THOUSAND OAKS : Theologian Stendahl Feted by University

Adding a purple and gold Cal Lutheran hood to his academic robes, theologian Krister Stendahl accepted an honorary doctor of divinity degree Wednesday from the Thousand Oaks university.

At a ceremony in the university’s chapel, Stendahl told students and professors that they were engaged in an important pursuit: exploring the interplay of faith and reason.

“The absence of serious study of religion in the American schools plays right into the hands of all the nuts,” said Stendahl, Mellon professor of divinity emeritus at Harvard University and former bishop of Stockholm for the Church of Sweden.

Stendahl is at Cal Lutheran for the week as a visiting lecturer.

On Wednesday, he told an audience of several hundred that preachers and theologians want to put faith first in the contest between faith and reason.

“That is our turf,” he said.

But Stendahl said reason is as important as faith.

“It rescues me from wallowing in vague feelings,” he said. “The mind gives faith words so we can talk together about our joy in God.”

The mind is a crucial part of religion, he said.

“It is more important to think right than to do right, because in the long run, it is the way we think that shapes the future,” Stendahl said.

Faith, however, should not be completely spurned in favor of reason, he said.

“The faith keeps the mind hungry and never allows it to settle down in self-satisfaction,” Stendahl said.

A. Joseph Everson, Cal Lutheran religion professor, read a citation before President Luther Luedtke presented Stendahl with the honorary degree. The citation praised Stendahl “for his scholarship, for his prophetic courage and for his lifelong Christian witness.”

Everson said Stendahl’s scholarship has focused on relations between Christians and Jews and the role of women in the Bible.

Stendahl will speak at 10 a.m. Monday in the Samuelson Chapel. The topic of the lecture, which is open to the public, is “The Religious Origins of Violence.”