{"id":241728,"date":"2021-08-29T07:59:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T07:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=241728"},"modified":"2021-08-31T06:08:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T06:08:29","slug":"harvard-university-elects-atheist-as-head-chaplain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=241728","title":{"rendered":"Harvard University elects atheist as head chaplain"},"content":{"rendered":"

rte.ie — Aug 27, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

America’s prestigious Harvard University, founded by Puritan settlers almost 400 years ago, has a new chief chaplain – and he doesn’t believe in God.<\/p>\n

Greg Epstein, 44, took up the role this week, becoming the first atheist elected president of Harvard’s organization of chaplains.<\/p>\n

“I’m obliged and honored,” he wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Mr Epstein has been Harvard’s humanist chaplain since 2005 and is the author of the bestselling book “Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe”.<\/p>\n

He will lead a group of more than 40 chaplains who represent some twenty different religions and beliefs including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.<\/p>\n

His appointment comes as young people in the United States increasingly identify as spiritual but without a religious affiliation.<\/p>\n

“There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life,” Mr Epstein told The New York Times.<\/p>\n

“We don’t look to a god for answers. We are each other’s answers,” he added.<\/p>\n

Mr Epstein did not immediately respond to request for comment from AFP.<\/p>\n

A 2019 Pew Research Center study found that the United States remains a predominantly Christian country, with 43% identifying as Protestant and 20% as Catholic.<\/p>\n

But more than a quarter of those surveyed (26%) described their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” up from 17% in 2009.<\/p>\n

Mr Epstein, born into a Jewish family in New York, has also been the humanist chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), another major university in the Boston area, since 2018.<\/p>\n

Harvard, founded in 1636 to train the Protestant clergy, is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harvard\u2019s new head chaplain, Greg Epstein was born into a Jewish family and is the author of the bestselling book “Good Without God<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":241729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241730,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241728\/revisions\/241730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/241729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}