Mary E. Hunt reflects on "Renaissance man" Rustum Roy (1924-2010)

Rustum Roy: Science, Society, and Healing
Mary E. Hunt
October 18, 2010

Religion and science lost a phenomenal man this season when Rustum Roy (1924-2010), an Indian born materials scientist, 33rd generation Brahmin and progressive Christian, passed away in State College, PA, where he worked for more than fifty years. He was phenomenal because he combined a world-class scientific mind with a deep commitment to liberal unto liberationist religion, and topped it off with an ever-deepening conviction about body, mind, and spirit connections. What he brought to the science-religion conversation, unlike so many scientists who are religiously conservative, was a mind as open, critical, and learned about religion as he was skeptical, rigorous, and data driven in science.

The easiest way to describe Rustum is to call him the Renaissance man that he was in every sense of the term. He was classically educated in India where he met Gandhi who came to his house for tea with Rustum’s father who was a high government official. He earned a U.S. PhD and returned briefly to India to work. But given that the pace of research was slow in his native land, Rustum returned to his alma mater, Penn State, to engage in basic scientific research.

He was trained as an earth scientist. He was among the first to see the need for interdisciplinary work among geologists, applied chemists, physicists, even engineers, to name just a few of the intersecting disciplines that make up Materials Science. What is now a well-established field was an idea that Rustum Roy pioneered. He invented and patented with the best of scientists, wrote more that 800 scientific papers, consulted for Bell Labs. In essence, he was a scientist’s scientist. But he also knew and loved the arts, adding a gallery to the Materials Research Lab at Penn State. Science policy became his forte as he helped to shape the way government and industry allocate resources for research and development, always weaving social values into the equation.

At the same time, Rustum helped create a small Christian base community, the Sycamore Community, in State College, PA. He preached regularly at the innovative Church of the Savior in Washington, DC, chaired the board of Kirkridge, a progressive conference center in Bangor, PA, and served on the board of the National Council of Churches. Somehow he found time for voluminous correspondence, dozens of phone calls a day, and a vital family life with his wife, children, and the extended Roy clan. Rustum worked tirelessly, often returning to the office after a family dinner to burn the midnight oil on one of several journals he helped to found, or simply to support a graduate student whose thesis needed some tending.

The man was amazing in his production and in his enthusiasm for new ideas. Of course, like many gentleman of a certain age, he could not have done it all without the many (mostly women) support staffers who made his plane arrangements for the hundreds of national and international meetings he attended, kept his appointments straight, and polished up his countless articles, books, chapters, and scientific papers. It was not unusual to get a late night phone call; Rustum had a new idea he just needed to share and assess with his fifteen closest colleagues who knew about the topic.

Believe it or not, the man was much more than all of this though I find the thought of it dizzying. He made the garden-variety workaholic look slothful. He never missed a chance to combine work and pleasure, often finding time during his Washington, DC visits to gather friends for a simple meal and stimulating conversation. He replicated that dynamic around the world.

More than a Renaissance man, Rustum Roy was a phenom. As Wikipedia would have it, a Phenom is at once a kind of electron microscope, a progressive rock group from Bangalore, India, a computer processor, and a television show. Yes, this is getting closer to the man I knew who left the Renaissance in his dust.

I met Rustum in 1984 when a mutual friend, Anne Stewart, a United Methodist minister, invited both of us to lecture at a conference she was coordinating on friendship, sexuality and the church. Rustum and his wife, Della, also a materials scientist, had published a book called Honest Sex in 1968, in which they had opened up the possibility of married people having additional intimate friends. Needless to say, they knew a lot more about the topic than I did and we became friends and colleagues instantly.

Rustum pioneered Science, Technology and Society as a field, starting an organization and a journal, as was his wont in new endeavors. He realized that by networking the right people and publishing the key articles (before and in the early days of the Internet!) the multiplier effect would take over. Religion, of course, was an integral part of society.

His interest in religion went back to his family of origin, Protestant Christians in India. When he arrived in the U.S. he had early connections to progressive Protestants. He eventually fell in with Jon Oliver Nelson and the merry band at Kirkridge who practiced the “Picket and Pray” spirituality with roots both in the Social Gospel and the rigorous spirituality of the Iona Community in Scotland. His religious professional friends included Bishop John A. T. Robinson of Honest to God fame, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, and Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, all innovators in their respective circles.

Rustum gave the prestigious Hibbert Lectures, nonsectarian treatments of theological issues, in 1979, later published in a book entitled Experimenting with Truth. He joined the Hibbert company of luminaries that now includes William James, Josiah Royce, Albert Schweitzer, James Luther Adams, and Karen Armstrong among others. He argued that the basic scientific work of our time was finished. There would be more applications, but the nuts and bolts were all there by the 1970’s. It was time, he urged, to see how the “end of science” could mean the beginning of something new.

Rustum was a scientific and religious contrarian. Just as he rejected the sacred cows of science, so too did he reject the popular neo-orthodoxy and liberalism in religion in favor of liberation theology, feminist theology, and other less well-accepted theological approaches. He worked hard to defeat the Superconducting Supercollider, a move the U.S. House made in 1992, effectively ending the gravy train for scientific research that Roy was honest enough to say was not necessary. In religion, he was an early supporter of rights for same-sex lovers.

What was ahead? The science-religion conversation that the John Templeton Foundation began funding in the late 1980’s out of what is now a $1.8 billion endowment was of little interest to Rustum. He preferred to emphasize science and religion in more organic ways. For example, he saw to it that science was part of the conversation in the revival of Parliament of the World’s Religions. He insisted that progressive religious voices be part of the dialogue with scientists. He was skeptical of the conservative framing of so much of the science-religion discussion that left engineering out of science and ethics out of religion. Rustum realized that such framing was the death knell of any useful collaboration.

Eventually he went in a different direction—even more applied—into the area of “whole person medicine.” This was somewhat surprising to me in light of his socially responsible faith—did I mention that he was on the board of the Calvert Group, the socially responsible investment firm well into his 80’s—which seemed a far cry from the seemingly fuzzy healing crowd. But I was wrong.

Rustum met and worked with Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra on the intersection of the physical, mental, and spiritual components of healing. In his retirement years he taught in Arizona where a lot of this work goes on. He was a big supporter of the Qigong movement, a Chinese approach to healing and exercise. I should have known that he would bring his usual rigor and style to the work of healing.

True to form, he set up a non-profit, “Friends of Health” to bring the right people together http://www.wholepersonhealing.org/. The group’s first accomplishment, rather on the order of basic science, was to establish “whole person healing” as the preferred term, replacing “alternative medicine” and other lesser explanations for what is increasingly popular approach. Another move by the group was to explore the nature of liquid water to show, with the help of insights from materials science, that homeopathic medicine can’t be written off as scientifically untenable. This was the among last of his scientific forays http://www.rustumroy.com/Roy_Structure%20of%20Water.pdf but I predict it will have future ripples.

Just as he was decades ahead of the curve in science, I suspect that he was decades ahead of the curve in the whole person healing work. It does not matter. The world eventually catches up with Rustum Roy. But his life demonstrates that science and religion, far from being odd bedfellows, are really interesting conversation partners, especially among people who bring the same critical apparatus to both.

After Rustum Roy, whom I loved as a friend and respected as a colleague, I expect such rigor on both sides of the fence of the science-religion nexus. The fact that he could play both sides so well only ups the ante for a conversation that is as impoverished by his passing as it was enriched by his participation.

What does it take to get a red hat these days?

Pope Benedict XVI announced on Wednesday the election of 24 new cardinals, including two Americans: Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington DC and Raymond L. Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority of the Catholic Church. Their appointments to cardinal necessitate a forthright examination of their respective paths to the red hat - paths filled with discrimination, abuse of power, and staunch efforts to preserve the patriarchy. Click here to read Mary E. Hunt's article "Vatican Pitbulls Make Cardinal" for a look into the Vatican's election (read: reward) system and see just what it takes to get a red hat these days. The article appears in the online magazine Religion Dispatches.

WATER's Feminist Conversations in Religion Series Presents-

An Hour-Long Teleconference
"Trans Gifts: A Conversation with Virginia Ramey Mollenkott"

Wednesday, November 10, 2010
1:00PM-2:00PM EST

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott is professor emerita in English at William Paterson University of New Jersey. She is the author or co-author of 13 books, including several on women and religion. Perhaps the best known of her books, written with Letha Scanzoni, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? A Positive Christian Response (HarperCollins Publishers, 1994) remains a classic in the field.

She is a longtime member of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus and a leading Christian feminist voice on transgender issues.

Virginia’s focus in this WATER conversation will be on the specific gifts that trans people can offer to religious congregations and other groups. Virginia will share her extensive experience on the topic, which readers will find in her book Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach (Pilgrim Press, 2001). She will also reference her chapter “Trans-forming Feminist Christianity” in New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views (edited by Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. Neu, SkyLight Paths, 2010). Order your copy of the book here.

Virginia is a stalwart proponent of women and LGBTQ people, a longtime friend and supporter of WATER. We are delighted to share her with a wider group of colleagues! Gather some friends for lunch and take this special opportunity to learn and speak with one of our pioneers.

How to Register
Email waterstaff@hers.com with the words "register me" and you will receive dial-in information. Please register by November 8. We encourage you to make a donation to WATER. Thank you!

The Feminist Conversations in Religion are open to all. These hour-long live teleconferences highlight the latest issues addressed by WATER. In addition to the teleconferences, you can go to our website to listen to an audio version at your convenience.

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Faith leaders respond to Carl Paladino's divisive remarks

On October 11, 2010, a response to Carl Paladino's tumultuous comments about homosexuality was issued by the National Religious Leadership Roundtable, convened by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Paladino stated that children should not be "brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is as equally valid or successful an option [as heterosexuality]." He continued on to criticize his opponent Andrew Cuomo for marching in New York's gay pride parade with his daughters. The Task Force blog has more information, including a video from Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, faith work director.

Mary E. Hunt of WATER contributed the following:

The last thing the governor's race in New York State needs is homophobic comments from anyone. While the Roman Catholic hierarchy will not step up to the plate on this one, let it be known that many Catholics consider homosexuality "an equally valid and successful opetion" for loving, committed, and generative relationship. Suggestions to the contrary reveal either ignorance of contemporary theological work, homo hatred, or both. Ample resources from Catholic social justice teachings prove that disrespect for human persons and their choices has no place in Catholic circles. The work of groups like Dignity, New Ways Ministry, Fortunate Families, Call to Action, and Women-Church Convergence is testimony to the fact that Catholicism can and should be inclusive, welcoming, and supportive of the variety of ways people choose to love, partner and generate families.

Mission of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Foundation
From their website
The mission of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is to build the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. We do this by training activists, equipping state and local organizations with the skills needed to organize broad-based campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation, and building the organizational capacity of our movement. Our Policy Institute, the movement’s premier think tank, provides research and policy analysis to support the struggle for complete equality and to counter right-wing lies. As part of a broader social justice movement, we work to create a nation that respects the diversity of human expression and identity and creates opportunity for all.

Stay Connected on Facebook with WATER and The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force!

State of Belief

Tune in this weekend to Interfaith Alliance's weekly radio show and podcast State of Belief to hear
- Vickie Stangl, of the Great Plains chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on the secular invocation offered at a recent Wichita City Council meeting.
- Kathy Miller, the President and Executive Director of the Texas Freedom Network, on new polling data related to the controversy over the new social studies standards approved by the Texas State Board of Education.
- Mary Hunt, co-founder of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, on Argentina's decision to legalize same-gender marriage and her experience teaching at an ecumenical seminary in Buenos Aires in the 1980s.
Plus, Rev. Gaddy shares his thoughts on the disturbing anti-Muslim sentiment that is still plaguing our country.

Listen now at http://feeds.feedburner.com/stateofbelief.

Where God Has Placed a Comma

As part of our internships at WATER, Ikhlas, Elizabeth and I took a “field trip” to the United Church of Christ DC headquarters this summer, where we met with the Rev. Dr. Mari Castellanos, an esteemed member of the UCC church and social justice activist, who is policy advocate for domestic issues at the UCC.

Dr. Castellanos welcomed us warmly with a stream of information about the church: commercials, literature, inclusivity, focus on social justice, all of which impressed me with their broad welcome, clearly stated core beliefs and progressive outlook. “God is still speaking,” as the UCC unofficial motto goes.

A few days later, I saw UCC principles in action at the wedding of Sue, my godmother, and her partner Claire in Chicago. The ceremony was held at Wellington Church in Chicago: we were invited to “come as you are.” Like the UCC church, the wedding incorporated many different traditions, including Cherokee poetry, readings from the Bible, Cris Williamson songs, Shakespeare sonnets, and the poems of Khalil Gibran. An impassioned call that the marriage, though not recognized in the eyes of the state of Illinois, was legitimate in the eyes of UCC was met with cheers from the congregation.

The progressive interpretations of the Bible, combined with a welcoming community, illustrated to me the importance of women’s theology, ethics, and ritual. We lit candles on the altar, sang songs, and responded to the call to worship. The brides’ vows were even different from the usual I do’s and reflected their belief systems.

I was reminded of the unofficial UCC creed: never place a period where God has placed a comma; I was also reminded of the other UCC phrase: God is still speaking; indeed, everyone with a voice who wanted to contribute may speak in the UCC church.

New Book from WATER!!

New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views
edited by Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. Neu

Feminism has brought many changes to Christian churches. From inclusive language and imagery about the Divine, to an increase in the number of women ministers, churches will never be the same. Yet, even now, there is a lack of substantive structural change in many churches and a certain complacency within denominations.

The contributors to this book are the thought leaders of the future who are shaping, and being shaped by, the emerging directions of feminist Christianity. They speak from across the spectrum, and from the many racial and ethnic groups that make up the Christian community. Taken together, their voices offer a starting point for building new models of church and society.

Issues covered include:

• Feminist Theological Visions
• Feminist Scriptural Insights
• Feminist Ethical Agendas
• Feminist Liturgical/Artistic Frontiers
• Feminist Ministerial Challenges

A must-read for anyone in Christian ministry, as well as religious feminists in and beyond the Christian tradition, and church-based study groups. (SkyLight Paths Publishing, 300 pages, $24.99 plus s+h).

To order book click here.