world needs, that the Church needs. Uh, so I don’t feel discouraged at all in my own calling, but I feel there are challenges that await my students, for example, and you don’t want to be training students who don’t have a future.
Todd Ream: Thank you. For those who then have been called to issue those words of hope, and perhaps therein lies one of the answers to the question I’m about to ask, what intellectual or moral virtues do you believe ethicists need to cultivate? And then what theological virtues for which, you know, do they need to pray?
Jennifer Herdt: Great. Yes. Well, I think a lot of intellectual humility, patience, perseverance, and curiosity, not the vicious kind of curiosity, but a love of learning that, that remains capacious and, and open and, and willing to engage with, with otherness, with, with ideas that challenge. So those are all, I think, critically important, not just for ethicists. I think they’re important for, frankly, probably for all scholars.
But I, I think maybe equally revealing is thinking about the, the vices that, bedevil the, the scholarly life. And there is just this perpetual danger of, of allowing the external goods to deflect appreciation for the internal goods. So the external goods of, you know, you just, you need to, to publish, and you need to get tenure, and you need to gain respect from your colleagues and and keep doing more of that and have your blog and, and this and that. And I think often people feel, “Wow, something’s missing of that passion that first drew me into what I’m doing.” Uh, and yet, what is really a vice becomes framed as, “This is just what I have to do.”
And because the tenure clock is a fairly long period of time, by the time people have job security, they have been deformed in, in ways that make them more selfish, right, more focused on their career as the top priority that actually runs against doing a generous institutional service, for example, because you know, they’ve, they’ve been told for these initial period of, of years often, “Prioritize your research. Don’t, don’t prioritize your students. Don’t prioritize the institution.”
Um, let alone, you know, nobody’s worried about whether you really love what you’re doing or that you’re really passionately engaged with it, so, so sometimes that goes by the wayside, and it’s, and it’s sad. So I think being aware of those vices of, of pride and vainglory and, and, and so on and so forth. In terms of the theological virtues, we need them all, right? I don’t think you could ever choose among the theological virtues. You need faith, you need hope, you need, you need love.
And, and it, it could be that at this moment where there’s really such an acute loss of trust in higher education and you know, I think that’s a moment for some corrective, some valuable correctives to, to take place and a, a recalibration of, of asking you know, okay, so yes, we know, you know, we know medical research is for the common good and so on, but, but there are other things that we’re doing for the common good or should be doing for the common good. How it that we are, again, forming whole persons, right? Assisting everybody to be each, each person, each student to become something more than just a member of the workforce.
Uh, and, and I think that for Christians, the virtue of faith understood as trust in God, right? Trust that God is holding, God is holding the world in God’s hands. Um, and that, that, that relieves anxiety. I think trying to do scholarship from a place of anxiety, anxiety about theological education, anxiety about the humanities, anxiety about one’s own sub-discipline, Christian ethics, we never are going to do good thinking from that standpoint of anxiety. So to be able to do that theologizing from a place of faith and hope and love is what allows us to do good work.
Todd Ream: For our last question then today, in what ways do you believe for those who persist in faith, hope, and love in what ways do you believe Christian ethicists can be of greater service to the Church, and in what ways do you think maybe the Church can even be of greater service to Christian ethicists?
Jennifer Herdt: Yeah. I mean, thank you. That’s such an important question. I think it, it does follow up nicely on this question of the, the vices of the academy because there are rewards within the academy of, of being very specialized and impressing your fellow scholars in ways that can distract from the really broader and much more significant questions of, well, how are we serving God’s world, right? How are we serving beyond the academy?
I think really honestly, just asking, just being reminded of that question often is, is, is important, so, and, and, and transformative, that people get distracted from what the stakes really are. Uh, I think it’s fine to find a place where your passions and gifts meet the needs of the world, but you really should find the place where your passions and gifts meet the needs of the world, right, and not just the needs of your, you know, your little tiny subfield. So it’s, it’s not just say, nuclear physicists who need to be asking how does my research actually benefit others? It’s ethicists, right. It’s theologians who, who may be doing something that seems kind of unintelligible to your average person in the pew. Um, and, and this is one area where I think the internet, social media, and so on can remind us, it can give us pathways into being in communication with that broader world.
So for those who feel alienated from the world of the academy, praying, praying for the academy is a good starting point. Um, and being alive to those who are attempting to reach out and communicate, and to, to be receptive to those initiatives and offer feedback that encourages scholars who are making those efforts to let them know that they’re being heard. I think that if, even if there are a few vital bonds of connection that are built, those can grow and, and be amplified.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much.
Our guest has been Jennifer A. Herdt, the Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics and the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at Yale University Divinity School. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Jennifer Herdt: Thanks so much, Todd. I really enjoyed the conversation.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
