What would Jonathan Edwards think?

I think I know why the man in this picture looks so sour: he read this post!

I didn't know Yale once expelled students for being gay. The things you can learn from reading the Courant!

Act 1 was about to start and Richard Lalli had a few last words for his students. Orpheus, Apollo and the others huddled around in their white robes. "Try to be free," Lalli said calmly. "And make it as much your own as possible."

With that, he retreated to the church balcony, dressed for the opera in a silk scarf. In a few short months, his students had mastered "L'Orfeo," and as the opening music filled the rafters, Lalli looked as proud as any parent in the room.

A vocalist, pianist and professor, Lalli is about to take on a new role: master of Yale University's Jonathan Edwards College. He and his partner, Dr. Michael Rigsby, who will be assistant master, are set to become the first openly gay couple to head a campus dorm when they move in next January.

Yale is divided into a dozen residential colleges, each with its own dining hall, intramural sports teams and social events. The college master presides over it all: reassuring parents, nurturing students and providing entertainment, a job that can make directing a Baroque opera, by comparison, seem easy. With Lalli's appointment, Yale follows Harvard in naming a same-sex couple to a high-profile, mothering role, a milestone for a school that once expelled students for being gay.

In a sign of how far society has come, no one is expecting much controversy. "You can never control for every loose cannon, but I just don't think this is an issue anymore," said a close friend, Ralph Hexter, the openly gay president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

I guess not. We sure have come a long way indeed.

Faith and Science at Yale

An interesting look from the Yale Daily News at creation, evolution and intelligent design. (Note the term "worship team" in quotes. A good reminder to Christians that people really don't know us.)

A “worship team” sang praises of the Lord, while professor Fred Sigworth prepared do his best to reconcile the demands of faith and the demands of science.

“God of wonders beyond our galaxy / You are holy, holy / The universe declares your majesty / You are holy, holy,” the crowd intoned.

After the introduction by the Yale Christian Fellowship’s worship team on Friday, Sigworth launched into a lecture that stressed the compatibility of science and faith by focusing on the idea of the “unexpected vista,” the discovery or witnessing of a unique occurrence, a phenomenon which he said was common to science and religion.

Sigworth’s talk spanned the foundations of modern science and the debate over evolution and intelligent design, with ample reference to philosophy and the Bible.

“Being a Christian is good preparation for work as a scientist, and science can help prepare you for being a Christian,” he said.

Click here to read the rest.

Korean students pursue God and education at Yale Divinity School

An interesting profile of Korean divinity school students at YDS. Looks like Chris Tomlin really is popular everywhere.

The congregation continues to sway to and fro through four more songs accompanied by a five-person band. Here, at 9:30 a.m. on a Sunday, in a pew at the back of the New Haven Korean Church in Hamden, Conn., worships a cluster of Korean-American students enrolled at the Yale Divinity School (YDS). Yeon Soo Lee, DIV ’09, a boyish, bespectacled YDS student in his late twenties, has freshly arrived from Seoul. Lee is going to teach Sunday school after services today, and I am going to observe. He didn’t tell me it would be conducted entirely in Korean—a language that nearly everyone in this church understands, but that I do not.

The several Korean Christian churches sprinkled throughout New Haven serve primarily Presbyterian and Methodist worshippers. Ethnic churches may seem like a curious oddity, but in fact are part of a growing trend among Korean immigrants. Although Christianity arrived in Korea barely 100 years ago, the religion boasts unusually devoted followers. Like Lee, they leave behind families, friends, and promising careers in Korea to pursue theological studies 8,000 miles away in a quiet nook of Connecticut, on a grassy hill tucked behind several University science buildings in New Haven.

Read more here.