Dear Emily Brooker,

I know we do not know each other, but your name has recently made the news in reference to a bill nicknamed after you (HB 213 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/16/missouri) and I wanted to reply to the issues you have brought up to you, personally.

I left college quite some time ago but I still remember having to write papers on distasteful subjects, attending class lectures or speakers' programs that left me shook up, and writing confused and hurt letters to those I had grown up with or having long (and equally bewildered) talks with my new friends on campus when I encountered something that disturbed my sense of the way things were. (Or ought to be.) I imagine you must have felt the same way, lately, and I see you have gone to a great deal of trouble to remedy it.

If you are having trouble speaking up in class, I can only suggest you look at the part of the syllabus that says "percentage of grade from class participation" and find your courage. Remember that most of your classmates are in the same boat whether they are too overawed by their professor, or are scared to speak in front of a group of people, or are not used to such a variety of points-of-view. Your speaking may give them courage: be a good example.

I am sorry your faith is so shaky that you required the Missouri state legislature to shore it up. Most of us are not so fortunate - we face disappointments and contradictions in our faith in the goodness of another's love, or in religious matters, or in the benevolence of the economy or the political process or the judicial system, or in the abilities of the medical profession, but we have to shoulder them the best we can and move on. (I for example, believe I am worthy of winning the state lottery: I am not selfish, I know a museum that protects its 4,000 year old artifacts with a plastic tarp, a college that holds its art classes in a basement, a university that keeps priceless archival photos in a stack on an ordinary an office floor - I had never realized I could petition the state legislature to redress my disappointment. Now I do; but now that you have opened the door to that I fear there will be quite a line.)

There are other ways to cope with the uncertainty you're feeling: turn to a pastor, a friend, a Bible Study group, a councilor, do some reading on your own - there are already laws to cover your situation, particularly the ones that protect freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. No one will keep you from attending any house of worship you please, no one will keep you from speaking as loudly and as vehemently as you please about your beliefs (in a classroom or anywhere else), and no one will compel you to be any one of the thousands of religious sects that crowd the globe. (The simple existence of alternate points of view does not compel you to accept any one of them.)

The danger lies in passing laws that do compel any of those one things - because a place's religions change with time and demographics and new religions emerge. In twenty years your school's town may be the home of a newly founded religion that believes things neither you nor I could picture, it could be the home of a new industry that brings with it a completely different population (socially, economically, ethnically or nationally), the young people of that town could grow up and decide (as young people sometimes do) that they will believe the polar opposite of what their elders now do. And the law passed today will be yet another 'blue law' on a state's books - odd and antiquated, with no one remembering why it was passed or why it was necessary. Or it could be abused and used to coerce professors into teaching the doctrines of a religion that neither of us could ever anticipate. Study the history of England in the sixteen-hundreds and think over how destructive it can be when different religions take power and attempt to coerce adherence. Leave our laws as they are: they were written in light of that history.

Let me submit to you that if you did not feel uncertainty as part of you school's education then your school is not doing its job. (And I say you should ask for your money back )  Speaking of your tuition dollars, I am not familiar with every detail of what lead you to this point, but I'd like to ask if you spoke to the professor in question, or to the head of their department, or to your school's Dean of Students, or to the Division of Student Affairs, or to the Faculty-Student Judicial Commission? Did you carefully exhaust every campus resource and ever recourse recommended by the Student Handbook? (I say this because other students who've made similar complaints to yours seem startlingly ignorant of their own campuses' grievance procedures and tend to under-use them; the Student Handbook is the first place I'd point any student who had trouble with any faculty member.)

To go back to your discomfort, I think faith is a bit like love - if it's sound it can weather doubts, questions, and uncertainties. If it cannot weather them then perhaps it was not the most secure or profound feeling to begin with - and perhaps it should be transmuted into something deeper or set aside.

A Jewish friend of mine once showed me a poem by Robert Weston that may help you reflect on what's happened to you:

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth. Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge. It is the servant of discovery. A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief. Doubt is the touchstone of truth. It is an acid which eats away the false. Let none fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief. For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure. Those who would silence doubt are filled with fear. The house of their spirit is built on shifting sands. But they that fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on a rock. They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge. The work of their hands shall endure. Therefore, let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help; it is to the wise as a staff to the blind. Doubt is the handmaiden of truth.

I gather that doubt and truth may seem antithetical to you; please know that the spiritual life contains many paradoxes. I wish you the best, wherever your journey make take you, and I ask you to be slower to hurry to the legislature (at any level) in the future: I would ask you to resolve personal matters, especially things so deep and private as belief or unbelief, on a personal level - one on one with confidante you trust.

Best regards,

Kushana