Jerry Herbert, director of the American Studies Program (ASP), was born in Los Angeles, served in the U.S. Army as a special agent with Military Intelligence in Uijungbu, Korea, and earned his doctorate in political science from Duke University. Editor of America, Christian or Secular?, he has served on the national board and is affiliated with the Center for Public Justice and has taught during their summer Civitas Leadership Program. He’s also involved with the Mustard Seed Foundation and helps lead a one-week summer institute for the Harvey Fellows Program (www.msfdn.org).  Also, as a longtime member and elder at Washington Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill, he helped launch the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, just a few blocks away from the ASP campus.

 

This year marks your 25^th anniversary with the American Studies Program—congratulations! Looking back, how are you different now than you were during your first year in terms of how you view the relationship between connecting biblical faith with public life?

 

I’ve learned so much being here at ASP, mostly from interacting with my students, actually. The next person I’ve learned most from is probably Steve Garber [author of Fabric of Faithfulness] when he was here.  You see, when I came into the program my understanding of the connection was fairly academic.  Steve helped me move beyond that.

 

When I started my graduate work at Duke University, I was, quite simply, a dualist. I could not connect my love for Christ with my love of politics.

 

After church on Sundays while at Duke, I met with an eclectic group of Duke graduate students from my Presbyterian church to talk about faith, the sermon and our graduate work. I sat there week after week wondering what they were talking about.  I couldn’t understand how they were seeing connections that seemed to come so easily to them. After several months, however, it began to dawn on me that Christ really is the Lord of politics, Lord of my interest in public life. When I came into this awareness, that Jesus is Lord of politics as well as of my life, it was like a Second Blessing to me, one of those wonderful highs in your spiritual journey.  Ever since then, I’ve been seeking to deepen and broaden that understanding of Christ’s sovereign rule.

 

Since I’ve been here at ASP, walking beside Steve all those years, I’ve come to grasp it as being more than mere intellectual understanding.  It’s experiential.  It’s by stepping into and living life that you discover what God’s love and sovereignty really look like. We can’t philosophize our way into living a life that is integral.  By the power of the Spirit we have to enter into it by doing.  It’s like what we try to do here at ASP. We take up a real world issue, in all its messy, complex, multi-layered ambiguity.  We reflect on what our responsibility looks like given what the Bible says about Christ’s reign, God’s intention, and how we humans have screwed things up.  And we begin to test to see how things might actually be different because of Christ’s work of redemption on the cross. 

 

Can you share an example of such an issue that you’re examining with the students?

 

We’re now studying energy policy and climate change. Students will make policy recommendations for how the country might move forward to strengthen its energy security while reducing pressures on global warming.  We‘ve talked with believers and non-believers on all sides of the issue. We’ve talked with people from the Sierra Club and from the petroleum industry, and with people who have interests in ethanol production.  We’ve read and heard from economists and scientists.  We’ve been briefed in Congress and at the White House.  We’ve heard from all kinds of people with all kinds of interests.

 

As we’ve gone through this study we’ve begun to see that the root problem is actually a spirit of entitled consumerism, a kind of self-centeredness. Even if we had all the new technology coming online that would expand the types of energy sources available to us, that would make energy more affordable or more earth-friendly, the problem would still remain if we continue at the current rate of consumption.  In other words, faith in the gods of technology is not going to save us.

 

We’re coming to see the need to rediscover God’s intention.  Energy is there to help us meet our needs and the needs of our neighbors, not to enable us to become gluttons of human consumption.  That means attaining a certain kind of balanced living that goes beyond policy. That doesn’t remove the need for policy.  Policymakers still need to make tough calls in the midst of conflicting interests and limited information.  But it properly relativizes the policy debate within the larger meaning of a more just and healthy world.  Policy is not just about balancing competing interests.  It’s also about acknowledging God’s intentions for justice and wholeness.  Through our study we are learning some things about the tools of policy in light of our responsibility as Americans and as followers of Jesus. 

 

What is the biggest obstacle that students typically have to overcome as they adjust to life in the ASP?

 

It’s the city. It’s a huge contrast. Here are the very rich and the very poor. Most students who come here suddenly find themselves in a setting where they are in the minority for the first time in their lives, perhaps both racially and economically. They also see the power here, the celebrity that is here.  It’s quite enticing. So how do they balance that with the notion of servant leadership?

 

D.C. really is a cross-cultural experience. Stereotypes go out the window: about race, about the city, about those with different ideological convictions, about themselves… Being able to navigate all of these differences is the biggest challenge. Students who are best equipped to handle it are those who are willing to learn from those different from themselves, and who are eager to follow after Christ no matter where that might lead.

 

You once dreamed of becoming a U.S. Senator before you switched gears and pursued teaching instead. Do you ever wish you had that experience under your belt?

 

Yes. I’ll put it this way: I am very convinced now both in my heart and in my head, that I am where God wants me, and I am doing something that really is consistent with my vocation. However, in the darkness before dawn, if I happen to be awake, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I had pursued my original course. There is probably a lingering ambition, a longing for a dream that has died. It’s not something that stays with me very long because God has given me another dream that is far better, given my personality, family, strengths and weaknesses. I’m living a far better dream. But nonetheless, some dreams die hard.

 

There were two times when a political career was a realistic option for me after moving to Washington, but both times it was clear that the timing was not right.  I was not ready.  My family was not ready.  Both times, God said he had something better for me, and that was ASP.

 

This is a dream job for me. I really am following my heart now, even though I wouldn’t have thought so in grad school.

 

For more about Jerry Herbert, visit: http://asp.bestsemester.com/contentID.1/faculty.asp

 

For more about the American Studies Program, visit: http://asp.bestsemester.com/overview.asp