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F. B. Nieman
Although a Roman Catholic by rearing and education, I was never tempted into business or to become a clergy person, I began my higher education with an Honor’s bachelor degree having a double major...ver maisAlthough a Roman Catholic by rearing and education, I was never tempted into business or to become a clergy person, I began my higher education with an Honor’s bachelor degree having a double major in Classical Languages (Latin and Greek) and Philosophy at Xavier University of Ohio. A teaching fellowship from Saint Louis University brought experience teaching Philosophy to undergraduates, a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy with a thesis on human understanding, and some work on a doctorate. Marriage and the arrival of children caused an interruption in studies while I taught Philosophy in the evening back at my undergraduate college. By day I became a Systems Analyst, helping to convert a large life insurance company from a punch-card system to the then newly-created digital computers.
Life took an unusual turn when, after reading a Time Magazine article (June, 1961, “Religion”), I was accepted into an experimental program formed at the University of San Francisco to train professional lay evangelists for the Roman Catholic Church. A year of graduate studies, mostly in theology, followed and then I spent four years as an evangelist in California parishes. We evangelists, all college graduates and at least twenty-eight years of age, were directed specifically to try to convert the un-churched and I led more than a hundred adult persons to Baptism. This bold experiment was interrupted by the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, and parishes became more focused on updating than reaching out for converts.
Always interested in theology more than philosophy, I took the opportunity to return to graduate studies when, just at that time, a doctoral program was opened for laity at Marquette University. With a good grasp of Greek, I was eager to do a doctoral dissertation in the Gospel of St. John. Fate intervened. The man on the faculty who led such studies took a leave of absence and I had no time or money for any delays. I turned to my Lutheran, Harvard-educated professor of Reformation Theology and he led me through a dissertation in the young Martin Luther. I ended up a Roman Catholic with a grasp on Reformation theology. I also taught a course in the New Testament at a local women’s college during this time.
The program that I had entered to become an evangelist had meanwhile been invited to become an affiliate of the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, as The School of Applied Theology, offering a professional Master’s degree in Applied Theology. Because I was finishing my Ph.D. studies and had four years of experience as an evangelist, I was invited to Berkeley to become Dean of the new program. I did that for the next twenty-nine years, President/Dean for the last nine. Besides directing the degree program, I taught theology, primarily on a graduate level, at the Union as well as at several other universities as a Visiting Professor.
Motivated by personal efforts to engage adults, many highly educated, in the reasonableness of Christianity, I have made a specialty of examining what is happening when people “convert” to a religion. When I “preached the Gospel”, I seemed always to be only half preaching, the other half being a rational presentation, almost like a college class. This may be somewhat evident in this treatment
In spite of my intellectual pursuits, my feet have, perforce, been kept firmly planted on the ground. With my spouse of over fifty years, we have raised eight children, all college graduates. Spurred by recent events wherein people have pursued wealth as if it were something holy or have suicide-bombed innocent women and children as if it were something God would bless, I was moved to write this essay. I pray that no one be scandalized by what I have written.ver menos