“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. 

But the gathering at Tuff City Styles, across the street from Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, had a scholarly purpose. In keeping with the 2016 theme of the Association of Practical Theology conference, which took place April 8 through 10 at Fordham, the off-campus excursion was meant to exemplify the intersection between migration and theology, said Tom Beaudoin, PhD.

“We live in a world with boundaries and borders, which means we have to pay careful attention to who those borders benefit—who gets to have life and who doesn’t as a result of them,” said Beaudoin, the association’s president and an associate professor in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (GRE).

“Practical theology in particular has a responsibility to be part of the living experiences of the neighborhood—to find out what brings joy and pain in the local environment, and how those are connected to the larger world… This starts with symbolically and literally going outside of the gates.”

Tuff City is an art supply store and tattoo and piercing parlor that also houses a professional recording studio. Street artists from around the world are drawn to its backyard graffiti lot, where they paint over its walls on a daily basis.

“Not engaging with and serving the neighborhood—including the arts—is to all of our detriment,” Beaudoin said. “There are resources to be shared, [and]this is a relationship that could be life-giving on both sides and utterly essential to the mission of this University.”

In addition to giving association scholars from around the country a glimpse of the Bronx, Tuff City provided an apt milieu for a talk by alumna Tamara Henry, PhD, GRE ’14, an assistant professor of religious education at New York Theological Seminary.

Against a backdrop of a graffiti murals and life-sized replicas of subway trains, Henry offered an introduction to the world of hip-hop and how urban art—including rap music, DJing, graffiti art, and breakdancing—pertains to the world of practical theology.

“Hip-hop is an art form that is hewn out of hardship—specifically, the hardships of young people in the 1970s and 80s living in the throes of postindustrial economic and social distress,” said Henry, who is the youth minister at Lenox Road Baptist Church in Brooklyn.

“These art forms become a way in which young people can ignite resistance to the moral and social ills that are plaguing their community … whether it’s pervasive forms of housing discrimination, racial discrimination, unemployment, or the dwindling quality of education systems.”

Hip-hop can serve as a pedagogical resource to illuminate themes relevant to both theology and hip-hop, such as “speaking from the margins, speaking truth to power, and contesting injustice,” Henry said.

The art form can also provide religious educators a window to their students’ world, Henry said, helping them to better understand how urban adolescents and young adults relate to their social and religious environments.

“Hip-hop has become a grammar of young people all across the nation,” she said. “We can begin to view it as an equally meaningful avenue through which religious identity is being formed and through which a new approach to religious education can be engaged.”

The conference initiated what Beaudoin hopes to become an ongoing partnership with Tuff City.

“They are interested in working with students to teach them about urban art, and I’d like to find ways to support and appreciate the Tuff City artistry within our gates and to deepen the partnership Fordham has with our neighborhood,” he said.

“There is a lot to engage with, not only around religion but also other aspects— art, urban life, racial diversity and justice, and local economic issues.”

“Migration has been part of the story of New York City for centuries, and it’s also a powerful image for what is both rich and conflictual about the city,” said Beaudoin, an associate professor of religion in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

“We’ll be looking at all kinds of migration—forced and chosen migrations across borders, migrations through the prison system, migration into and out of religions, migrations through the journey of faith and spirituality—and asking how we are contributing to life in places where migration is happening. There are many ways to relate to this topic, but what’s most important is that people’s lives and livelihoods are at the center of it.”

The lived experience of real people is the central concern of practical theology, said Beaudoin. Rather than focusing exclusively on ideas and concepts, practical theologians study how religions and theologies directly and indirectly influence people’s actions, experiences, and practices.

“We see theology as interventionist,” Beaudoin said. “We do theology because we want to facilitate life and facilitate deeper or renewed practices in different environments.”

Many of the conference sessions will explore the intersection of practical theology with critical contemporary issues, such the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. A plenary session on this topic will feature a panel of speakers that includes BLM activist Darnell Moore and Rev. John Vaughan, executive vice president of Auburn Theological Seminary and a leader in the BLM movement.

“The idea is to ask how the effects of your theology honor the lived witness of the BLM movement,” Beaudoin said. “Whether you’re doing religious education for second graders or systematic theology for the university, how is your theology helping to realize these goods?”

Conference participants will also have the opportunity to head across Fordham Road to Tuff City Styles, where alumna Tamara Henry, PhD, GRE ’14, will discuss urban art, religious education, and practical theology. In conjunction with Henry’s talk, graphic artists at Tuff City will be revamping the APT logo in the style of graffiti art.

“This is a way to connect the study of religion at Fordham and the neighborhood we’re in,” Beaudoin said. “That’s very important to me.”

Registration for the biennial conference is open now through March 10. Visit the conference website to learn more and to register.

There’s a constant cacophony bounding from a trio of iPods inside Tom Beaudoin’s home.

His 10-year-old daughter prefers the pop of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Fifth Harmony. His wife, a psychotherapist, is fond of show tunes. “And I’m playing Kiss,” said Beaudoin, an associate professor of theology in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

It’s been that way for him since adolescence: That hard rock band’s maiden effort was the first record he ever owned.

But it was hearing the Canadian band Rush’s bassist, Geddy Lee, on the radio that forever transformed him.

“It summoned me, and 35 years later, it’s still happening,” he said of Lee’s distinctively intense lead playing. “I felt I was learning how to live through music.”

Beaudoin, among whose main research interests is the intersection of theology and popular music, has been playing bass in rock ‘n’ roll bands since he was 16.

“There’s some kind of nourishment and energizing and truth that’s coming through the bass in a way that’s true of no other instrument for me,” he said in a Midtown bar on a recent Friday, before heading off to see U2 at Madison Square Garden.

Beaudoin has been the bassist in the band The Raina for about four years, gigging in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Beaudoin’s hometown of Hastings-on-Hudson.

For him, playing rock ‘n’ roll, particularly within an ensemble that’s cultivated a near-instinctive understanding, can approach the transcendent.

“The creative vulnerability and energy and the solidarity about this kind of communal surrender to the music is still extraordinary and I’m still completely moved and compelled by that,” he said.

The Raina, while nominally a jam band, also plays propulsive, guitar-driven, straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll. And although bass players’ main responsibilities are to provide the rhythmic backbone, Beaudoin’s instrument pours into the foreground.

With splayed hand fingers plunking at the strings of his 1974 Fender Jazz bass–similar to his rock idol Lee’s favored instrument–Beaudoin generates, in his word, a “growly” tone.

“The bass can be percussive but it’s also percussive in a note-rich way. You can do that, sit kind of lovingly under everything, or you can do that in a way that’s propelling things forward and opening out,” he said.

For a long time, Beaudoin did not talk about his identity as a rocker within the academy, and his bandmates heard little about his university life.

“I didn’t mix them up,” he said of his avocations. He fully unveiled his rock ‘n’ roll cloak within academia about the  same time he kick-started his “Rock and Theology” blog in 2009.

His reticence to merge the two, though, can still prevail.

“In some ways, each world saves me from the other,” he said. “Academic life saves me from what I don’t like about rock ‘n’ roll, and rock ‘n’ roll saves me from what I don’t like about academic life. So I have a motivation to keep them separate.”

Beaudoin, raised in Independence, Missouri, within a progressive Catholic family, said he’s undergone “really deep shifts” in terms of his religious sensibilities. That’s been reflected and distilled in his research on religious “deconversion and disaffiliation.”

Rock ‘n’ roll, though, has been a constant–and powerful–thread. Looking for and discovering ways to mesh those two worlds of rock and theolgy, though, has proved a revelatory journey.

“It’s just surrender to the uncontrollable. But it’s a cultivated surrender, it’s a trained surrender,” Beaudoin said of where religion and music meet for him. “But if I’m going to be one person, then I’d like to find a way to let both of them through, in a way that respects where I am. That’s tricky to do.”

—Rich Khavkine

When I used to go bowling as a kid, “sleeper” pins were the ones hiding behind the obvious pins in front. You had to reach them with a creative roll of the ball in order to have a good frame. In the movies, a film that surprises people by succeeding despite not presenting itself in obvious “hit” terms is called a “sleeper.”

Below are pop songs that are “spiritual sleepers”—songs that you wouldn’t necessarily consider to be spiritually significant, but, when heard or seen in a certain light, might take us into some theological reflections about life and death.

#5: Lacuna Coil, “My Spirit”
This song is an unusual account of life after death from the perspective of the dead. It emphasizes an encompassing spiritual indifference and freedom toward everything. (And as theology teaches us, imagining death is also a way of imagining how to live today.) This song’s delicately majestic, mystical refrain can create a space for wondering about the difference between life and death, but does not alight on any single interpretation about what lies beyond death. This is effected through the remarkable phraseology that invites and suspends an “answer” about what lies beyond death, described only as “where, where I go…” It opens itself to spiritual seekers for their further contemplation.

#4: Father John Misty, “Every Man Needs a Companion”
This is a song registering a deep, contemporary spiritual search, achefully sung. Misty (a.k.a. Joshua Tillman) mentions significant sources of spiritual insight for people today: sacred books (“the Bible”), religions and myths (“Joseph Campbell”), and music (“the Rolling Stones”). Campbell, a celebrated scholar of mythology and comparative religion, argued that basic stories about the meaning of life are essential for providing a sense of being at home in the universe. This tune outlines a quest that speaks to a great many in our culture: to find that “companion” to help make sense of life’s mystery.

#3: David Bowie, “Where Are We Now?”
Bowie joins a venerable religious and philosophical tradition of meditation on the mystery of death. He finds himself pacing Berlin, lost in musement yet aware that he is “walking the dead.” The song has a haunted, aged quality, as if to emphasize that, at this stage of his life, one of the most important spiritual-existential questions, lingering through and after the song, is “Where are we now?” Knowing the depth of this question might be more important than the answer. And so his way of living this dual reality—of ordinary life under the shadow of dissolution—is by imagining his life amidst the powers of nature (“sun,” “rain,” “fire”). It is as if he is asking: What about our lives will permanently endure, and will it endure like nature does?

#2: Japandroids, “The Nights of Wine and Roses”
The keening bottle-rocket transcendence of this song is continually checked earthward, offering listeners a relentless commitment to the world in its untameable wonder. “Don’t we have anything to live for?” they sing. This dalliance with nihilism is the jetpack that rock and roll so often provides for those who want to imagine testing the limits of their lives, for what “more” might appear in the process. “Well of course we do,” they sing, but bets are hedged: “till they come true,” the band is partying. The tune exemplifies the pleasure in singing out and celebrating our way across the gap between what our lives might eventually add up to and our shadowy awareness of it in the present.

#1: “The Harlem Shake” music video craze
“The Harlem Shake” was a recent dance-video craze set to a short, infectious stretch of house music by the electronic musician Baauer. Thousands of people have filmed themselves dancing it. The basic movement of all the videos is the same: the transition from mild individual “oddness” amid “normal” everyday life into the sudden explosion of a weird revelation that just below normal life is a party in which people become ecstatic personae. When the “isolated” individual opens onto the “weirdness” of the whole (formerly silent) community, it is as if to say: everyone here has something utterly surprising and untameable inside. It directs us to the “more” just below the surface of everyday life. What is that strangeness, beautiful and unsettling, that we bear inside?
VIDEO: Five Spiritual Sleepers
To watch these songs’ videos go to www.fordham.edu/spiritualsleepers.

Aditi Bagchi,

associate professor of law, LAW,

“ESPN Accused in Dish Case of Giving Comcast Better Terms,” Bloomberg, February 11

Tom Beaudoin, Ph.D.,

associate professor of practical theology, GRE,

“Woodford and the Quest for Meaning,” ABC Radio, February 16

Mary Bly, Ph.D.,

professor of English, A&S,

“How do Bestselling Novelists Court Cupid on Valentine’s Day?,” Washington Post, February 14

James Brudney,

professor of law, LAW,

“Nutter Seeks High Court’s OK to Impose His Terms on City Workers,” Philly.com, March 1

Charles C. Camosy, Ph.D.,

assistant professor of theology, A&S,

“Drone Warfare Faces Barrage of Moral Questions,” Catholic San Francisco, February 20

Colin M. Cathcart, M.F.A.,

associate professor of architecture, A&S,

“New York City Traffic Ranked the Worst Among the Nation: Study,” AM New York, February 6

Saul Cornell, Ph.D.,

The Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History, A&S,

“After Newtown: Guns in America,” WNET-TV, February 19

Carole Cox, Ph.D.,

professor of social service, GSS,

“Boomer Stress,” Norwich Bulletin, February 19

George Demacopoulos, Ph.D.,

associate professor of theology, A&S,

“Pope Resignation,” ABC, World News Now, February 28

Christopher Dietrich, Ph.D.,

assistant professor of history, A&S,

“Bad Precedent: Obama’s Drone Doctrine is Nixon’s Cambodia Doctrine (Dietrich),” Informed Comment, February 11

John Entelis, Ph.D.,

professor of political science, A&S,

“John Brennan,” BBC Radio, February 9

Howard Erichson,

professor of law, LAW,

“High-Stakes Trial Begins for 2010 Gulf Oil Spill,” Amarillo Globe-News, February 25

Laura Gonzalez, Ph.D.,

assistant professor of finance, BUS,

“Recortes al Presupuesto Podrían Afectar el Seguro Social y Medicare,” Mundo Fox, February 8

Albert Greco, Ph.D.,

professor of marketing, BUS,

“Why Would Anyone Want to Buy a Bookstore?,” Marketplace, February 25

Karen J. Greenberg, Ph.D.,

director of the Center on National Security, LAW,

“Alleged Sept. 11 Plotters in Court, but Lawyers Do the Talking,” National Public Radio, February 11

Stephen R. Grimm, Ph.D.,

associate professor of philosophy, A&S,

“Grants from Foundations and Corporations of More Than $100,000 in 2013,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, February 28

Tanya Hernandez, Ph.D.,
professor of law, LAW,

“Brazil’s Affirmative Action Law Offers a Huge Hand Up,” Christian Science Monitor, February 12

J. Patrick Hornbeck, Ph.D.,

assistant professor of theology, A&S,

“Vatican Conclave,” Huffington Post, March 4

Robert Hume, Ph.D.,

associate professor of political science, A&S,

“USA: Supreme Court Case Update – DOMA/Prop 8 Briefs Streaming In,” Gay Marriage Watch, February 28

Clare Huntington,

associate professor of law, LAW,

“Sunday Dialogue: How to Give Families a Path Out of Poverty,” The New York Times, February 9

Nicholas Johnson,

professor of law, LAW,

“Neil Heslin, Father of Newtown Victim, Testifies at Senate Assault Weapons Ban Hearing,”Huffington Post, February 27

Michael E. Lee, Ph.D.,

associate professor of theology, A&S,

“Tiempo: Watch this Week’s Show,” WABC 7, February 17

Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J.,

professor of theology, A&S,

“Remembering Benedict — the Teacher, the Traditionalist,” The Saratogian, March 1

Dawn B. Lerman, Ph.D.,

director of the Center for Positive Marketing, marketing area chair, and professor of marketing, BUS,

“Study: Google, Facebook, Walmart Fill Consumer Needs,” Tech Investor News, February 12

Paul Levinson, Ph.D.,

professor of communication and media studies, A&S,

“Will Oscar Host Seth MacFarlane Be Asked Back? Probably Not,” Yahoo! News via Christian Science Monitor, February 26

Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Ph.D.,

professor of history and director of Latin American and Latino Studies, A&S,

“Escaping Gang Violence, Growing Number of Teens Cross Border,” WNYC, December 28

Timothy Malefyt, Ph.D.,

visiting associate professor of marketing, BUS,

“On TV, an Everyday Muslim as Everyday American,” The New York Times, February 8

Elizabeth Maresca,

clinical associate professor of law, LAW,

“Poll: 87 Percent Say Never OK to Cheat on Taxes,” KWQC, February 26

Carlos McCray, Ed.D.,

associate professor of education leadership, GRE,

“Cops Nab 5-Year-Old for Wearing Wrong Color Shoes to School,” Take Part, January 18

Micki McGee, Ph.D.,

assistant professor of sociology, A&S,

“Do Self-Help Books Work?,” Chicago Sun Times, February 21

Mark Naison, Ph.D.,

professor of African and African American Studies and history, and principal investigator of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP), A&S,

“Professor: Why Teach For America Can’t Recruit in my Classroom,” Washington Post, February 18

Costas Panagopoulos, Ph.D.,

associate professor of political science, A&S,

“Analysis: Obama to Republicans – Can We Just Move On?,” WHTC 1450, February 13

Kimani Paul-Emile,

associate professor of law, LAW,

“Some Patients Won’t See Nurses of Different Race,” Cleveland Plain Dealer via AP, February 22

Michael Peppard, Ph.D.,

assistant professor of theology, A&S,

“Big Man on Campus isn’t on Campus,” Commonweal, February 20

Francis Petit, Ed.D.,

associate dean and director of Executive Programs, BUS,

“Marissa Mayer Takes Flak for Gathering Her Troops,” E-Commerce Times, March 1

Rose Perez, Ph.D.,

assistant professor of social work, GSS,

“Education Segment,” Mundo Fox, January 21

Wullianallur “R.P.” Raghupathi, Ph.D.,

professor of information systems, BUS,

“¿Qué Tiene Silicon Valley para Producir ‘Frutos’ Como Steve Jobs?,” CNN, February 24

Joel Reidenberg, Ph.D.,

Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and professor of law and founding academic director of the Center on Law and Information Policy, LAW,

“Google App Store Policy Raises Privacy Concerns,” Reuters, February 14

Erick Rengifo-Minaya, Ph.D.,

associate professor of economics, BUS,

“Noticias MundoFOX 10PM Parte II,” Mundo Fox Noticias, February 8

Patrick J. Ryan, S.J.,

The Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, A&S,

“Pope Resignation,” WNBC, Sunday “Today in NY,” March 13

Susan Scafidi,

professor of law, LAW,

“Diamonds: How $60B Industry Thrives on Symbolism,” CBS This Morning, February 21

Christine Janssen-Selvadurai, Ph.D.,director of the entrepreneurship program at the Gabelli School of Business and co-director of both Fordham’s Center for Entrepreneurship and the Fordham Foundry, BUS,

“NYC Embraces Silicon Valley’s Appetite for Risk,” Crain’s New York Business, February 6

Ellen Silber, Ph.D.,

director of Mentoring Latinas, GSS,

“Mentoring Program Serves Young Latinas Aiming Higher in New York City,” Fox News Latino, February 25

Janet Sternberg, Ph.D.,assistant professor of communication and media studies, A&S,

“What are You Supposed to Do When You Have, Like, 106,926 Unread Emails?,” Huffington Post, February 25

Maureen A. Tilley, Ph.D.,professor of theology, A&S,

“Pope Resignation: Interview with Maureen Tilley of Fordham University,” WPIX, February 17

Terrence W. Tilley, Ph.D.,

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Professor of Catholic Theology and chair of the department, A&S,

“As Conclave to Select New Pope Begins, English-Speaking Cardinals Lead Charge to Reform Vatican,” Daily News, March 4

Peter Vaughan, Ph.D.,dean of the Graduate School of Social Service, GSS,

“Ceremony Held for NASW Foundation Award Recipients,” Social Work Blog, February 28

More features in this issue:

People

In Focus: Faculty and Research

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Copyright © 2013, Fordham University.

Tom Beaudoin, Ph.D., Fordham’s associate professor of theology in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, weighed in yesterday in a USA Today article on Pope Benedict XVI’s new Twitter feed.

The new handle, which launched today  in Rome, is @pontifex, and it is expected that the Pope will tweet answers to questions about faith (#askpontifex). He has some 900,000 followers, the article states.

You can read Beaudoin’s comments, and the entire article, here. And you can sign on to follow the Pope  here.