Augustine redux
Book review, Title From Harvard to Hell And Back, Author Eric H. Sigward, Rating 3.0,
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From Harvard to Hell And Back Eric H. Sigward Book review |
From Harvard to Hell and Back is an autobiographical account of a young phenom who in the late 1960's and early 1970's attended Horace Mann, Harvard, where he rowed on the crew and joined the Porcellian Club, then Cambridge, Stanford, and several divinity schools. It is a crazy book, of hubris and wild youth, drugs, sex, the occult, and finally, Jesus.
Eric was one of several seminary interns from the Bay Area Peninsula Bible Church, all of whom were guests in my parent’s house on and off during the mid-1970’s. I only met a couple of the interns (one of which was the notorious Bryan Fischer (note 1)), sadly Eric was not among them. The stories I heard about him from my family were intriguing and entertaining. One story of Eric remains in my memory: Eric, out of the blue, asked another intern, Tina, to marry him (they had no romantic relationship), and when she emphatically replied, ‘No,’ he responded, ‘Well, how about tennis?’
So when I stumbled across this book, I was able to determine it was the same Eric Sigward, and decided to read it.
The Christian autobiographies I read as a child, a natural consequence of being raised in an Evangelical household, had a predicable arc: ‘I was blind, but now I see’. They are in part evangelical appeals: ‘I grew up a sinner, and after perhaps a tour of the darker side of life, and after a struggle to understand my purpose on this earth, I found and accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, and I am now eternally safe, and my life is immeasurably better. You too can follow Jesus.’
Confessions Of Saint Augustine, by Saint Augustine, R.S. Pine-Coffin
Eric’s book more or less follows that pattern, but feels more like St. Augustine’s Confessions. Augustine catalogued his numerous sins prior to his adult conversion to Christianity. His extensive passage through hedonism is tinged with regret, but seemed to me only tinged; in fact Augustine seemed to relish reliving the old life, and famously beseeched God: "Master, give me chastity and celibacy, but not yet." (Confessions of Augustine, Book VIII) This same sense permeates Eric’s account, and makes it feel more human and less didactic, less Christian Socialist Realism than typical of books in this genre I encountered in my youth.
Eric Sigward died recently, on February 28, 2021. He has been celebrated by the New York City religious community. Perhaps some of Eric’s best years were spent teaching at the New York School of Divinity (NYSD). Paul de Vries, president of NYSD, said of Eric that he was “a riveting storyteller with a very clear and comprehensive worldview and was inspirational to his students. … Students loved his weird sense of humor that was fun for its brazen rejection of stuffiness.” God speed, Eric.
Notes
1. Seminary intern Bryan Fischer. Fischer was led into far right Christian politics, working for the last many years at the American Family Association (AFA). At the height of his notoriety, he cast a wide net of aspersions over Muslims, Native Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans, and homosexuals, who he claimed were the cause of the Holocaust, and that Hillary Clinton was a lesbian. At one point, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated the AFA a hate group, until the AFA specifically repudiated Fischer’s views on those subjects.