“I was looking for a degree in Christian spirituality. I started with the certificate program in spiritual direction, and then I ran out of classes and I was still interested,” he said with a smile.

He pursued a master’s degree at GRE, still not planning on going for a doctorate. But the opportunity to dive deeper into areas such as practical theology and spiritual direction was appealing to him.

“I was able to explore interests I had without feeling too constrained,” he said. “The great surprise for me was all the work we did around the field of practical theology.”

A ‘Transformative’ Practical Theology Class

Suriano said that the practical theology class he took, taught by religion professor Thomas Beaudoin, Ph.D., was transformational.

“He, in his own gentle and persistent way, got all of us to think differently about our ministry,” he said. “I can’t really say enough about how that semester changed my ministry here at the church and my ideas around it.”

Beaudoin said he teaches students to use practical theology to examine and understand their own lives and spiritualities.

“The ultimate curriculum is the student’s life, and so theology matters in part because we need to learn how to reckon with our lives—our lives individually and our lives together,” he said.

Beaudoin said that as a part of the program, Suriano was able to reckon with his unique spiritual background. He came to Fordham after decades in church ministry, which started when he was ordained a Catholic priest before he joined the United Church of Christ in 1993.

“He was interested from the beginning in using the language of Christian spirituality, to hold together his Protestant and his Catholic heritage and commitments,” Beaudoin said.

A Queer Vocation

Beaudoin said that one way Suriano did this was through his study of queer theology and his eventual thesis, “A Queer Vocation: Growing into Power.”

Suriano said that studying queer theology helped him develop a sense of “how I as a queer person have a voice in the church, that I may speak to the church in a way that is powerful and meaningful,” he said.

He called his thesis a “great intersection between some personal work and also some work about the church itself, including the congregation I serve.”

“I began to explore, just briefly, in my thesis about how for queer people in the church there is this connection with Christian spirituality and how to find our place in the church that isn’t centered around the debate over whether or if we should be there,” he said, but instead centered around some of the unique gifts that queer people can bring.

Past, Present, and Future

Beaudoin said when Suriano was able to “engage wholeheartedly in queer theories and queer spirituality,” it “really opened him up to a new horizon.”

“There was something noble and challenging and nourishing about this idea of queer vocation, and he really claimed that in three ways: as a way to make sense of his heritage; and then queer vocation as a way to understand what he’s about intellectually and spiritually now; but then also as a hopeful path to and through retirement in ministry.”

Beaudoin said that it was rewarding to see Suriano, who had already accomplished so much before coming to the program, “say an even deeper yes” to his life, vocation, and intellectual project.

“He’s so thoughtful, and he’s so reflective,” he said. “Also it’s humbling—it puts me in the role of perpetual student to be in the presence of students like that. I get to learn from his example as he goes deeper.”

He received a grant of $200,000 this past September from the Templeton Religion Trust for the Pantheon Research Project. The funding allowed him to return to Rome this past November to prepare a visitor survey that seeks to gauge the variety of experiences. The Pantheon will help promote the survey when it rolls out online next summer. He said his research has implications right here in New York City, where there are several sites that share the same qualities.

“Steffano was a courageous educator, enthusiastic and hopeful, who was always dedicated to his students, even during his health-related challenges. He excelled in the art and practice of teaching, providing a perfect model of how to teach in an inclusive way and engage all students,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

Montano joined the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education in 2019 as a visiting associate professor in practical theology and religious education. Faustino “Tito” Cruz,” dean of the school said that Montano was the embodiment of the University’s mission. His work in anti-racist pedagogy and leadership was especially relevant, he said, as the school actively works toward creating a curriculum that is inclusive and confronts white supremacy. Montano was key to that effort, Cruz said, because he was willing to have conversations that others might shy away from.

“I’m so grateful that he spent the last three years of his life with us. I’ve never met anyone who was as courageous as he was,” he said.

“Having someone on the faculty who could actually name what had to be named was both affirming and challenging. He was someone who could have transformed life not only at GRE, but Fordham as a community.”

Montano was a first-generation Cuban American from Miami. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Florida International University, a master’s degree in practical theology from Barry University, and in 2019, he earned his Ph.D. in theology and education from Boston College. His dissertation was titled Theoretical Foundations for an Intercultural, Antiracist Theological Education.

Hosffman Ospino, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology and education at Boston College who mentored Montano, said that when he first asked him why he wanted to do doctoral studies in theology, Montano told him he wanted to accompany others as a scholar and show people the way to a better world and a better church.

“We journeyed side by side for several years through classes, conversations in my office and restaurants, meetings with other academics, writing projects, especially his dissertation, and family moments,” he said.

“Our daughters went to school together. We became good friends. We expanded each other’s ideas. We dreamed about possible projects and possible worlds. I feel his absence.” 

Montano joined Fordham in 2019 on a two-year Louisville Institute postdoctoral fellowship. He taught classes such as Youth and Young Adult Ministry, Education for Peace and Justice, and Intercultural Ministry and Religious Education. His research spoke to the issues of both anti-racism and the cultivation of the faithful, in publications such as “Cultivating Young Hispanic Catholic Leaders,” which was included in Our Catholic Children: Ministry with Hispanic Youth and Young Adults, (Our Sunday Visitor, 2018), and “Addressing White Supremacy On Campus: Anti-Racist Pedagogy and Theological Education,” which appeared in the journal Religious Education in 2019.

He embraced the label of “practical theologian,” which he said meant learning first what people are doing to understand God on their own.

His wife, Christina Leaño, said that teaching had a transformative effect on Montano, who taught his last class virtually from his hospital bed.

“He was just filled with this renewed energy. It was really a transformation. This opportunity to teach at Fordham was such an important opportunity, and a lifeline as well,” she said.

He was one of the kindest people she’d ever met, she said, as well as an excellent listener.

“People would open up to him because he had this kind and unjudgmental presence that made you feel comfortable. He had a real humility and a love of people that was rooted in his health struggles. He knew the limits of life and the preciousness of relationships,” she said.

Rachelle R. Green, Ph.D., assistant professor of practical theology and education, said that “Steff,” as Montano was known, lived out the commitments of cura personalis in his scholarship, teaching, and friendship.

“He challenged us to imagine and enact a school and a discipline that goes beyond speaking about anti-racism so that we might become a school and community that embodies anti-racism in all that we do,” she said.

“Steff loved Jesus, and he loved to teach, and his love for both made us all better human beings. I have personally grown in my capacity to understand the justice work of education and to imagine more life-giving purposes for scholarship because of how Steff lived before us. I am deeply saddened by the loss of my friend, brother, and colleague and also greatly inspired to continue his work to make God’s world more loving, just, generous, and kind.”

Tom Beaudoin, Ph.D., a professor at GRE, lauded Montano for challenging and inspiring the school in his commitment to the urgency of antiracist theology, education, and ministry.
“He did not want us to settle for anything less than a radical vision of equality grounded in the family of all beings, the ‘kin-dom of God.’ As I experienced him, this was the good news to which he was committed, and I believe it remains our unfinished project,” he said.

Jeniffer Wowor, a doctoral student who took Foundations for Intercultural Ministry and Religious Education with Montano this spring, said the class felt like a home for her.
“I knew that he struggled with pain in teaching, but his eyes were always shining,” she wrote via email from Indonesia.

“Although he is no longer with us, I’m sure that ‘the light’ still shines, for his profound commitments to the path of liberation and equality, in the lives of those who know him. and in his wife and daughter’s heart. He also encouraged me to find my own and authentic ‘light,’ and I hope my future students will also be able to see it in my eyes.”

In an interview with Fordham News in 2019, Montano expressed optimism that real change was happening at GRE and at Fordham as a whole.

“The students in our school are already leaders. They’re already making an impact in the communities they belong to,” he said.

“I’d like to bring some of this pedagogy into their own practice—not just to help them change their communities, but to help create those sparks that can begin to change the way we do things in this country.”
Montano is survived by Leaño, his 8-year-old daughter Malaya, his mother Lourdes, his father Jose, and his brother Gabriel.

His funeral will take place on Saturday at 11 a.m. at Barry University in Miami. His ashes will be interned at the Honey Creek Woodlands, a memorial nature preserve at the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia.

A memorial website has been set up for friends, colleagues, and family to share memories of Montano, and to watch the funeral as it is livestreamed on Saturday.

“Most of the people who frequent it don’t know its history, don’t know who’s in charge, and are not necessarily [church]  members,” said Tom Beaudoin, Ph.D., professor of religion in Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. “And so, that raises two questions for me: What is the Pantheon staff doing, in relation to that situation? How do they think about relating to all those folks—six to seven million people a year who come through?”

For the past few months, Beaudoin—a practical theologian who explores how people practice religion in their daily lives—has been trying to understand how today’s people experience the Pantheon. What do they think of the Pantheon? And how can the Pantheon staff better connect with their visitors? 

Beaudoin’s research comes amid recent religious shifts in the U.S. Over the past decade, the number of American adults who identify as Christian has decreased by 12 percentage points, according to the latest research from the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated population, which consists mostly of young adults, has increased from 17% to 26%. 

But Beaudoin says the church’s affiliation crisis is also a good opportunity to reflect on the institution’s identity in the 21st century. One perfect model is the Pantheon, he said: a Roman Catholic church whose audience has vastly changed over the millennia, from faithful parishioners to short-term tourists. 

“I see the Pantheon as a symbol for the predicament of many legacy Western churches, meaning that you are in a situation where you do not own your core audience anymore, and you have to relate to people who may not understand the value system that you bring,” he explained. 

He selected the Pantheon for a second reason. Beaudoin wanted to see how “profoundly open spaces” like the Pantheon can help people feel more interconnected with the world around them. 

“I’m also a musician. I know that in arenas, certain kinds of concert venues or open-air festivals, there can be a communal experience where differences are driven down in that space,” Beaudoin said. “I thought, well then, what about the Pantheon? It’s open to the sky. It’s got a nine-meter oculus at the top. And it’s got these monumental front doors that never close except at night.” 

Last summer, his research began in earnest. For roughly 140 hours in total, Beaudoin roamed the Pantheon and observed life around him. He paid attention to what visitors saw, how much time they spent in the building, and which areas they frequented. He also interviewed 20 people who work at the Pantheon — pastoral staff, state employees who manage the space, and staff at the visitor’s desk — about what the Pantheon meant to them. 

Beaudoin is currently analyzing his observations. He’s also creating a five-minute online survey that will be distributed to Pantheon visitors next year. From fall 2020 to spring 2021, visitors will have the opportunity to answer experience-based questions: How did they feel in the Pantheon? What did they notice? What were they curious about? Did they know the building is a church?   

So far, he’s noticed a few themes. Among them is how visitors treat the space as “a historical space—not a spiritually significant space in the present.” 

“One is how utterly influential Wikipedia and guidebooks are in telling you what the space means. People are often going through the space with their phones, open to the Wiki page, or they have their [paper]  guidebook … But you’re not being asked to think about your own internal experience of the space or alternative interpretations of the space,” he said.  

He’s also observed visitors’ fascination with the Pantheon’s open dome and the rain that falls through onto the floor. 

“None of the guidebooks or the Wiki page treat the water on the floor as an aesthetic site of its own. But it is,” Beaudoin said. “As soon as it starts raining, people run inside and watch the water collect on the floor …  In a way, it’s a little strange, right? Couldn’t you just go outside and look at the rain on the pavement or just be rained on? Why are people doing that? Why is it significant? What [part of us]  does it tap into?” 

Beaudoin’s work was supported by a fall 2019 faculty fellowship and a faculty research grant from Fordham’s Office of Research. A full report of his findings will be shared with the Pantheon’s religious leadership in 2021. Leaders there say that Beaudoin’s research—the first of its kind—may help them better connect with visitors and encourage a more spiritual experience. 

“The collaboration with the study of Fordham University could help us to better understand the points of views of those who benefit [from]  the visit, the strengths of the visit [and]  what can be done to promote the spiritual dimension of the visit itself,” Pantheon archpriest Msgr. Daniele Micheletti said in a translated email. 

“Education was not just a job,” said longtime colleague Kieran Scott, Ed.D. “It was a vocation for him that gave profound meaning to his life.”

He was “one of those rare individuals” who taught in two graduate schools at Fordham—the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (GRE) and the Graduate School of Education (GSE)—said Gerald M. Cattaro, Ed.D., executive director of the Center for Catholic School Leadership and Faith-Based Education. 

“He acted as the academic bridge between the two schools,” Cattaro said. “[And] John was a cherished colleague and mentor to me in my early academic career, in addition to being a friend.”

At GSE, he helped establish the Ph.D. program in educational leadership (now known as the Ph.D. in church and non-public school leadership). The program produced alumni who went on to become university presidents, bishops, vicars of education, and congregational and past presidents of high schools worldwide, said Cattaro. 

At GRE, Elias was a professor emeritus who was instrumental in shaping two doctoral programs: the Ph.D. in religious education and the Doctor of Ministry program.  

“He realized that to complement religious education, we needed to be doing a kind of theology that served our students in their professional practice,” said Thomas Beaudoin, Ph.D., professor of religion. “As a result of what he did, we hired more practical theologians, including our current dean.”

But Elias’ 35-year-long relationship with Fordham ran deeper than the programs he developed, said his colleagues. To Elias, Fordham was home. 

“The first phone call I got as the new dean of GRE three summers ago was from John,” said Faustino “Tito” Cruz, S.M., dean of GRE. “He simply wanted to welcome me to Fordham and express his appreciation that I accepted the leadership of the school that he dearly loved.”

‘A Real Gift’  

Elias was born on Dec. 23, 1933, in Asheville, North Carolina, to George and Josephine Elias. His early exposure to scholars in theology and education led him to become “one of the most significant writers in adult religious education of the 20th century,” said an online database of Christian educators of the 20th century. 

His life at Fordham began in 1977 when he started teaching as a visiting professor at GRE. Over the next four decades, he delivered more than 80 scholarly addresses, served on multiple doctoral dissertation committees, and mentored dozens of students. He taught at Fordham until he was 78, said one of his two daughters, Rebecca Elias, FCLC ’96. 

In phone interviews, his Fordham friends and colleagues described him as an affable, curious man who was easy to talk to. He was a “sage” who was politically savvy in academia and university life, said Gloria Durka, Ph.D., a retired GRE faculty member who knew Elias for more than three decades. With his wit and wry sense of humor, he put a twist on serious matters in the classroom. But perhaps above all, he was humble and respectful, said those who knew him. 

“[He was] a true colleague who represents everything that you would hope a colleague to be,” said Durka. “He was my closest colleague, all these years at Fordham. And that’s a real gift—to have someone like that.” 

Harold H. Horell, Ph.D., assistant professor of religious education, remembered Elias as a good listener. When Elias spoke, everyone in the room paid attention, he said. 

“He used to sit with his head cocked to his right side, with a thoughtful look on his face. And then after the discussion was over, he would speak,” recalled Horell, who also directs the Ph.D. in Religious Education program. “His words carried a lot of weight because they often rang true.” 

He was a brilliant scholar whose mind was “like a living card catalog,” said his past student Linda Baratte, GRE ’04.

“He set up the scaffolding, almost, in his coursework, and then invited you to do all the exploration and fill in all the gaps with his amazing research and resources he knew about,” Baratte said. “[But] he never wanted adulation, as much as he was worthy of it.” 

His Namesake: John Elias to Elias Gelpi 

Elias authored more than 15 books and hundreds of articles on religious education and social justice. His teaching, writing, and practices addressed three things: the university, the church, and society, said Kieran Scott, Ed.D., a retired GRE faculty member who co-developed the Ph.D. program in religious education with Elias. His writing gave “a vivid sense of history,” said Scott, and often addressed the life of the church—especially the religious education of adults. 

“He felt that it was critical to raise up a mature, intelligent form of religious life in the church,” Scott said. “[But] at the center of all his education was a concern for justice. He felt that justice was indispensable for a peaceful society.” 

Elias also advised dozens of students, from as far as Ireland, Africa, and South America. He invited them to his home for Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July so they could experience American holidays with an American family, said his daughter Rebecca at his funeral liturgy on Oct. 2. 

One student even named his son after Elias. 

David Gelpi, who earned both a master’s and a Ph.D. in religious education from Fordham, recalled the ways that Elias had shaped his life. In the first year of his Ph.D. program, he said, his older brother was killed in a car accident. Gelpi didn’t know how he could finish his degree. But Elias, in a “gentle” manner, convinced him to stay. 

Today, Gelpi is a religious studies teacher at Fordham Prep. His son Elias—named after his mentor—was born in the early 1990s, when Gelpi was in the midst of his master’s program. Now he is a firefighter in Yonkers, New York, Gelpi said. 

“[My son] quietly tries to put himself at the service of people in Yonkers, and I’d like to think that was something that John Elias helped to sharpen early on,” Gelpi said. 

‘We Will Never Forget the Way He Made Us Feel’

One of Elias’ longest mentees and friends, David L. Coppola, Ph.D., GSE ’98, gave a speech at Elias’ funeral liturgy at St. Vincent Martyr Church, where they had met 25 years ago. Elias had mentored Coppola in the Graduate School of Education, toasted Coppola at his wedding, and commemorated Coppola when he was installed as president of Keystone College in 2014. 

“No more emails, texts, or phone calls; no hand to hold; no warm embrace or spontaneous ‘Hellooohhh!’” Coppola said at the service. “But we will never forget the way he made us feel. And his witness of lifelong learning, embracing paradox, and selfless giving lives on in all of us.” 

Elias is survived by his wife of 47 years, Eleanor J. Flanigan, Ed.D., professor emerita at Montclair State University; two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel; and three grandchildren, Julia, Kayla, and Zachary. 

In lieu of flowers, charitable contributions may be made in John’s memory to the Fordham University Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, Fordham University, Office of Development, 45 Columbus Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10023, or to the Sr. Regina Flanigan, IHM Fund at Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School, 1717 W Allegheny Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19132. 

Tharpe’s ability to push the boundaries between religious and popular music positioned her as the “Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and a pioneering musician at the intersection of gospel, jazz, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll.

“So much of her catalog was what she used to sing in church, but it was rocked-up,” said Tom Beaudoin, Ph.D, an associate professor of religion at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (GRE).

This month, a new GRE online course, which is free and open to the public, is exploring the spiritual significance of popular music through a theological study of Tharpe and seven other influential artists in music history— Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley, George Harrison, Carlos Santana, Lauryn Hill, Björk, and Beyoncé.

The course, Faith in Music: Sound Theology From the Blues to Beyoncé, kicked off this week and runs through May 19. It is part of a cooperative venture between the GRE and WFUV, a noncommercial, public radio station at Fordham. Through a series of podcast lectures, the course will examine how the artists’ faiths are reflected in their songs and how they’ve placed themselves in the service of their art.

“There are some people who will think that these artists are only secular or profane,” said Beaudoin, editor of Secular Music and Sacred Theology (Liturgical Press, May, 2013), who teaches the 10-week course. “That’s one side of it, but [the course is]pushing back against the idea that popular music is spiritually thin.”

Veteran WFUV disc jockey John Platt, who helped Beaudoin put the course together, said “Faith in Music” allows listeners to hear popular music in a new way.

“I think on some levels music operates on a visceral level where you’re moved by the melody or the performance, which hits your heart and soul in a non-verbal way,” he said. “In other cases, there’s something in the words that adds more depth to it.”

Platt provided supporting materials for the course from WFUV’s extensive archives, including interviews with gospel singer Marie Knight, who sang with Tharpe; rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins, who wrote Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes”; and guitar legend Carlos Santana. Coupled with informative magazine and newspaper articles as well as music and video playlists, the WFUV interviews will serve as a window to the artists’ influences and theological backgrounds.

One of the more insightful modules focuses on former Beatle George Harrison, whose spiritual quest into Hinduism informed his later music. Among the songs highlighted in the course is the Beatles’ 1967 song, “Within You Without You,” which was written by Harrison and includes the sitar, a popular instrument in Indian classical music. According to Beaudoin, Harrison expresses what he has learned of reincarnation from Hindu teachers with the lyrics, “And life flows on within you and without you.” Harrison’s 1970 post-Beatles solo hit, “My Sweet Lord,” delves deeper into his spiritual convictions with its pairing of the Christian invocation ‘hallelujah’ with Hare Krishna chanting.

“He’s saying it’s possible to hold together different traditions through music,” said Beaudoin.

“Faith in Music” will conclude with mega pop star Beyoncé’s latest visual album, Lemonade, which incorporates African spirituality and Southern black womanhood.

“For Beyoncé, who grew up Christian and singing in the church, I’m interested in how she gets to an artwork like Lemonade, which really gets overtly political and theological at the same time,” said Beaudoin.

Platt said in studying the works of artists as diverse as Beyoncé and Harrison, participants are able to discover the ways in which spirituality can shape one’s musical outlook.

“It’s there in a lot of music, but perhaps it’s hidden or under the surface,” he said. “I think what this course does is dig down underneath the surface to find some of those things that are informing the songs of that particular songwriter.”

At a seminar held at Fordham that focused on ministering in a secular and post-secular world, participants said religious leaders working with students are facing a new set of challenges.

When MoTiv, a team of chaplains from the Netherlands, began to engage engineer students from the University of Delft in discussions about their calling in a course on personal leadership, they discovered that spirituality was important to the aspiring engineers’ identities.

“The most beautiful things happened in those three [to]four hours,” said Günther Sturms, a MoTiv coach and university Roman Catholic chaplain, who spoke on Feb. 10 at the Lincoln Center campus. “The students started to share their inner stories. They told us ‘We’ve never done this with our lecturers. We’ve never had these kinds of conversations about why we are really here.’”

The MoTiv team said they had to strip away their own ideologies in order to create a safe and sacred space in which students could talk openly about their existential perspective, and could feel nurtured.

“Our predecessor found out that religion—as it was presented at the campus—had become obsolete, so we couldn’t do anything our predecessor did before,” said Hans van Drongelen, a spiritual counselor and MoTiv trainer.

Along with the MoTiv team, Rabbi Irwin Kula, an eighth-generation rabbi and co-president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL), shared how today’s campus ministers can steward religious heritage creatively to reach religiously unaffiliated people.

“One of the big problems that we have is the language problem,” said Kula, author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life (Hachette Books, 2007). “We literally don’t have a language that we can [speak], between legacy religions and the different types of secularism that we have.”

The MoTiv team said they’ve developed some practices that stem from a deep desire to understand student-engineers’ departures from established religion, juxtaposed with their apparent need to be guided by faith or inner motivations as they navigate the unknowns in their vocation.

“Maybe we need to become more curious,” said MoTiv coach Bart de Klerk. “This might be a trigger to redefine who we could be not only as [individuals], but as a community.”

Kula helps run CLAL’s Rabbis Without Borders, an innovative program training rabbis to minister outside of synagogue settings. He said that leaders who have a conservative predisposition lean toward wanting to conserve their religious tradition or else find new meaning in it. Those who he described as progressive are those typically interested in creating something new.

Both sides should be inquisitive if they want to change the religious landscape, he said.

“We need everyone in the drama,” he said. “Wherever you position yourself, if you want to grow, you better spend a lot of time on the side that you disagree with most.”

 Thomas Beaudoin, Ph.D., associate professor in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, organized the roundtable discussion in an effort to share contemporary perspectives on the issue. He said the participants’ perspectives “give us each something for our own work today.”

This special broadcast, “Faith, Spirituality, & the Future,” will air on the CBS Television Network on Sunday, April 3, 2016 (check local listings here).

While more Americans move away from organized religion, many still profess a belief in God and consider themselves spiritual, claiming to encounter God and the sacred in nature and in their relationships with friends and family rather than within the traditional setting of a church.

One of the largest demographics driving this shift in spirituality are millennials, young people between the ages of 18 to 34. Beaudoin discusses why many millennials do not want to be defined by one particular religious tradition, even if they were raised in one.

Watch a trailer below and tune in when the show airs in your area, or stream it online.

Fordham professors speak at several conferences throughout the year, and sometimes they’re high up on the pop culture scale.

Last May, for instance, Thomas Beaudoin, Ph.D., associate professor of theology at Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, gave a presentation on “Secular Music as a Quest for More” as part of a panel at the very buzzworthy South By Southwest (SXSW) tech and music conference in Austin, Texas.

This Saturday, Oct. 12, Christiana Peppard, Ph.D., professor of theology, science, and ethics, will join a panel at New York’s Comic Con. *Paul Levinson, Ph.D., professor of communications and media studies, has recently been added to the panel.

Hosted by Academy Award-nominated actor, James Woods, the panel will focus on “Tech Toys from the Future.” It is presented by Futurescape, a six-part series on the Science Channel.

According to show organizers, this “tech road show from the future” will feature notable “‘rock stars of the gadget world’ as they unveil the ‘latest and greatest’ in the world of technology.”

Attendees will also see exclusive footage from the upcoming season of Futurescape with commentary from the producers.

“Each episode of Futurescape will look at one idea or discovery that will critically alter life as we know it: Synthetic Biology, Predictive Analytics, Habitable Planets, Nano Technology.

“Woods will ask the big questions, ignite debate and reveal a stunning image of the future.”

That’s where Peppard will come in, as she’ll discuss some future aspects of synthetic biology. *Paul Levinson will discuss the civil rights of robots. (Yes, you read that right.) Here’s how describes it:

“We invent robots to be our servants — to do dangerous or tedious jobs that we would rather not do,” Levinson says. “We try to make them more and more intelligent, so they do their jobs better. What happens when we make our robots so intelligent that they are sentient beings? Are we morally entitled to continue treating them as slaves? Or will our future robots be entitled to civil rights?”

Two Fordham professors and an Academy Award-nominated actor discussing the future? Sounds good to us!

New York Comic Con is the East Coast’s biggest popular culture convention. Its show floor plays host to the latest and greatest in comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys, movies and television.

-Gina Vergel

Thomas Beaudoin, Ph.D., associate professor of practical theology, used to reach into the closet and pull out shoes, a belt and other workaday attire almost without thinking. Likewise, he regularly plunked down $4 for a daily latte at a popular coffee chain.

All that changed a few years ago, when Beaudoin grew curious about the day-to-day items in his life while researching a book on young people and faith.

“I wanted to know whose hands had touched [the objects]along the way,” Beaudoin recalled. “I realized that in everyday life and practice, I am indebted to mostly young workers around the world that I don’t know—in China, in El Salvador. They depend on me and I depend on them.

“I like my shoes. I like the coffee. These workers have done their job,” Beaudoin continued. “But I (and the companies I support) haven’t done my job for them. I am in a relationship in which I am at least the slacker, if not the abuser.”

For Beaudoin, acknowledging his relationship to people of lesser means raised the issue of what it means to be a Christian in a nation dominated by branding. He grappled with this issue in Consuming Faith (Sheed & Ward, 2003), a book that examines corporate branding while tracing the roots of the products in Beaudoin’s closet.

According to Beaudoin, some popular brands of shirts, sneakers and even coffees enjoy a near-spiritual allure among young people. Yet these brands, often manufactured overseas, depend on an exploitation of labor that might lead to a “test of faith” for Christian consumers. In the end, the practical theologian in Beaudoin decided to integrate who he is with what he buys.

“If you [as a Christian]believe the basic argument that you should live one whole life . . . at peace with God, then one thing to do is to examine your personal practices,” Beaudoin said. “How do those everyday practices bear witness to our theology?”

Self-examination resonates with Beaudoin, who lately has chosen to evaluate his Roman Catholic post-Vatican II values in the context of today’s global religiosity. He sees a slippage between the boundaries of faiths and religions that makes him wonder where Catholicism in particular, and religious identity in general, will be in 50 years.

He also sees some new directions among young Catholics. In his first book, Virtual Faith (Jossey-Bass, 1998), Beaudoin acknowledged the irreverent spirituality of his own Generation X. The merger of pop culture and religious reverence led youth to embellish themselves with tattoos of Jesus and uncommon sacramentals—piercings and jewelry. Yet, in Beaudoin’s view, these things were less a statement against religion than a new exploration of the sacred among a generation hungry for spiritual discipline.

“There is a fairly widespread move in Catholicism among younger generations toward a greater reliance on individual conscience, a greater skepticism about church authority, and a greater openness to the value and truth of all religions,” Beaudoin said. “There is also a push back by an influential and significant minority against what they perceive to be the dangers of relativism implied in these shifts.”

According to Beaudoin, some sociological studies have argued that generational differences among Catholics are even more dramatic than ethnic and racial differences.

“It seems that you are at least as likely to pinpoint someone’s belief system as a Catholic if you know when he or she was born, as if you know where he or she came from,” he said.

But is the Catholic Church in dialogue with its younger members?

At the recent Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, Pope Benedict XVI spoke to the gathering of 250,000 youths about the negative effects of a culture driven by consumption, referencing everything from financial squandering to the media’s exposure of sex and violence. While Beaudoin was impressed by the message, he was more encouraged by the Pope’s examination of the church’s own sex scandal, calling the Pope’s candidness particularly inspiring.

“For me, the critique of [youth]culture has more force if the Pope, and all of us who share the Catholic tradition, are willing to be self-critical about what is going on in our own house,” Beaudoin said. “Because the Roman Catholic Church has become a tradition that has trouble telling the truth about itself.”

The time is ripe, he suggests, for the Catholic Church to engage in a more forward-thinking approach in its relationship with young people, while easing up on its traditional “club or clan mentality.”

Beaudoin’s latest book, Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian (Orbis, 2008), speaks to the church’s need for self-examination, and a “letting go” of some rigidly drawn boundaries around Catholic identity to make room for the generational shift and new cultural questions for faith.

Drawing on postmodern philosophy to inspire a new way of practicing Christianity and Catholicism, Beaudoin’s book addresses the role of younger theologians in bringing the church into the 21st century.

“The question of power probably needs to be foregrounded theologically today as much as ever,” Beaudoin continued. “Christians can learn to see their practice of faith as acts of dispossession if they begin to acknowledge how power has functioned in Christianity, Catholicism and through their own lives.”

One outcome might be to rediscover Catholicism as “something that is historical and shifting in its orientation, that is not a guaranteed sale from one cohort to the next.”

Having come to Fordham from Santa Clara University, it is no surprise that Beaudoin is at home with the Jesuits.

“My whole theology is oriented to the question of spiritual exercises, whether ‘secular’ or ‘sacred,’ in contemporary culture,” he said. “Spiritual exercises, of course, are not just imaginations that take place in the mind, but are ways of being with your body differently.”

Music is one such exercise. Beaudoin views his playing bass guitar in rock bands as a spiritual practice. He and Brian Robinette, Ph.D., a drummer and assistant professor of theology at St. Louis University, are working on a project for theologians who are also rock musicians, nurturing the spirit through academic theology and secular music.

Extracting spiritual nourishment from a music scene rife with anti-religious types, Beaudoin said, becomes possible by embracing “what is beautiful about strangeness.”

It may be serendipitous, therefore, that the native of Kansas City has landed in one of the strangest cities on the planet.

“New York City is a tremendous gulp of reality,” Beaudoin said. “I feel a deep geographic consolation here, and hope my work at Fordham will be nourished by, and respond to, what the city gives.”

Staff Intern Brendan Gibbons contributed to this story.

– Janet Sassi