“Religion, faith is a mystery, it’s entering into a mystery, it’s not entering into…truth, it’s entering into questions.”—Rev. Dr. Gail Ransom
Rev. Dr. Gail Ransom knows the faith landscape is shifting. “There’s a lot to choose from now,” she says. “It isn’t like you go and you get your Christianity when you’re young…you go to college [and] you find a nice church that’s just like yours at home.” As an undergrad, it’s easier than ever to connect with new belief systems, some more positive than others; Ransom acknowledges the risk of cults. “The campus needs to be very careful, and is very careful, about who they bring on. I mean, I work with the Multifaith Council. They’re very, very wonderful people. So Chatham doesn’t let anybody on campus that’s not good for students,” she says. Her warning? “If a group starts asking you, telling you what to think…you need to do the opposite and think for yourself.”
That’s where the All Faith Gathering comes in: a weekly opportunity led by Ransom for students of any spiritual background to connect and grow together. “It’s a place where you can ask whatever question you have and any misgiving you have, any curiosities you have,” says Ransom. “All Faith supports all the curiosity, the eclecticism, the wanting to know more, the trusting in the mystery.”
The experience is much more spiritual than religious; Chatham students focus on bonding and forming trust. “In the All Faith Gathering, they support each other and ask each other questions and honor each other’s questions and answers. I’m very impressed with Chatham students,” she says. “They’re warm; it’s very warm, it’s very personable intelligence.”
Ransom combines the traditional with the unfamiliar every Thursday. After opening with drums, each participant shares the highs and lows of their week. “Then one of the students leads a meditation that she likes,” Ransom says. “We’ve had Zen meditations, we’ve had pagan meditations, we’ve had all sorts, just depends what the students have.”
Though Ransom leads Chatham students to spirituality, her religion was established in childhood. “We were, I’d have to say, casual Christians,” she says, “but we went to church all the time. My family became good friends with one of the ministers, and so we’d often have dinner together with them. My mother was a teacher…both my mother and father sang in the choir and so I sang in the kids’ choirs…and was part of Methodist youth fellowship. My father was in recreation, so he did a lot of the social events of the church’s, the festivals and the plays and the potluck dinners…and I’m still doing that. I’m doing exactly what my father did.”
For a time, it didn’t seem as though Ransom would end up in the church. “I started out in music education…I was a singer-songwriter. I sang in coffeehouses and bars, too, and I was a troubadour singer for a while and I taught music for three years.” Teaching about 1,000 students, she found the rigidity of her job challenging. “There are just so many different students and you had to be really alert at 7:30 in the morning, and for some that’s good, but not for me.” Along the way, she found a new passion. “I liked the latitude of creativity in the church,” she says. “So then I went to Yale Divinity School, but I went into the Institute of Sacred Music, Worship and the Arts. And that was very good for me because I got to do my arts, but then I also put the theological and spiritual grounding behind it.”
The extremely selective program stretched Ransom academically and spiritually. “Divinity school prepares you for a classic Christian ministry,” she says. “So you have to study the Bible…a semester in Old Testament, a semester in New Testament just to give you a cursory overview. And then you might find yourself drawn to a certain part…and you might study it more in-depth. Then you have to study church history.”
Her religious education did not stop there. “I did graduate from seminary, then recently I finished a doctorate in Wisdom Studies from Wisdom University.” The postmodern program runs for ten weeks. “It is an intensive where you spend a week studying a subject, write papers beforehand and papers afterwards.” Body prayer, in-depth discussion and artistic meditation supplement the academic work.
After examining faith from both traditional and postmodern perspectives, Ransom understands why organized religion is suffering in popularity amongst young people. “The reason the church goes into trouble is [that] it gets stuck on its form rather than its content,” she says. Now, as Director of Faith Formation for First United Methodist Church of Pittsburgh, she’s working hard to bridge the generation gap; her Wednesday night Worship Jams celebrate spirituality in a number of innovative ways. “I think the church has to grow, and that involves dancing, using your whole body, using your whole senses…a lot more meditation, a lot more prayer, a lot more spiritual context,” she says. “Really the church just has to get down to its essence again about the spiritual life…to know that we are spiritual beings and grow that in ourselves as much as we grow our intellect or as much as we grow our nutrition. It’s part of who we are; it’s a beautiful part of life.”
To Ransom, spirituality has nearly a tangible essence. “It’s all around us, and we’re part of it…we swim in it, whether we know it or not.” Her philosophy of hands-on faith carries over to prayer. “Prayer can be with your arms open, prayer can be a dance, prayer can be a song, prayer can be meditative syllables,” she says. “You can have a prayer of joy, you can feel something just pop out of your heart.”
Though Ransom firmly advocates a welcoming philosophy of spirituality, she’s well aware of the religious intolerance promoted by Christian mega-churches and spearheaded by major political figures. “It’s maddening,” she says. “It’s very frustrating for those of us who have much more accessible Christianity that we feel like it’s very hard to get our word out there. We don’t have the funds, you know: the smaller, more liberal churches, churches that are more open.” Ransom is disappointed by the alienating practices. “Some of us feel they’ve abducted Christianity and taken it their own way and used…what are their moral and social agendas and…called it Christianity,” she says. “As humans, we really prefer to have things told to us so we can spit them back and not think for ourselves. I mean, not everybody’s a Chatham student.”
Despite current religious negativity, Ransom has great hope for the future. She does believe there is a revelation coming, but not necessarily the 2012 kind. “The transformation that we’re going through, that probably we’ll go through, is more [about] people becoming more spiritual, more tolerant, more understanding…. We’re actually going to mature in a way, evolve; we’re in the process right now….We are evolving into a more consciously spiritual species.” Ransom is reassuring: change is nothing to be afraid of. “I’m not worried that it’s going to be some cataclysmic thing. It’s all said to be a rise of the human race into a more…divine kind of being….I can’t wait. I can’t wait.”
The All Faith Gathering meets Thursdays at 4:15 in the PWC room off of Anderson. Drop in anytime; all are welcome.