CORNELL’S INVISIBLE RELIGION

belief and ritual on a secular campus

by Jack Kubinec

In the fall of 2018, Anne* settled into her dorm at Cornell University after transferring from one of the most conservative colleges in America. Anne had just spent her freshman year at a southern evangelical school that I will refer to as Conservative Christian University (CCU); it is ranked among the top ten most conservative universities in America on Niche.com. [1]

When Anne first told me she went to CCU, I remember being taken aback. Even in the conservative evangelical community where I grew up, CCU was regarded as being out there. They weren’t just conservative, they were fundamentalist. Students’ clothing is strictly policed—requiring business casual with pants no further than two inches above the ankle—and the administration infamously had a ban on interracial dating that lasted into the twenty-first century. [2] Anne was a Black woman; why would she choose to go to CCU? I wrote to Anne seeking insight into the switch from CCU to Cornell—from an intensely religious university to one founded by an anti-religious polemicist.

Anne was excited to grow in her faith at CCU, but she didn’t make any assumptions that it would be a utopian university: “I went to [CCU] because they love Jesus there. And spaces full of people who love Jesus are still broken,” she told me. As she settled into a routine and grew acclimated to campus during her freshman year, Anne found herself feeling disappointed at the racial homogeneity in CCU’s faculty. And yet, this lack of diversity didn’t stop Anne from falling in love with her professors at CCU, who she says “treated [her] with dignity, respect, and counted [her] perspective as valuable.” Her professors had “a faith refined like gold and a compassion and empathy that was pure and robust,” Anne told me. 

What I found most striking about Anne’s perspective, though, was her belief that “there is more freedom of thought at CCU than at Cornell.” CCU prohibits students from going to movie theaters and listening to contemporary popular music. [3] How could CCU possibly have freedom of thought? 

Anne acknowledged that both CCU and Cornell can tend to ostracize students who fail to conform to a narrow set of ideals, but in Anne’s eyes, “at Cornell the shaming [for misbehavers] would be faster, harsher, and perhaps extend beyond your social circles to your academic and vocational opportunities.” While Anne’s claim is impossible to prove or disprove, the idea that a secular institution is comparable to a fundamentalist southern evangelical college in its administration of justice is surprising, if not alarming.

As Anne shared her story, I was struck not by the differences between the universities but by their similarities.

Despite its secular origins, the Cornell community exists within a religious sort of framework—a set of unifying beliefs which I will, for lack of creativity, refer to as Cornellism. Cornellism has its own myths and rituals, canon and language, orthodoxy and heretics. Yet many students seem entirely unaware of the quasi-religious pressures that Cornellism places upon them. Are students actually happiest as unconscious participants in Cornellism? As much as Cornellism’s creeds may provide some good, I believe it ultimately is missing something.

To be sure, Cornellism is not a religion in the way that, say, Christianity is a religion. The great sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote that “sacred things” are the essential component of all religions. [4] In Durkheim’s framework, a worldview like Cornellism which lacks connection to the divine cannot be religion; Cornellism is a heuristic that only goes so far in explaining reality. However, Durkheim points to unity surrounding beliefs and practices as another key component of religion, and Cornellism certainly checks that box.

What characterizes Cornellism? Cornell professors and students are, by and large, deeply motivated by seeking justice for the oppressed in society. This desire for justice is producing students who care deeply about anti-racism, decolonization, climate justice, and other means for building a more equitable world. However, the rituals and norms—the quasi-religious practices—regarding what justice means and how justice must be achieved have homogenized to the point of a religious unity in beliefs and practices. Since Cornellism remains invisible to many of its adherents, the way sins are punished deserves closer examination.

A girl we’ll call Emma** is a TikTok influencer who was well-known by Cornell students before she ever set foot on campus. Her one-minute-or-less college advice videos earned her over half a million followers on TikTok and a Daily Sun profile while she was still in high school. In the fall of 2020, as Anne was finishing up her last semester at Cornell, Emma was just arriving at Cornell, excited to make the most of her college experience even if a pandemic was putting a damper on things. 

During orientation week, Emma posted videos on Snapchat of herself attending a maskless indoor party. One of Emma’s classmates uploaded a screen recording of the video to TikTok, and the video was widely shared throughout the student body. I remember a friend showing me the video when it first leaked; the two of us wondered how Cornell would respond to Emma flouting our school’s COVID-19 guidelines. 

In Emma’s case, it wasn’t the Cornell administration but the Cornell student body that meted out justice. An online petition calling for Emma’s Cornell acceptance to be rescinded went viral, garnering over 4,500 signatures. [5] Soon, the Washington Post picked up the story. A Google search for Emma’s name still brings up pages of links exposing her sin. 

The petition that circulated in the wake of Emma’s maskless partying used the language of Cornellism. If Cornellians were to be sent home due to an outbreak, “Some students [did not] have the luxury of going home to a quiet and healthy environment to focus on academics,” the petition read. To be seen as legitimate, the petition had to frame Emma’s wrongdoing as perpetuating injustice against the oppressed—in this case, students whose home circumstances prevented them from learning. The petition writers admirably call for empathy towards their peers. But, they offer no way forward for Emma herself—no opportunity for her to remain in the community and atone for her actions. For these writers, the only way to deal with a sinner like Emma was to cast her completely out of the community. Cornellism has no doctrine of repentance; as Emma learned firsthand, it has no means of grace.

I remember watching Emma’s public shaming happen and feeling like the saga presented a fundamentally broken picture of community. Did the end justify the means? An 18-year-old girl was in an unfamiliar social environment and made a mistake. Why were upperclassmen in the Cornell community so quick to condemn her but so unwilling to show empathy and give Emma guidance for how she could learn from her mistake? Why was it that older students never thought to pick up the phone and call Emma to talk about her mistakes and what she could do to make things right?

The Cornellist drive for retribution provides little opportunity for repentance and forgiveness. Do we really want to live with all of our wrongdoing permanent and unatonable? The Christian faith offers a different way—a vision of healing through repentance. 

The biblical Psalm 51 shows an example of repentance that has deeply influenced my own spiritual growth. The poem was written by David, the king of Israel, after he sent the innocent Uriah to his death so David could have sex with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. After being caught in his wrongdoing and rebuked by God through the prophet Nathan, David acknowledges the depth of his sin: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” [6] How should he respond? He concludes that God prefers “a broken spirit” over “a burnt offering.” [7] In other words, it was better for David to realize the depths of his own depravity than to right his wrongs through empty religious practice. 

Repentance sounds nice in theory, but if I’m honest, I don’t live up to David’s example of self-emptying repentance very well. When I say that I’m sorry, it’s often for trivial things or done in a way that boosts my own ego. Rarely do I even notice my “broken bones,” let alone ask God to repair them. [8] In writing this essay, I spent a long time wracking my brain before finally giving up trying to find an example of Davidic repentance in my life. Where I see repentance (or the lack thereof) most clearly, though, is in the social fabric of Christian communities where I have been a member.

After we had a fight on a family vacation in North Carolina last year, my older brother looked me in the eyes and said, “Jack, what I said to you was wrong, and I want to tell you I’m sorry.” This moment of repentance ignited a period of healing as different members of my family repented to one another over long-unspoken wrongs. When Christian communities flourish, a culture of repentance emerges in which members continuously affirm their mutual brokenness and spend time meditating on their own sins instead of focusing only on the wrongdoings of others. A culture of repentance muddies the binary between good people and bad people as individuals within a community take turns either repenting to others or having others repent to them.

When this culture of repentance doesn’t emerge in a Christian community, disaster results. Pastor Mark Driscoll’s spectacular fall from grace at the megachurch Mars Hill was caused in large part by his inability to recognize his own wrongs paired with an unwillingness to look past perceived wrongs in his enemies. [9] Unified beliefs and practices that are not tied to some practice of repentance leaves community members bitter and exhausted from pursuing right behavior—without the hope of receiving grace for their shortcomings.

What would it look like for Cornellism to take on a culture of repentance? I think it would require an acknowledgement of our own limitations, both intellectually and morally. A culture of repentance would encourage nuance and would likely lead to better scholarship in an age of p-hacking and confirmation bias. 

But a better question, perhaps, is whether Cornell can be reimagined without Cornellism. How can we push back against religiously unified beliefs and practices at a university that espouses free inquiry? Are there ways to maintain a high aversion to injustice while rejecting the urge to respond hatefully to its perpetrators? What would a culture of repentance look like in our dorms, in our extracurriculars, or in our classes? Perhaps we can imagine a university where brokenness looks less like a problem to be solved by the competent and more like a burden we all share.

SOURCES

[1] “2022 Most Conservative Colleges in America,” Niche, https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/most-conservative-colleges/

[2] “2021-2022 Student Handbook,” Bob Jones University, 36, https://www.bju.edu/life-faith/student-handbook.pdf

[3] “Rules of Conduct, Bob Jones University,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University#Rules_of_conduct

[4] “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life,” Wikepedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elementary_Forms_of_the_Religious_Life

[5] “​​De-Densify Cornell's Ithaca Campus By Rescinding *Emma '24 Acceptance,” Change.org, 

[6] Psalm 51:3, ESV

[7] Psalm 51:17, ESV

[8] Psalm 51:8, ESV

[9] “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” Christianity Today, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/

*Anne asked for her name and the name of her former college to be kept confidential

**Name changed for confidentiality