Inside "In Character"
Charlotte Hays likes to recall what her friends said when they heard she was the new editor of In Character, the John Templeton Foundation's tri-annual journal of the "everyday virtues." "They all made jokes about how vice is really more interesting," she says. Hays responded by going out to buy "tons of books on the virtues." Reading through them, she discovered "whole classical systems of thought that we don't know much about, or take at all seriously. I decided that we were going to produce a magazine that makes virtue just as interesting as vice."
Hays is well qualified for the assignment. A former editor of the Women's Quarterly and Washington bureau chief of the National Catholic Register, she has freelanced for an eclectic list of publications, from New York magazine, Spy, and Town & Country to the New Republic and the Wall Street Journal. She is also, as she puts it, a "recovering" gossip columnist, having written her own popular column, "Charlotte's Web," for both the Washington Times and the New York Daily News.
Hays believes that a journalistic approach is the best way to explore and illuminate issues related to character. Under her editorial eye, many of the articles in the journal will include original reporting, and all will feature "bright and lively writing." She also insists on a journalistic point of view. "I don't want to approach virtue with piety," Hays insists. "We're 'pro-virtue,' if you will, but we're not afraid of hard questions."
In Character was conceived in 2003 by Templeton's Executive Vice President Arthur J. Schwartz. "The study of character and the dissemination of ideas about it are central purposes of the Foundation," says Schwartz. Noticing that there was "no publication focusing on the virtues, the character strengths," he suggested that Templeton start a journal, each issue of which would consider a single virtue from a variety of perspectives, including public policy, the humanities, religion, and the sciences. The first issue of In Character, which focused on thrift, was published in the fall of 2004. Subsequent issues have covered purpose, creativity, loyalty, modesty, generosity, justice, self-reliance, and honesty. The journal's advisory board includes the distinguished scholars Jean Bethke Elshtain, William Galston, Michael Novak, Robert Sapolsky,
and Alan Wolfe.
The current issue of In Character is Hays's first (and was shaped in part by her predecessor, Mark Oppenheimer). It deals with compassion, looking at this preeminent modern virtue from many different angles. In "How Emotion Became A Virtue," for instance, Clifford Orwin, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, provides a philosophical history, showing how compassion "has not always enjoyed so lofty and uncontroversial a status." In "Java and Sympathy," Howard Behar, a former president of Starbucks, argues that "it's impossible to lead in business—or in life—unless you genuinely care about other people." In "Take Two Aspirin and Don't Bother Me in the Morning," author Charlotte Allen considers the medical phenomenon known as "compassion fatigue." Says Hays: "I am particularly pleased that Allen's piece featured some genuine reporting: a visit to L'Arche, a communal home for the mentally disabled in DC. It's a good read."
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Charlotte Hays |
The next issue of In Character, scheduled for publication in October, will consider forgiveness. Michael Dirda, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post, will write on forgiveness in literature. Author and retired physician Theodore Dalrymple will analyze "false apology syndrome"—that is, apologizing for things one didn't do, like the Crusades or the Holocaust. The issue will also include an interview with psychology professor and JTF grantee Michael McCullough, author of Beyond Revenge, on the evolution of the forgiveness instinct, and a symposium on the question "Must we forgive the unforgivable?," featuring Robert Enright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a pioneer in the field of forgiveness studies, and Boston University philosophy professor Charles Griswold.
Under its previous editors—Oppenheimer, Christine Rosen, and Naomi Schaefer Riley—In Character has been recognized for excellence several times. This year, Bill McKibben's essay "Old MacDonald Had a Farmers' Market" (from the self-reliance issue) won the Pushcart Prize XXXIII, a prestigious best-of-the-small-presses award. Wilfred McClay's "Idol Smashing and Immodesty in the Groves of Academe" (from the modesty issue) was selected for the 2007 edition of The Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin), and Jean Bethke Elshtain's "'You Kill It, You Eat It' and Other Lessons from My Thrifty Childhood" (from the thrift issue) was selected for the 2006 edition of the same volume. In 2006, In Character was nominated in the categories of best design and best cultural coverage by the Utne Reader.
Helping Children Find Their Calling
"A problem that I've seen in a lot of young people's lives is that they're not really thinking about the question of 'why,' and not really devoting themselves to something that they truly believe in." So said long-time Templeton grantee William Damon at a Templeton Book Forum in New York City on June 9 (see video link at right).
The Forum, moderated by Templeton's Chief External Affairs Officer Gary Rosen, was convened to discuss Damon's new book, The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life (Simon & Schuster). Damon is a professor of education at Stanford University, where he directs the Center on Adolescence, and one of the world's leading scholars on the moral and psychological development of children and young people. The Path to Purpose was supported by a grant from the Templeton Foundation.
Damon wrote the book because of his concern over the "failure to launch" that he sees among too many young people. "There are certainly a lot of kids working hard," he said at the Forum, "and they look great from the outside. But there is a sense of emptiness among a lot of young people today." His book is the first scientific study of the issue. Damon surveyed some 1200 young people in their teens and twenties and did in-depth interviews with about 300 of them. He has already done one four-year follow-up study with some of his subjects and hopes to follow as many of them as he can longitudinally.
Damon is the author of many other books, including the much-discussed Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in our Homes and Schools (1995), which was also supported by the Templeton Foundation. At the Forum he explained that he wrote Greater Expectations when "self-esteem was the holy grail," to make the case that what young people really needed was standards. Today, he said, "those concerns have been addressed," permitting him to turn to the question of purpose.
Making Room for Darwin and God
"There's an important distinction between a theory that tells us the way the world is and a theory that tells us the way it ought to be," says Karl Giberson. A professor of physics at Eastern Nazarene College and director of the Forum on Faith and Science at Gordon College, Giberson speaks authoritatively about both sorts of theories in his new book, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, written with the support of the John Templeton Foundation.
Giberson recently discussed the book in an interview published in the online magazine Salon, conducted by Salon staffer Vincent Rossmeier. The conversation addresses what Rossmeier calls the "unending match of whack-a-mole" between scientists and Christian creationists. Giberson does not exonerate either side. Creationists, he argues, regard the Bible as history, but "the early chapters of Genesis do not read like history," he says. "They have a different sort of character to them." Giberson asks his fellow Christians to reconsider the concept of the Word of God. "That phrase makes no sense if you're talking about words and sentences," he says. "But it does make sense if you're talking about some kind of revelation about the nature of God."
Giberson rebukes scientists, too, for what he calls their "reckless extrapolation from what we know about evolution to an all-encompassing materialism." He draws attention to the "very deep mystery" of consciousness, and he counsels humility. "When you know a lot about how something works," he warns, "it's reasonable to rule out certain things and say, well, I don't think it could be this or that. When you know almost nothing about how something works, you need to be more humble." In a further contribution to the discussion, Giberson recently wrote a controversial and widely discussed article for Salon, titled "What's Wrong with Science as Religion."
"Let's Make It Cool to Save"
The first fruits of a multi-year, Templeton-supported initiative on thrift have been greeted with praise from across the media. The initiative, called "Exploring the Science and Practice of Thrift," supports interdisciplinary research and public education to examine the history of thrift as an American value. It is run by the New York City-based Institute for American Values under the leadership of David Blankenhorn, and aims to launch a national conversation on this newly urgent topic.
At a spring conference in Washington, D.C., Blankenhorn and his colleagues released a report called For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture. The report addresses the linked American problems of overindebtedness, lack of savings, and growing inequality. New York Times columnist David Brooks called it "one of the most important think-tank reports you'll read this year." Other commentators have suggested that the initiative signals the start of a trend or movement. "Haven't you heard?" wrote Marie T. Sullivan in a column in the Chicago Daily Observer. "Thrift is in vogue. Every cloud has a silver lining," she wrote, "and if there's a silver lining to problems like the subprime mortgage crisis and escalating gas and food prices, it's that some Americans are waking up to the old-fashioned idea of thrift." Financial columnist Michelle Singletary took a similar approach in reporting on the initiative for the Washington Post. The title of her column was "Let's Make It Cool to Save."
