A lecture earlier this month has jumpstarted a few initiatives led by the Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF), including a book reading and special focus group — all fitting within the group's theme this semester of social justice.
The Veritas Forum, a national group designed to engage university students and faculty on the relevance of Jesus in academia and grander life questions, brought Claremont Graduate University Professor Mary Poplin to campus on March 4.
Poplin's presentation, entitled "Radical Marxist, Radical Womanist, Radical Love: What Mother Teresa Taught Me about Social Justice," served as the inaugural event of the Veritas Forum at Tufts. It was co-sponsored by TCF and the Catholic Community at Tufts.
The Veritas Forum was founded in 1992 at Harvard University as a way for students, alumni and faculty to share how they found veritas — Latin for "truth" and Harvard's motto — in Jesus Christ. The group's events, which take place at universities all over the world, relate faith to contemporary social, cultural and scientific issues.
"The purpose is to connect Jesus to academics in a more significant way, to show that the teachings of Jesus and the people who follow those teachings do have a place in the university world and in intellectual discussion," said sophomore Charles Skold, advertising and public relations coordinator for the Veritas Forum at Tufts.
In addition to holding a weekly social justice-themed lecture series at TCF meetings, the group co-coordinated a Hunger Banquet with Pangea to raise awareness about world poverty and hunger.
TCF hopes to expand upon this theme with a campus-wide reading and discussion of Poplin's book, "Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service" (2008), which was distributed at her lecture. TCF has also followed up Poplin's discussion by establishing a new "Global Poverty Impact Group," which looks at personal finance and how it relates to global poverty.
This group, an eight-week experience, follows a curriculum used by over 17 Christian organizations in Boston. They have raised over $120,000 to help combat global poverty, according to Mako Nagasawa, a staff member from InterVarsity, the parent organization associated with TCF.
The theme of the group is simplicity for the sake of generosity. "It's an attempt to simplify our lives in response to the teachings of Jesus in order to work to end global poverty," said Nagasawa, who heads the impact group along with sophomore Kelly McClorey.
"I had talked about it with a few students of TCF and they were really interested, so we decided to start it up," Nagasawa said. All attendees of the forum were invited to join.
During her lecture, Poplin focused on her two-month experience with Mother Theresa in Kolkata (Calcutta), India in 1996, as well as her personal and professional experiences with the Christian faith.
"Starting out, she wasn't a Christian," Skold said. "She really thought that Mother Theresa was [just] doing social work, not religious work, in [Kolkata] by serving the poor and the dying. But she did come to the conclusion that it was a profoundly religious idea that motivated her."
Poplin also addressed the larger theme of Jesus's relevance to academia, the defining premise behind the Veritas Forum.
"She talked about coming back [from Kolkata] and how that experience changed her idea of education," Skold said. "She realized that in her classes she had been marginalizing a Christian worldview, and now she thought that that worldview did have a lot to offer to education, to the idea of social justice."
Freshman Frances Wilburn, who attended the lecture, welcomed Poplin's broad-based view of Christianity in her teaching style. "Her goal was to teach her students all the different viewpoints so that they could be well-informed and decide for themselves," Wilburn said.
"I appreciated the fact that she was an intellectual and a college professor who allowed Christianity to influence her teachings, but that she included Christianity without excluding other ideas," she added.
Though this was the first time the forum came to Tufts, Skold said it will become an annual event in the future.
"TCF plans to continue bringing the Veritas Forum to Tufts every year," he said. "The hope is that the forum will grow in popularity on campus as a great discussion-starter and intellectual stimulator in years to come."
