Sanctum

Fall 2009
 Sanctum Staff
Stephanie Riederman
Editor-in-Chief

Josephina Aguila
Managing Editor

Learned Foote
Financial Manager

Avishai Gebler , Ray Katz,

Menachem Kaiser,Derek Turner
Contributing Editors

Rebecca Miller
Art Editor

Tamara Epelbaum
Layout Editor

Elana Riback
Copy Editor

Michael Landes
Publicity and Events

Adel Elsohly
Webmaster
 Sanctum - Fall 09
4 Editorial Note: Why Pluralism and Why Sanctum?
Stephanie Riederman
7 Muslim in America: From Mississippi to
Manhattan

Adel Elsohly
10 The Case for Hope
Derek Turner
13 A Happy Non-Believer
Joshua Weiss
16 Education, The state, and the fight to take
back America
Learned Foote
23 Tolerated Taboo: A Sociological Study
of Attitudes Towards Premarital Sex

Menachem Kaiser
30 A Paradox of Faith: Religious Submission
in the Verse of John Donne

Ray Katz

From Outside Cover: Rev. Abel White Leading a 7 A.M. Service at Moody Church on West Chicago Av-
enue, from Chicago Daily News, Inc.
From inside cover: Makarov, Vadim. Statue of Liberty. Photograph. Vadim1.com. Web.
Editorial Note:
Why Pluralism and Why Sanctum?
Stephanie Riederman

Had the founders of the Core Curriculum been present for my Lit Hum-inspired discussions
of the New Testament with my first-year roommate, they would have surely passed on in blissful
content. Like a photo-op for a college brochure, we both sat cross-legged on my bed in Carman.
While I described the way in which reading Matthew impacted my understanding of Jewish
values, she recounted her Catholic prep-school Bible classes. Her explanations of Catholicism
prompted a flood of questions on my part, while I similarly tried my best to convey esoteric
Jewish legal concepts. Within our dorm room that day, we seemed to create the elusive “safe
space” for inquiry that many of us arrived here searching for. It was all utterly illuminating.
Yet an attempt by a Jew and a Catholic to dissect the historical and ideological divergence
of our two religions can clearly get messy. Over the course of other similar discussions, I felt
uncomfortable articulating my understanding of Jesus as a Jewish reformer and not a divinity.
When I later questioned the purpose of establishing Jewish guilt for the death of Christ, a
palpable tension entered the room. Even between two close friends, posing tough questions that
get at the heart of ideological differences, rather than simply highlighting commonalities, can
prove challenging. It is often in these moments that discussion between different faith groups
falters, and that we retreat back into the familiarity and comfort of our own communities, at a
safe distance from such challenges.
The small-scale breakdown of communication among faith groups can all too often
mirror the history of religiously inspired conflict on the global scale. In turn, the general failure
of religious coexistence worldwide seems to bolster the broad criticisms of religion I have often
encountered from the unaffiliated, which maintain that religiosity only leads to divisiveness
and war. Some have continued to reason that the path to world peace necessitates the end of
organized religion entirely.
Despite the honest intellectual inquiry practiced by many in the university setting,
liberalism can often serve as a pretext for some of the most prejudiced judgments of religious

4
 Editorial Note

individuals, whether they be directed at the clothing one wears or the divinity one worships.
I would urge those secular members of our community who have not yet done so to seek
out religious segments of our campus community, for you might benefit from exposure to a
different perspective, just as religious students can gain insight from stepping outside their own
circles.
At the same time, much of the secular criticism directed at institutional religion is
understandable, for many of us bristle at the central role religion plays in American life today.
Though religious values and practices may prompt the devout to engage in universally lauded
acts of kindness or public service that benefit us all, the beliefs of some may be understood
to infringe on the rights of others when they direct political issues such as abortion and gay
marriage. Despite our official separation of Church and State, a minuscule percentage of
Americans would elect a president who openly declared atheism. “In God we Trust” still marks
our currency.
In opposition to the marked decline in religiosity throughout the rest of the Western
world, America stands apart. It’s not easy to tease through the intertwining historical and
ideological circumstances that have pushed religion to center stage in the United States, but
there it remains. Our theme for this issue, “City on a Hill,” explores the unique role of religion
in American society, which has until today prompted countless leaders to evoke the language
of exceptionalism, first coined by Puritan communities, as a pretense for America’s dominant
global role.
A far cry from the homogeneity and isolation of Puritan New England, Americans
today are increasingly diverse and are interacting with one another with greater frequency and
salience than ever before. Yet religious communities, both across the country and more locally
at Columbia, seem to exist in an environment of removed and wary “tolerance,” arising from
the opposing world views which separate us. We should not be satisfied with this state of
detachment, as Diana Eck, director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University reasons:
“Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and
proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in
place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division
and violence.” 1
Instead, dialogue that is aimed at pluralism rather than just tolerance illuminates the face of
ideological opposition, and forces us to continually evaluate our own beliefs–just as a casual
dorm room discussion unearthed a complex set of commonalities and distinctions between two
religions and inspired much personal reflection in the process.

5
 Sanctum — Fall 2009

Still, in coming together, we must understand and respect the need for individualism. Pluralism
should not mean the weakening of our own identities, nor is it an implicit acknowledgement
that all beliefs are true; it simply involves sincere engagement with one another. Therein lies
Sanctum’s mission:
“Students at Columbia are exposed to a wide array of academic and cultural outlets meant to push
boundaries and inevitably shape our identities. In addition, many of us seek to participate in religious dialogue
and spiritual introspection with the same intensity directed towards secular subjects. We hope to use the university
setting as an opportunity to gain personal insight and take meaningful steps towards pluralism by seriously
engaging students of diverge faiths. In establishing this publication, Sanctum hopes to fill a fundamental need
in our community–an undergraduate journal dedicated to the academic exploration of religion and expression
of the individual religious experience. By presenting diverse understandings of faith, this journal will facilitate
dialogue between both religious and secular students. Additionally, with the creation of an editorial board
representing a number of religious groups on campus, we hope to produce our publication while simultaneously
building a tolerant interfaith community dedicated to examining our diverse beliefs.”

Let the examination begin,

Stephanie Riederman
Editor-in-Chief

Note
1
Eck, Diana L. On Common Ground: World Religions in America. New York, New York: Columbia

University Press, 1997.

6
 Muslim in America:
From Mississippi to Manhattan
Adel Elsohly

Photo courtesy of Ronn Ashore

“I will not eat them here or there. I will not eat them anywhere. I do not eat green eggs and ham. I do not
like them, Sam-I-am.” As a Muslim kindergartener growing up in Oxford, Mississippi, this refrain perfectly
encapsulated my experience. At that young age, I don’t remember feeling singled-out as “Muslim” or learning
that Muslims don’t eat pork, but I do recall sitting in my kindergarten classroom as we read Dr. Seuss’s famous
tale while our teacher’s assistant prepared green eggs and ham. The TA divvied up the chartreuse-colored
dish, and handed it out in separate plates, but when she came to me, I refused it. She tried to convince me
to participate, but I continued to insist, “It’s against my religion!” At that moment, she must have dismissed
me as merely squeamish, but in retrospect, I may have been the first Muslim she had ever encountered. And
there I was, five years old and aware of being different but having no idea why I was different.
Oxford had a small community of Muslims—no more than 10 families, and I grew up in an Egyptian
household that was not especially religious. Neither my mother nor my sisters wore the veil, and we rarely—if
ever—talked about religion at home; those conversations were relegated to weekly Sunday school classes,
just like my Christian friends (for as few Muslims as there were, there were far fewer Jews). In the Bible

7
 Sanctum — Fall 2009

Belt, believing in God seemed to be a given; religiosity was something everyone articulated in order to fit in.
Naturally, I wanted to be religious as well, because I enjoyed the praise I received from family and friends- the
personal pride that came with assuming a devout identity. So I memorized chapters from the Qur’an and
whatever else that was asked of me. But my knowledge was no more than a set of facts. The deeper meaning
that came with understanding and faith just wasn’t there. On the surface, I almost fit in perfectly; I attended
the public schools and had a close group of friends, and I was content with being outwardly religious if it
meant I could fit in.
But high school proved to be a battle within, and in my sophomore year I truly began questioning my
sincerity in calling myself a Muslim—outside of the ritualistic fasting and prayer. What exactly did I believe?
As a student of the sciences, I struggled with the concept of religion, and indeed, I wondered whether or not
God existed. At the end of my junior year in high school, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and
it was in that moment of despair that I found myself surprised that my greatest comfort came from religion,
and with it, an awakening sense that maybe atheism was an inauthentic way of being. Soon thereafter, my
senior year began, and with it, the tragic events of 9/11. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people questioning
my religion and my beliefs—or at least the little belief I had—demanding answers. “What does your religion
teach? How can they justify what they’ve done? We thought your religion was one of peace.” I found myself
wanting answers to those same questions.
As I began college at the University of Mississippi, I started probing more deeply into the spiritual aspects
of Islam, and found myself reassured by the simplistic beauty of the Islamic concept of tawheed (literally,
oneness) of God. My thirst for more knowledge and greater understanding became unquenchable, and I read
every book I could find. I began memorizing portions of the Qur’an with a very pious Pakistani man in our
community, and his presence alone inspired me to search deeper within Islam for guidance. In him, I saw
a man who was rightly guided, and I marveled at how simple the world must have looked through his eyes.
These were among the most spiritually enlightening and fulfilling years of my life. For the first time, I felt
secure in telling others with sincerity that I was a Muslim.
Five years and three degrees later, it came time to leave Mississippi for graduate school here at Columbia.
I remember feeling excited at the prospect of getting out of town, meeting new people, and being out on
my own. However, upon arriving in New York, I felt substantially more alone and out of place than I had
expected. I no longer had my spiritual support system, and it seemed at every corner, there was encouragement
for me to lose the faith I had struggled for so long to attain. After a few weeks in the city, I realized the extent
to which I had taken for granted the ease and acceptability of religiosity in the South. And therein lies the
irony: I spent my younger years wanting—but not able—to be religious to fit in, and suddenly I found myself
becoming religious at the cost of fitting in.
Little did I know that a second wave of spiritual fulfillment would soon spill over me. Solitude enabled

8
 Muslim in America

even greater introspection and focus; it gave me the time to examine myself—without any outside influence—
and the determination to find comfort not only in knowing and practicing my religion but also in maintaining
steadfast faith no matter my environment. I could simply transcend it. Indeed, my first khatim of the Qur’an
(reading the complete book from cover to cover) was in my first year of graduate school. I will never forget
how meaningful those hours of recitation were, as I felt the words rolling off my tongue, and the subtle
rhythm touching my soul and bringing me to tears. Each chapter seemed to rock me to my very core.
Though a long way from Mississippi, New York today feels more like home than I ever expected. I find
comfort both as a part of the Muslim Students Association, a community that encourage me to increase in
faith, and as a part of a city that constantly challenges me to remain critical and constantly search inward. The
spiritual peace I feel today could only a exist as a delicate balance of the two, for as Muslim scholar Al-Tahwai
teaches “Islam lies between the extremes of excess and neglect, immanence and transcendence, determinism
and free will, and assurance of salvation and despair of God’s grace.”1

Notes
1 Al-Tahawi, Abu Ja’far. The Creed of Imam Al-Tahawi. Trans. Hamza Yusuf. Fremeont, CA: Rumi
Bookstore, 2007.

Princely Youth and Dervish, by Riza i-Abbasi

9
 The Case for Hope
Derek Turner

Photo Courtesy of Avishai Gebler

It doesn’t take much to remind me. A family losing everything by way of corporate greed,
the personal history of a woman who barely survived the horrors of the Holocaust, even my
endless list of unaccomplished goals, all serve as powerful reminders that I live in a world
that rarely gives me reason to hope. Sure, I occasionally experience moments of optimism
after overcoming a personal challenge or an encouraging achievement in a friend’s life, but they
quickly fade behind a deluge of injustice and failure in the world around me.
My time working for a nonprofit in Africa only reinforced my crippling hopelessness as
we faced endless obstacles in our attempt to bring basic necessities to poverty-stricken people.
Though there were indeed smiles when we provided practical help, there were countless masses
of people whom we just couldn’t assist. The cruel reality of my powerlessness brought on waves
of despair and apathy. It was tempting to sink into a mindset of seclusion, refusing to engage
life for fear that it would fail me. After all, why attempt a goal so insurmountable that it is bound
to prove a failure?

10
 The Case for Hope

Without a means to transcend the inevitable shortcomings of my environment, I was

destined for repeated failures and constant letdowns. Yet as I searched for a means to rectify the
negativity in the world around me, I slowly realized that in addition to my disappointment with
the injustices perpetuated by others, I also failed to meet my own ethical standards. Though I
lamented broken promises made by friends or cutting remarks expressed by peers, I was at fault
for the same damaging behaviors.
Struck by the extent of my personal shortcomings, I realized my own desire to
dramatically and holistically change myself in order to affect the world in a positive way. To do
so I needed an extraordinary power, not derived from a flawed and failing world, but a source of
truth that would allow me to overcome it.
All at once, my grappling with
suffering and injustice and my search
for truth illuminated my Christian
upbringing, which until then had
failed to truly resonate. The guidance
I yearned for had been right beside
me all along. The answer I found is
in Jesus Christ.
Through faith in Him, I have
gained two things I don’t deserve:
forgiveness for the hope I destroy in
the world with my own contributions
to the victimization of others; and the
privilege of being both a citizen of
this life and a child of God, without
having to abandon the former to
rejoice in the latter. Because Christ
suffered the punishment I deserve as
a result of my own corrupt urges, I do
not have to pay the highest price for
robbing my relationships, community,
and self of hope. Whereas before
I had no reason to battle through a
Interior of Notre Dame Cathedral. Photo Courtesy of
series of letdowns, now I can strive McCullagh, Declan.

11
 Sanctum — Fall 2009

ahead in life with hope for the future.

Because I have triumphed over hopelessness through Christ, I simultaneously feel a
calling to improve my surroundings. Just as Christ actively healed the sick and cared for the
poor, I too can contribute my own positivity and peace. The power of forgiveness enables me to
eradicate the hopelessness I encounter by helping others reach a point of freedom from which
they too can put an end to their suffering. The gift of redemption motivates me to minimize
actions that contribute to hopelessness and to do my best to actively display my newfound hope.
Though I am no longer weighted by the burden of a world of broken promises, manipulation,
and selfishness, I am called to empathize with that burden, to refuse to ignore it, and to do my
best to lighten the load of my fellow man.
Put simply, my faith in a person who came to Earth two thousand years ago, improved
the lives of the broken, and voluntarily endured unimaginable suffering to bring redemption
to all, gives me the remarkable ability to overcome my own pain. Instead, I live for His cause
and attempt to make the world a more hopeful place. Whereas I once struggled to justify
and coexist with despair, today I can focus my life on the Almighty, who can carry me to
great heights without failing to keep my feet on the ground and my heart with the people I
encounter every day.

12
 A Happy Non-Believer
Joshua Weiss

Photo Courtesy of Avishai Gebler

“Aren’t you depressed?”

A surprisingly common question I fielded upon informing more religious friends that I was moving
away from a life rooted in faith. But it was an understandable one at the same time. For most of my religious
life, I had seen the world through a prism of absolutes: There was Truth and Meaning in my pursuit of
spiritual practice and my observance of God’s law. Meaning, for me, came from God and, consequently, so
did happiness. So how was I to achieve happiness without believing in religion, they wondered?
As my friends saw it, without the notion of an eternal God, any meaning in life would eventually end.
Outside of a religious context, all the happiness I could possibly experience was merely superficial due
to its finiteness. Because it lacked predefined meaning, an atheist’s life could contain no meaning at all.
Instead atheism necessitated a nihilistic and utterly depressed world view.
Not only did atheism fail to infuse human existence with meaning, but a life without God could not
compel ethical behavior either. I understood religious ethics as a system which necessitated authority from
an eternal source, a giver of truth in the form of God or some similar omniscient figure. Without an all-

13
 Sanctum — Fall 2009
knowing external source instructing me how to act, how could morality be any more than a limited human
construct? In fact, another common question I faced from friends after first ceasing my observance of
religious laws usually went something like: “Seriously, if you’re alone, and no one’s gonna catch you, then
why not steal?”
Yet another good question: When I was more religious, I also felt perplexed by the notion of happiness
and ethics bereft of religious backing. The only atheist conception of the world I could fathom was an
existentialist one. Yet would this framework allow me to find meaning and morality in my life?
And then it just all seemed to fall into place. After studying Judaism intensely over a post-high school
year in yeshiva, I decided that a religious life wasn’t for me. I didn’t believe in it anymore, nor did it seem
like a lifestyle I wanted. Once I made this decision, the previously inconceivable happened: The terrifying
notion of not ascribing meaning to my experiences through defined absolutes became thrilling. Instead,
life became mine to define. I began deriving happiness from my own interests and not from those I was
told would give me happiness.
So how did I cope with the lack of the eternal or the absolute in my life? How did I find satisfaction in
the necessarily short-lived nature of any goal I set?
Truthfully, I only laughed at my previous fears, and my dilemma simply dissolved once I ceased
believing in those measures of fulfillment. Instead, I understood that the need for eternal goals and
absolute meaning arises when the religious adhere to those constructs in the first place. Once I stopped
believing in the absolute, yearning for absolute meaning in life became a silly notion to me. I was quite
content with the idea of meaning constantly shifting as my life progressed.
Nothing in life lasts forever, and nothing that generally gives me happiness has any great meaning in
the expanses of the cosmos. Yet this fact fails to prevent me from enjoying any relationships I foster or
interests I pursue that satisfy me on a more local level; for me, local satisfaction and local meaning are what
life became about.
Moment to moment, my happiness today is really no different than the satisfaction I had drawn from a
religious life. Thinking back, how often was I really happier because I thought my actions were connected
to some ultimate, all-encompassing God? Very rarely, if ever. Life has always been enjoyable, challenging
or interesting to me because of local steps I took to make it so.
The specific philosophies I use to satisfy myself with a secular life are not my point here. Neither is it
my intention to argue for an all-encompassing secular ethic. My hope is simply to present an alternative to
an eternal, spiritual definition of meaning. I would challenge any reader to look at his or her own life and
to consider this question: Do you really derive day-to-day happiness from a large, abstract system of belief,
or is your satisfaction derived from the relationships you build and the goals you work towards? Does the
awareness that the bases of our happiness are often transient, that they cannot last forever, really affect
the satisfaction that we derive in the first place? I would argue that most lives–secular or religious—are

14
 A Happy Non-Believer

fulfilling because of the short-lived relationships, interests or goals that make us happy.
Simply put, then, secularism has helped me see that life itself is a beautiful thing. It is short and worth
living to the fullest because of its inherent worth and opportunities for experience. I don’t see a need for
life to “mean” anything grand beyond the understanding we derive from living itself. In fact, my previous
belief in an absolute meaning deprived me of an appreciation of life’s wonder. Looking for something
deeper in life implies that life itself is unsatisfactory and not beautiful enough. I would argue that the
chance events that brought us here made us unfathomably lucky; they gave us the opportunity to do
nothing more than exist in the world.
So in response to an all too common question: I have been secular for about four years now, and no, I
am not depressed. Why don’t I steal? Well, that is more complicated and there are plenty of ethicists who
can answer it pretty well. Generally, I don’t steal because my life is happier when I don’t steal. So are most
lives. It might just be that simple.

Photo Courtsey of Avishai Gebler

15
 Education, the State, and the
Fight to Take Back America
Learned Foote

Photo Courtesy of Ave Maria University Youth Conference, 2009

My father told me in hushed tones once, as we drove in his car, about how the police initially refused
to release the sound recordings from the massacre at Columbine High School. The two teenaged killers,
he said, were joking merrily about the survival of the fittest as they walked through the hallways of their
school. The police, the Columbine school board, the American educational system: all prevent us—the
American people—from realizing the devastating implications of social Darwinism.
This culture is, roughly speaking, why my parents decided to homeschool me. They were not worried
about my death per se; when my father began to teach me phonics at the age of two, high-school
shootings were not yet a part of the public consciousness. Still, Columbine represents the nadir of a
flawed culture. For my protection, my parents created a different education, one that would establish
and nurture a more righteous identity, one that would stand apart from the corrupt aspects of modern
American society. In this way, homeschooling allowed my parents to create a protective environment.
My parents’ educational philosophy has picked up steam in the latter half of the 20th century, but it is not unique to
the modern era. Parents in the United States have historically struggled against the societal influences corrupting them

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 Home Schooling Movements

children. In Homeschool: An American History, historian Milton Gaither emphasizes the role education
played in the minds of the earliest American colonists. The community that would eventually be known as
the Pilgrims, for instance, traveled from England to Amsterdam in search of religious freedom. Once in
Amsterdam, however, the Pilgrims grew concerned that their youth would be corrupted by the permissive
influence of the city. When they came to America, Protestant separatists taught their children in their own
homes. The New World offered an opportunity for these communities to impart their own values to future
generations.
Despite its comfortable locus in the home, the home-schooling movement historically acquiesced
to substantial governmental intervention because the educational vision of individual families so closely
resembled that of the State. As the 17th century progressed, colonial governments passed laws that reached
into households and enabled tight regulation. One record from 1643 emphasized that the health of the
colonies depended upon “the well government and ordering of particular Families,” which—when properly
managed—would lay “the foundations of a family state.”1
Many of the colonial governments required their citizens to follow certain religious and educational
practices, and threatened to remove children from homes if parents did not fulfill their duties. Gaither argues
that this “symbiosis between family and state” was not surprising, for many colonists perceived the family
and the state as “analogous institutions, both created by God and grounded in a natural law of patriarchal
authority.”2 The “city on a hill,” which the colonists intended to build as an example to a fallen world,
depended upon the virtue and righteousness of individual families.
The modern homeschooling movement has developed a vastly different relationship to the American
state. Rather than utilizing the law and federal government to promote one vision of society within the home,
the modern homeschooling movement is predicated upon resisting the state’s intrusion into family life. It
is founded, in the words of Milton Gaither, on “self-conscious political protest against the government.”3
This shift began after the Great Depression when public schools underwent a “profound expansion and
standardization,” which later helped to provoke the counter-cultural homeschooling movement by the 1960s
and 1970s.4 Parents from all across the political spectrum, expressed anger and suspicion about the values
bolstered by public schools. At the same time, they found that the homogenization of public schools reduced
their ability to shape the curriculum. Leftist parents worried that public schools forced their children to
acclimate to a rigid and authoritarian establishment, and preferred communitarian households that practiced
organic self-sufficiency rather than relying on mass-produced technologies. Conservative parents, often
deeply religious, were disturbed by Supreme Court decisions that outlawed school prayer and Bible reading
in public schools. Indeed, sometimes they were motivated by racial animus and the deep-seated changes of
the civil rights era. The first homeschoolers, according to Gaither, shared a “pan-ideological commitment to
local, authentic, private life and contempt for establishment liberalism.”5

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 Sanctum — Fall 2009

For religious conservatives, changes in American society proved especially disturbing because—as
evidenced in colonial history and beyond—white Protestant Christians often enjoyed wide control over
the processes of government. In the past, religious conservatives had been politically active regarding issues
like alcohol and poverty, but usually aligned themselves with the government. Gaither suggests that as the
20th century continued, religious conservatives discovered that the “enemy had suddenly become their own
government.”6 Homeschooling for these people often implied reclamation of the government and the
country.
Rousas J. Rushdoony (1916-2001), an American Christian intellectual, represents an extreme version of
this philosophy of religious empowerment in the public sphere. Although few followers took his arguments
to their logical limit, Milton Gaither cites Rushdoony’s broad and effective influence on the homeschooling
movement. He called for a return to Biblical law, which he said should govern all nations, especially America:
the city on a hill. This law would be based on the Mosaic code, and would even apply the death penalty to
homosexuals or rebellious children. Rushdoony emphasized the distinction between man’s law and God’s
law, which he believed had grown further apart in America’s recent history. He believed that parents were the
best educators, and therefore testified frequently in court to defend education in the home.
It is partly through Rushdoony’s influence, says Gaither, that this segment of the homeschooling
movement has a “tendency to think of itself as a divinely guided instrument in restoring a Christian
America.”7 In God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission To Save America, Hanna Rosin describes
homeschoolers as follows:
Their parents raised them tenderly, not with the intention of sheltering them forever, but of
grooming them for their ultimate mission: to “shape the culture and take back the nation.”
It’s a phrase repeated in homeschooling circles like a prayer, or a chant, or a company slogan.
It shows up in homeschoolers’ textbooks and essays and church youth groups; their parents
whisper it in their ears like a secret destiny: There’s a world out there, a lost and fallen world, and you
alone can save it.8
What are the results of such an education? As Levi, a homeschooled child being interviewed in the 2006
documentary Jesus Camp, explains: “We’re being trained to be God’s army.”
In an essay titled “Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler,” Edward Said offers
insight into the dynamics of the homeschooling movement, though the author never broaches the subject
specifically. Rather he discusses academic freedom in the context of national identity, observing that in the
late 20th century there is a “greater sense that societies interact, often abrasively, in terms of who or what
their national identities are.”9 In our globalized society various factions compete against each other for
cultural supremacy.
Said recognizes the schoolyard as a battleground for these values, observing that “all societies accord a

18
 Home Schooling Movements

remarkable privilege to the university and school as crucibles for shaping national identity.”10 When education
is co-opted to serve political ends by forming a national identity, Said predicts two possible reactions: either
a thrust towards ideological diversity or a retreat into conformity. The university may in turn become a mere
tool of the state, educating students about the superiority of the dominant culture.
He describes his own experience in the Arab world in the wake of decolonization, and the “passion that
went into reclaiming educational territory.”11 After the “sustained presence in our midst of domineering
foreigners who taught us to respect norms and values more than our own,” he says, many countries emphasized
“Arabization of the curriculum, the Arabization of intellectual norms, the Arabization of values.”12
From the beginning of the homeschooling movement, American parents have been concerned with
the questions Said raises in his essay. The early Pilgrims were disturbed by the values inculcated in English
society, and instead sought a way of life where they could raise their children according to their own beliefs.
In the 20th century, religious conservatives observed that their values and norms were being torn down in the
classrooms, and therefore sought to remove their children from public institutions and raise them according
to a deeply religious curriculum that reflected their own identities. The story of homeschooling in America
is considerably less brutal than the colonization Said discusses in his essay, and any comparisons to his work
must necessarily be limited. Nonetheless, Said observes that struggles over education and national identity
have occurred across the globe in a variety of contexts.
Said describes the “hallowed” academy as fundamentally separate from arenas such as the “government
bureaucracy, the workplace, or the home.”13 It is clear, however, that the unique nature of homeschooling
shatters this assumption of separateness. Said says that the purpose of the academy is to “form the mind of
the young, prepare them for life.”14 However, homeschooling fulfills this purpose in combining the academy
and the home to train better citizens. A large portion of the homeschooling movement, in turn, is deeply
concerned with political and governmental questions. The homeschooling philosophy—“to ignite a vision
in America to help America return to her Judeo-Christian roots”—certainly speaks of political ends, as does
former president George W. Bush’s description of “a vision, which, when fully realized, will have a profound
impact on the course of our nation.”15
Both of the preceding quotations come from a book written in 2007 by Hanna Rosin: God’s Harvard:
A Christian College on a Mission To Save America. Designed for highly motivated homeschooled students,
Patrick Henry College features a student body with a superb SAT range, and a debate team that has defeated
that of the University of Oxford. “Their parents had sent them to Patrick Henry,” Rosin speculates, “because
they expected the professors to act as their substitutes and continue the education they had begun.”16 In
Patrick Henry College, a school of higher education, the limitations of household size for the homeschooling
model had been transcended.
Said references those who believe the university should “be wholly transformed into a place where

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 Sanctum — Fall 2009

students would be educated as reformers or revolutionaries.”17 Said first predicts that, when other viewpoints
are stifled in the tussle, universities will carefully adhere to the dominant ideology. This observation could
easily apply to schools like Patrick Henry. Mike Farris (founder of Patrick Henry College, and the Home
School Legal Defense Association), bemoans the intellectual waffling of professors who fail to hold fast to
the strict doctrinal outline set forth in his cultural model. As quoted in Rosin’s book, he says, “I don’t believe
students will be prepared properly to enter the world in battle if they are muddled in their thinking. If at
Patrick Henry the trumpet does not sound a clear call, then who will get them ready for battle?”18
Whenever this sort of one-minded devotion takes over, Said warns that “universities . . . became the
proving ground for earnest patriots.”19 At Patrick Henry College, Christianity became a barometer by which
the students and professors measured each other’s failings. “Roommates were afraid to talk in front of each
other,” says Rosin, and “friends became suspicious of friends.”20 Something unexpected, however, eventually
happened at Patrick Henry College, something precisely coinciding with Said’s definition of academic freedom.
In his essay, Said briefly discusses a man who provided strict instruction for Catholic schoolchildren. In many
ways, this man’s educational philosophy mirrored that of the homeschooling movement, but he too began
to express doubt.
[He] was arguing earnestly for a type of education that placed the highest premium on English,
European, or Christian values in
knowledge. But sometimes, even
though we mean to say something,
another thought at odds with what we
say insinuates itself into our rhetoric
and in effect criticizes it, delivers a
different and less assertive idea than on
the surface we might have intended.21
At Patrick Henry College, all of the professors
and students were firm believers in Evangelical
Christianity. But Said argues that “to make the
practice of intellectual discourse dependent on
conformity…is to nullify intellect altogether.” 22 Yet
the impressive level of intellect at Patrick Henry
could not be nullified. As the pressure to conform
intensified, nearly one-third of the Patrick Henry
professors resigned; Rosen quotes their criticism
of “an environment hostile to the teaching of the The Reading Lesson, by Knutt, Ekvall.

20
 Home Schooling Movements

Liberal Arts.”23 These were the very professors who challenged students—encouraging them to think outside
the parameters of their upbringing—and who found their classes wildly popular.
In a certain sense, homeschooling cannot help but fail. When the family and the academy are combined,
as they are in homeschooling, growing up itself becomes a journey towards academic freedom. A childhood
without homeschooling usually carries with it the unspoken rule that at eighteen, college will bring personal
freedom from the rule of parents. Consequently, if schooling and growing up are bound in the same
institution, the home, eighteen will become the year of personal and academic freedom. Homeschooled
children certainly do not always mirror the beliefs of their parents. While the children of leftist parents
sometimes became Young Republicans, young girls at Patrick Henry College became enthralled by Antigone,
Sophocles’ rebellious heroine. When education is defined wholly by the family—an entity even narrower than
the state—a child tends to dissent. The “family state” Gaither describes will eventually lose its coherency.
Gaither describes the homeschooling movement as a means of popular dissent from the “mass culture of
the modern liberal state.”24 Yet Edward W. Said additionally observes that the “search for knowledge in the
academy” can become the “search for coercion and control over others.”25 Throughout American history,
homeschoolers have been keenly attuned to this possibility. Milton Gaither suggests that homeschoolers are
“at heart deregulators, interested in maintaining their own autonomy and independence from government
or any other force that would impose limits on them.”26 If this is true, then homeschooling may fail in its
quest to create or reestablish a dominant national identity. But by challenging authority and promoting local
independence, it will succeed in another sense. In the realm of education, it will encourage self-determination
and thus diversity, and its students will join what Said describes as the “ceaseless quest for knowledge and
freedom.”27

Notes
1 Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (United States of America: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 9.
2 Ibid. 13-14.
3 Ibid. 2.
4 Ibid. 85.
5 Ibid. 95.
6 Ibid. 103.
7 Ibid. 137.
8 Hanna Rosin, God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission To Save America (United States of America:
Harcourt Inc., 2007), 17.
9 Edward W. Said, “Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler,” Transition, no. 54 (1991): 11,
http://www.JSTOR.org

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 Sanctum — Fall 2009

10 Ibid. 9.
11 Ibid. 8.
12 Ibid. 8-9.
13 Ibid. 5-6.
14 Ibid. 6.
15 Rosin 33, 154.
16 Ibid. 173.
17 Said, 6.
18 Rosin, 72.
19 Said, 9.
20 Rosin, 174.
21 Said, 16.
22 Ibid. 10.
23 Rosin, 262.
24 Gaither, 85.
25 Said, 18.
26 Gaither, 225.
27 Said, 18.

22
 Tolerated Taboo:
A Sociological Study of Attitudes
Towards Premarital Sex
Menachem Kaiser

Photo Courtesy of Rebecca Miller

Religious communities are often marked by their various rules, regulations, and encouraged behavior,
especially regarding sexual conventions. Yet, if the community is situated within a predominantly secular
environment– as many are–and its members are integrated into mainstream culture, then secular values,
including a relatively permissive stance on sexuality, will undoubtedly be at least partially absorbed. The
community’s de facto position on sexuality, then, will likely lie somewhere between the professed religious
doctrine and the prevalent secular attitude.
For instance, community members may readily acknowledge ostensible sexual taboos, yet may, openly
or otherwise, tolerate their violation. Tolerance and taboo of certain sexual behaviors are not mutually
exclusive positions. This study, through an exploration of the attitudes towards premarital sex in the Upper
West Side (UWS) Jewish Orthodox community, seeks to discern the domain of tolerance amidst a religious
prohibition. The UWS is a prime locale for such a study: The community is a fairly observant one, but

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has a decidedly non-insular life outlook; its members are regularly faced with the conflicts that arise from
living a religious life amidst secular sensibilities.
Abundant sociological studies have established a negative correlation between religiosity and premarital
sex. Pioneer in the field of human sexuality Alfred Kinsey noted that the religiously inactive, especially
females, were more likely to engage in premarital sex than the devout.1 Richard Clayton, too, found
religiosity to be negatively correlated to premarital sex.2 Sack et al. affirm these findings and point out
additional, indirect effects religion can have on premarital sex: Social groups are often largely determined
by religious background, which in turn profoundly influences sexual choices.3
Assorted studies, including the above and many others, have thoroughly examined the religious
individual’s sexual choice. There is, however, scant information on the religious community’s actual, rather
than professed, attitude towards the individuals who “misbehave,” which in turn informs the individuals’
decision. A central context of the premarital sexual decision for religious individuals has thus been largely
ignored. The hypothesis is that the UWS community, though ostensibly doctrinally forbidding premarital
sex, in reality tolerates it through various means and mechanisms.
To the reader unfamiliar with traditional Jewish mores, a brief introduction is in order. Orthodox
Judaism frowns on premarital sex; indeed, men and women are prohibited from touching each other
(excepting married couples, of course). However, among a significant subset of Orthodoxy, generally called
“Modern Orthodoxy” – of which the bulk of the UWS community is comprised – this prohibition of
touching (shomer negia) is regularly ignored. Nonetheless, there is a widespread expectation of premarital
abstinence, even among the Modern Orthodox.
To gauge the attitudes of the community, two separate tactics were employed. Firstly, a 13-question
anonymous online survey was posted on a popular community website (see figure 1)4 and was additionally
distributed through two separate UWS e-mail groups.56 The survey asked few personal questions, instead
focusing on the respondents’ perception of their peers’ behavior, aiming to assess the communal position
towards premarital sex. One-hundred-eleven responses were recorded, of which seventy-four were UWS
community members. Secondly, seven interviews with accessible lay members of the community were
conducted, and one each with a prominent UWS rabbi and a local synagogue president. The interview
questions were similar in form to the survey, but were less rigid and allowed for more instructive
responses.
Participants were eligible for the study if they met two criteria: (a) Be an UWS community member,
defined as either a resident in the physical neighborhood7 or somebody whose bulk of social activity takes
place there, and (b) self-identify as an Orthodox Jew.
The number of significant limitations inherent to this study must be acknowledged. The true
randomness of the sample is questionable, as it is likely that only those who frequent the website and/

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 Tolerated Taboo

or subscribe to the email lists were made aware of the survey. Despite requests to forward the survey to
others, few respondents apparently chose to do so. Some may have skipped certain questions, or even
avoided the survey altogether due to its mildly explicit language and nature, further skewing the results.
Additionally, participants’ lack of confidence in the anonymity of the survey may have impacted its
accuracy. The survey was somewhat superficial, sacrificing depth and length for ease and navigability. The
interviews are susceptible as well – the sample was selected purely by convenience, a far cry from a true
cross-representation.
Nonetheless, the survey provided the largest attainable sample–critical for an assessment of communal
Online Survey Questions
(1) Gender?
a) Male b) Female
(2) Do you live on the Upper West Side?
a) Yes b) No c)No, but the majority of my social activity takes place there / most of my friends live there
(3) How do you identify yourself?
a) (Modern) Orthodox b)Traditional c)Unaffiliated d) Other
(4) Which of the following [orthodox] synagogues do you attend at least monthly?
a) Ohab Zedek b) Jewish Center c) Young Israel d) WSIS e) West Side Kollel f) Lincoln Square Synagoge
g) Other synagogue
(5) On a seven-point scale from 1 (very critical) to 7 (meaningless), how critical are the following in order
to identify as an Orthodox Jew?
a) Sabbath Observance b) Kosher Observance c) Sexual Abstinence d) Synagogue Attendance
(6) As far as you know, roughly what percentage of your unmarried UWS Orthodox peers do (or would
be willing to do) the following with the opposite sex:
a) Hug/embrace b) Kiss c) Oral sex d) Genital Sex
[options: (i) Virtually Nobody (ii) Less than 15% (iii) 15-35% (iv)36-60% (v) 61-85% (vi) More than 85%]
(7) Should sexually active homosexuals be allowed in the UWS Orthodox community?
a) Yes b) No c) Other – comment box
(8) Should sexually active singles be allowed in the UWS Orthodox community?
a)Yes b) No c) Other – comment box
(9) Should single women be allowed to use the mikvah?
a) Yes b) No c) Other – comment box
(10) Are your unmarried sexually active Orthodox peers upfront about it?
a)Yes b)No c) Other
(11) How often does your UWS rabbi mention/admonish premarital sex? a)Never b)Rarely c) Once in a
while d) Often e) All the time f) Only in private
(12) Does the UWS Orthodox community tolerate premarital sex?
a) Yes b) No c)Other – comment box
(13) If yes (or other), please explain:
(Figure 1)

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 Sanctum — Fall 2009

attitude–in the limited time available. The interview responses proved useful, generally very similar to the
survey results, and they often lent a clarifying and supporting voice to the data.
Participants were asked, “As far as you know, what percentage of your unmarried Orthodox UWS
peers are having premarital sex?”8 Approximately 23% of respondents chose ‘Between 15%-35%,’ 24%
said less than 15%, 13.8% said ‘Between 36%-60%,’ and only 17% said ‘Virtually nobody’ is having
premarital sex.
Interviews offered similar information:
Respondent: Well, of course not everybody is having sex, but definitely a sizable minority is. And
everybody knows that.
R: It’s a known secret that some people are sleeping around.
Premarital sex in the UWS Orthodox community is fairly common, or at least highly visible, yet it is
far from sanctioned:
R: It’s okay, but not okay. I mean, nobody really cares, but you still don’t tell people. It’s so not socially
acceptable – it’s still a stigma. Sabbath Observance 1.44
The extent of the stigma was even
Kosher Observance 2.09
more pronounced on the survey:
more than 70% of respondents
Sexual Abstinence 4.32
claimed that their “unmarried Synagogue Attendance 3.73
(Figure 2)
sexually active UWS Jewish peers are
not upfront about it.” But in spite of their social apprehensiveness, sexually active singles appear to be
tolerated within an Orthodox framework. The survey asked, ‘’How critical is each of the following in
order to identify as an Orthodox Jew?’’ on a seven-point scale, one being the most critical, and seven being
meaningless. Sexual abstinence rated on average about a 4.3, remarkable compared to the other responses
(See Figure 2). In addition, relative to other religious injunctions, there is a marked tendency to accept the
unmarried sexually active as part of the Orthodox, despite the social taboo. Even synagogue attendance,
generally regarded as a communal or social–rather than religious–obligation, scored lower at 3.7.
This tolerance is even more conspicuous when contrasted with the prevailing attitude towards
homosexuality in the UWS. Over 60% of respondents answered “Should sexually active homosexuals
be allowed in the Orthodox community?” with a ‘’No.’’ Even among the 31% who said ‘’Yes,’’ nearly
half were tempered by comments explicitly rejecting homosexual behavior, or were merely acceptances
premised on a desire to ‘’reform’’ the homosexual. The following comments were typical:
R: Yes, but behavior is still problematic; doesn’t mean exclusion.
R: Yes, maybe he can be healed.
A similar question addressing the choices of unmarried, sexually active heterosexuals garnered nearly

26
 Tolerated Taboo

80% acceptance, with no notions of reform and few stated rejections of behavior. An UWS rabbi who
regularly sets communal standards while condoning or condemning certain behaviors. He thereby
discusses the distinction:
R: Would I reject somebody who has a weakness for pork? So why should I reject somebody who gives
in to his normal, physical desires once in a while? But homosexuality is another story…it’s a perversion.
We won’t forcibly remove him, of course. He’s still a Jew. But open acceptance? That’s condoning his
behavior, and we can’t do that.
Some of the disparity between attitudes towards premarital heterosexual sex and homosexual
relationship – even though Orthodox Judaism forbids both – can certainly be attributed to inherent
differences: Homosexual sex is not permitted under any circumstances, while the sexually active single
merely lacks a spouse. This distinction, however, explains only the community’s acceptance of the sexually
active individual – little is to be gained from ostracizing a temporary deviant – but fails to account for the
lack of criticism against the widespread, religiously-unjustified behavior.
Despite the intellectual vibrance of the UWS Jewish community, and the many institutions offering a
wide array of classes, events, and programming, there is a striking lack of discourse on premarital sex.9
Among the survey respondents, 85% visit an UWS Orthodox synagogue at least monthly, but nearly 45%
reported that the rabbi ‘’never mentioned/admonished sexual ‘’activities’’ and another 40% said the rabbi
did so only ‘’rarely.’’ This is certainly not due to lack of awareness of the issue. The following dialogue with
a synagogue president indicates the reluctance to publicly address the matter:
R: About 70% of our programming is geared towards singles, and the struggles they face as Orthodox
Jews in a modern, secular world.
Interviewer: Do you deal with the issue of premarital sex?
R: Not really, no. We’d like to, but we can’t do that. That’s a very sensitive, private issue, not really for
public consumption.
The lack of discourse is pervasive, extending beyond the synagogue. In 2005, the Orthodox Forum, an
annual convention dedicated to contemporary issues confronting Orthodox Jews, focused on the ‘’Singles
Crisis’’: the high rate of young unmarried Jews. The Forum (and subsequent book) professed to address
the “…sociology of the Jewish singles community… and the psychological and religious issues involved
in prolonged single-hood.’’10 Aside from a brief article recounting an interview subject struggling with
the prohibition of touching the opposite sex, there was, astonishingly, no mention, or even an oblique
reference, of premarital sex. Koby Frances, a City College doctoral candidate in clinical psychology
writing his thesis on the psychology of sexual-religious conflict in Orthodox single men, explained the
unwillingness in an email message:
The ambivalence and discomfort in how to address premarital sexuality…mirrors the

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attitude ‘We know and sometimes teach that this is wrong, but we turn a blind eye towards it
and don’t talk directly about it (or realistically) because it’s totally unrealistic and out of sync
with modern values (and secretly because we are super uncomfortable with it).’
Having absorbed secular values from the outside, the community experiences a profound discomfort
with any overt condemnation of premarital sexuality, yet normative Orthodoxy does not permit a liberal
stance on the matter. Synagogues, schools, community leaders, and rabbis therefore remain silent on
the issue, and, consequentially, there is little public discourse–another indication of widespread, albeit
undeclared, tolerance. Survey comments supported this:
R: The mere fact that people don’t discuss it much means that it’s tolerated.
R: It’s not spoken about in public because there is an underlying acceptance of it taking place.
Perhaps the most explicit example of premarital sexual tolerance in the UWS is the mikvah, or ritual
bath, policy. The precise prohibition of premarital sex and role of the mikvah is fairly technical: A
menstruating woman, married or otherwise, is considered impure and sexually off-limits until she immerses
in a mikvah. Single women have been traditionally unwelcome at the mikvah in order to discourage pre-
marital sex, and therefore remain perpetually impure and prohibited from intercourse. However the UWS
mikvah takes a different stance, as a community rabbi and long-standing board member at the West Side
Mikvah explained:
R: There is no ketubah (marriage document) check at the mikvah. This was deliberate policy. But it’s
not public information – if it got out, there would be an uproar.
Considering that mikvah use for single women is far from unanimously supported in the UWS (only 55%
of respondents said that ‘’single women should be allowed to use the mikvah’’) and that the vast majority of
contemporary religious authorities forbid it, the ‘’Don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy is an extraordinary measure
of tolerance, even approaching endorsement, of premarital sex, in spite of the taboo. It is noteworthy
that promotional material for the West Side Mikvah remains unambiguous: “Participation in…Mikvah is
a bond between husband and wife.”11
Although limited by scope and brevity, the study offers solid evidence of various forms of tolerance
of premarital sex in the UWS community. The hypothesis is upheld, but the picture remains incomplete.
A more thorough study, perhaps a qualitative assessment of various opinions and perspectives, is required
to gain a more precise measurement of the tolerance/taboo overlap within the communal attitude. The
effects of such tolerance on the individual are also left undetermined. But the recognition of a more
nuanced religious framework, where doctrine and actual attitude do not necessarily converge and the
boundaries of tolerance may be situated further than purported, are critical in any proper evaluation.
Clearly, communities–and religious communities are no exception–do not exist in isolation; secular mores
and values are inevitably absorbed, even–or perhaps especially–if they are opposed to the traditional

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community structure. This does not mean, of course, that the community’s values are negated or ignored.
Rather, room is made to maneuver: The community as a whole upholds its values while tolerating the local
and contained violations.

Notes
1 Kinsey, Alfred C. 1953, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female Philadelphia, PA: W.B Saunders Co.
2 Clayton, Richard R. 1969. “Religious Orthodoxy and Premarital Sex” Social Forces Vol. 47, No. 4
(June): pp. 469-474
3 Sack, Alan R., Keller James F., Hinkle, Dennis E. 1984. “Premarital Sexual Intercourse: A Test of
the Effects of Peer Group, Religiosity, and Sexual Guilt” The Journal of Sex Research Vol. 20, No. 2
(May): pp 168-185
4 BangitOut: Jewish Comedy, Culture, Events, & Classifieds. www.bangitout.com. 16 Novermber
2009.
5“WestSideNewYorkShuls.” Yahoo!groups. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
WestSideNewYorkShuls/. 16 November 2009.
6 “ jewishUWS.” Yahoo! groups. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jewishUWS/. 16 November
2009.
7 Bounded by 59th St. to the south, by Central Park to the east, by Hudson River to the west, and
approximately 125th St. to the north, encompassing Morningside Heights.
8 Questions of a more personal nature were avoided in order to attract more respondents.
Additionally, as mentioned, the study’s goal is to assess communal tolerance of premarital sex, and data
on communal perception, as opposed to actual incidence, of premarital sexual activity suffices.
9 Even the relatively wholesome online survey provoked some calls for its immediate removal.
Additionally, both the rabbi and synagogue president immediately requested anonymity when informed
of the study’s subject.
10 Blau, Rivkah, 2007. The Orthodox Forum: Gender Relationships in Marriage and Out New York,
NY: Yeshiva University Press
11 The West Side Mikvah. www.westsidemikvah.com. 16 November 2009.

29
 A Paradox of Faith:
Religious Submission in the Verse of
John Donne
Ray Katz
Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due, 5
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy; 10
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
-John Donne (1572-1631), Holy Sonnet XIV

“To escape the spirit of systems, the yoke of habit... to search by oneself and in oneself alone for
the reason of things...” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, that acute observer of American culture, in his
Democracy in America: “Such are the main features which characterize what I shall call the American
philosophic method.”1
Many things have changed since Tocqueville put America under his microscope in 1835, but one still
holds true: Ours is a culture of fierce individualism. We order personalized ice-cream flavors at Cold
Stone Creamery, design custom sneakers on Nike’s web site, and hire life coaches to help us achieve our
personal goals. We are trained to know what we want, to “listen to our hearts,” to “pull ourselves up by
our bootstraps,” to ceaselessly advocate for ourselves at every stage of life. Nowhere is the drive for self-
promotion and discovery more apparent than in New York City, that bastion of competitiveness, the

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 Paradox of Faith

traditional destination for those looking to “find themselves.”And nowhere in New York City, arguably,
is it more apparent than on Columbia’s campus. With the five boroughs and the vast resources of a
university at our fingertips, we go from class to internship to extracurricular activity, each of us following
self-tailored schedules and programs of study. We’ve been given four years of collegiate bliss—four years
to discover new interests and pursue old ones, to explore our identities, to re-examine our traditions, to
discover where our values lie. The world is our oyster. Opportunities to pry it open, to discover our own
personal bounties, are everywhere.
Given our environment, then, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the type of religious fervor
John Donne expresses in his Holy Sonnet XIV is one that the average 21st-century individual would find
hard to swallow. Using strong, violent language, Donne implores God to “break, blow, burn and make
[him] new” so that he may achieve spiritual perfection and merit God’s love. But even more unpalatable
than the force Donne deems necessary for religious fulfillment is the form religious fulfillment takes in
the poem, involving the complete submission of his personal will–the very essence of his individual
being–to the will of God. The modern individual, it seems, wouldn’t be as opposed to the idea of being
knocked around a bit as much as she would object to the complete nullification—even if it were a divine
nullification—of her individuality.
Herein lies the source of a fundamental disconnect between modern secularism and religiosity.
Religious values often seem to undermine the fervent individualism we preach and practice daily. Instead
of pouring our energy into self-exploration and advocacy, into developing the potential that lies within
each of our idiosyncrasies, religion mandates that those idiosyncrasies take a backseat to larger, loftier
commitments—or, in Donne’s words, that we be “imprisoned” by God. Perhaps even more important is
the sense that the unequivocal pursuit of set spiritual goals undermines the critical thinking that we deem
essential to our individual actions and personal philosophies.
Religious dictates are untouchable; they are never up for discussion. But the modern philosophic
method which Toqueville so deftly articulates, and which we value as a society, necessitates exactly this sort
of constant evaluation. We look down upon those who seem to repudiate any discussion or criticism of
the most important aspects of their lives, people who don’t seem to embody the Tocquevillian aversion to
a set of irrefutable givens In an age of fervent individualism, therefore, religion seems outmoded. There
is a sense that religious individuals, like John Donne, are stuck in the seventeenth century, in a backward
mindset which forgoes personal freedom and individual expression.
But is there really an inherent conflict between individualism and the religious expression of Holy
Sonnet XIV? John Donne, famed writer of the early seventeenth century, is known as a poet of privacy
and interiority. Donne declined to publish his poetry while alive, instead preferring to circulate it among
his close friends and associations. And reading his work, one senses that it is intensely personal. Always

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 Sanctum — Fall 2009

oriented inwards, Donne uses poetry as a way to ceaselessly probe his own psychology, its caprices and
contradictions,—and to achieve emotional and spiritual clarity through meticulous introspection. His
poems exist outside of any institution, away from the eyes of society; even his religious poetry seems to
be set not in church, but in a state of meditation, of personal communion with God. Donne’s poetry,
in large part, is concerned with private relationships, whether they be in the context of romantic love or
divine love, and, in the words of critic Constance Furey, it constantly grapples with “the tension between
singularity and unity—between the appeal and necessity of self-sufficiency and the desire for a self-
transcendent unity.”2 Thus, although Donne seems to repudiate individualistic values upon first glance,
his poetry instead provides a means for him to grapple with the same religious conflict we face today, the
conflict between individuality and religious submission. Unlike many modern readers, however, Donne
comes at this conflict from the unique standpoint of a religious individual, of somebody already engaged
in a system that demands submission of the individual will to that of the Divine.
Donne couches this submission in violent,
monosyllabic terms that not only denote force but also
rhythmically “bombard” the reader. However, a close
look at Holy Sonnet XIV reveals that Donne’s expressions
of force aren’t as haphazard as they might seem: “As yet,”
says Donne in line 2, God has only gone so far as to
“knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.” But these
measures, violent as they are, are not enough; instead,
for Donne to truly “rise and stand,” God must “break,
blow, burn and make [him] new” (lines 3-4). The words
of these first lines evoke images of a blacksmith working
over a forge: If God is the blacksmith and Donne the
broken tool, it is not enough for God to merely “mend”
him; instead, he needs to be forged anew. Donne doesn’t
want to be redeemed, but remade. In fact, he seems to
say, redemption is impossible: “I, like an usurped town,
to another due / Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end”
(lines 5-6). As Donne concludes line 6, the reader almost
hears his frustration—try as he might, his “labour” is for
naught; on his own, Donne is inadequate, unable to rid
himself of the imperfect characteristics which separate John Donne, the English Priest Poet, by
him from God. Robertand Lentz

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 Paradox of Faith

The urgency of Donne’s verse—the immediate, jarring invocation of “Batter my heart” and the forceful
vividness of his verbs—makes the reader feel the intensity of his inner conflict, a conflict whose nature
becomes increasingly apparent throughout the rest of the poem. It stems from the duality of the religious
experience, the intense wrestling match between the personal and the Divine will that goes on in the mind
of even the most devout worshipper, pitting individual identity against religious identity. “Reason your
viceroy in me, me [italics mine] should defend / But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue,” writes Donne
in lines 7-8, implying, with his striking juxtaposition of the two “me”s, a complex relationship between the
disparate parts of himself. As he grapples with his own deficient rational faculties, which impart within
him a will opposing that of God, Donne infuses lines 7-8 with contradiction: Reason is God’s “viceroy,”
a gift through which He elevates humanity. Human reason, in turn, has the capacity to lead us away from
God, making us capable of the rational, individualistic thought that ultimately influences our actions.
As the sonnet progresses, each line seems to contradict the next while adding a new layer of complication
to Donne’s relationship to God. Lines 5-10 vacillate between his inadequacy—his inability to live up to
God’s spiritual expectations—on the one hand, and his intense desire to live up to those expectations on
the other. Donne’s tone takes a more reflective turn in these lines, standing in contrast to the insistent,
emotional commands of the poem’s beginning, as he explores the fault line between his spiritual fulfillment
and human nature: As much as he wants to want to fully serve God, he is “weak and untrue,” “betroth’d
unto” God’s enemy—presumably Satan, or, in more literal terms, his own evil inclinations.
Donne’s original emotionality returns with a vengeance in the sonnet’s last lines, in a long, forceful
string of commands similar to the “Batter my heart” of line 1: “Divorce me, untie, or break that knot
again, / Take me to you, imprison me, for I, / Except you enthral me, never shall be free, / Nor ever
chaste, except you ravish me” (lines 11-14). These lines, arguably the most intense and contradictory of
the poem, are remarkable for many reasons (not least of which is the physical, erotic connotation of the
word “ravish”), and chief among them is Donne’s understanding of freedom. To us, freedom necessitates
autonomy and self-sufficiency; freedom gives us the ability to do what we want, not to depend on anyone
or anything, to rely solely on ourselves. Not so in Holy Sonnet XIV: Donne, in desperate need of divine
intervention, turns the modern notion of freedom on its head. As a human being with free will, he already
possesses the autonomy to follow his every whim and inclination. Instead, Donne, always attempting to
transcend his corporeal self, seeks freedom from the shackles of his natural urges, from the earthly desires
that separate him from his Maker. Since Donne lacks the self-restraint to achieve spiritual unity with
God, freedom, in this context, necessitates “imprisonment” by God. The key to spiritual freedom, Donne
concludes, lies in constraint—in the divine restriction of his human impulses.
And as averse as we may be to the idea of restriction, let alone imprisonment, we cannot help but
respond to the poignancy of Donne’s verse. Although much of this response can be attributed to his

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unmatched poetic skill, many can admit a certain level of identification with the tortured sinner—even
those modern, freedom-loving individuals so far removed from Donne’s concerns.
Consider this: A wildly popular computer application has, in recent months, received a good deal
of press. Its unique appeal? In the interest of increased productivity and decreased distraction, the app
completely restricts use of the Internet for a given interval, providing its users with up to eight hours of
web-free work time. Even a quick glance at the news requires the user to completely reboot his computer,
an inconvenience that, presumably, keeps even the worst of procrastinators in check. At the program’s root
is the recognition that one of the most important abilities we lack may also be one of the few advantages
increased technology cannot afford us: the ability to restrict ourselves, even when we know that doing so
is in our best interests. The name of the application, appropriately enough, is Freedom.
In a place that emphasizes motivation above all else, in a time when distraction is all too easy to come
by, we still crave the freedom that only constraint can provide. Working towards any goal is essentially an
act of self-transformation, driven by the recognition that we are imperfect beings. The person who makes
a New Years’ resolution to lose ten pounds does so because he thinks he should; he seeks to internalize

Counter-Composition VI, by Theo Van Doesburg,

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the value of being thin. The individual who vows to devote more of her time to community service by
restricting her time for leisure does so because she thinks she should, because she strives to become
someone who places a greater value on helping others. In order to change we must attempt somehow to
control our passing impulses—our desire to browse Facebook, our yearning for more leisure time, our
inborn craving for chocolate cake.
Religion is far from unique in its emphasis on self-restriction—to the contrary: Not only is restraint
necessary for participation in any moral system, be it secular or religious, but it is vital to any meaningful
endeavor. We have all experienced the inner conflict that self-restriction precipitates, the debates that pit
our immediate inclinations against our larger goals and produce feelings of helplessness and inadequacy.
Like Donne, we can all in some sense relate to a frustrated desire for some external force, be it in the form
of a divinity or a computer application, to “batter our hearts”—to imprison us so that we may become free.
Donne’s poetry resides in the gap between where we are and where we want to be. The duality of Holy
Sonnet XIV isn’t merely one of religious identity and personal identity—it is a conflict between instinct
and obligation, between the things we tell ourselves we should be and the things that hold us back.
Donne’s poetry, caught between humanity and spirituality, between the desire to remain an individual
and the desire to submit to God’s omnipotent Will is not only a living testament to his own religious
struggles, but sheds light on the nature of our own struggles as well, on the ways in which introspection
and self-criticism inform the decisions we make and the goals that we set. Poetry for Donne was a means
of channeling these conflicts into personal expression, for even under a uniform system of religious
obligation, the process of spiritual growth is largely an individual, solitary endeavor. Nobody but Donne,
that master of inward language, of the exploration of the self, could have written Sonnet XIV. And it is
the self-analysis embodied by his work, the Protestant emphasis on introspection, that our culture is heir
to today. Like Donne, we “search by [ourselves] and in [ourselves] alone for the reason of things.”2 Like
Donne, we constantly struggle to examine our inner lives, to re-evaluate our goals, to transcend ourselves
through action and introspection.
In an age of individualism, it is no wonder that Holy Sonnet XIV still holds such resonance.

Notes
1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (London: Penguin Classics, 2003) 493.
2 Constance Furey, “The Self Undone: Individualism and Relationality in John Donne and Aemilia
Lanyer,” Harvard Theological Review 99.4 (2006): 480.

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Columbia/Barnard Hillel

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