Ruth Okediji grew up in a home surrounded by books, with parents who were both scholars and Christians. She and her father often discussed the question of what it means to have faith in an academic environment. Having attended public and later private schools, all faith-based, she wondered whether an educational institution could combine both faith and academic rigor.
A professor at Harvard Law School and a leading authority on intellectual property law, Okediji continued to explore the relationship between faith and intellectual pursuit throughout her life. She was an avid reader of the works of C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sören Kierkegaard.
“I began not only to prayerfully pursue my academics, but to interrogate my academics through the lens of the Bible,” Okediji told students at an event hosted by the Harvard Law School Latter-day Saint chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Bar Association.
The growing separation between the private and public spheres makes it more difficult to practice one's faith in public as a “fully integrated” person, Okediji told students at another Brigham Young University event earlier this year. But he believes exploring one's faith through public debate and dialectics is essential to spiritual growth.
“When we learn religious truth, biblical truth, we should have a place where we can do better, become more Christlike, and engage as leaders,” Okediji concluded, “and that place should be in the public sphere, not the private sphere.”
Okediji believes faith and the teachings of the Bible are practical tools for addressing the complex challenges facing society today: “If we think seriously about faith, if we think faith is important for developing virtuous citizens, if we think faith has application to all social issues, whether it's poverty, injustice, inequality or environmental issues…we must be bold about faith in academic institutions.”
Okediji, who is the founder and dean of the Biblical and Christian Legal Studies program, has been open about her faith at Harvard, saying she prays for students' happiness and academic and personal growth, and that she prays for more Christians to come to Harvard.
In her farewell lecture to the law school's graduating class of 2020, she urged students to examine what they believe in. “Have faith. If you don't have faith, seek and find faith and make it your faith,” she said. “Anchore your life on immutable truths and unshakeable beliefs.”
“If we believe that faith can be applied to issues of poverty, injustice, inequality and the environment, then we must also be bold about our faith in academic institutions.”
For Okediji, faith integrated into academic pursuits is a powerful motivator for excellence: “When I’m teaching, when I’m working on my scholarship, when I’m speaking to and encouraging students, do your best, not because that’s the best, but because that’s an act of worship,” she told Harvard students.
A faith-infused perspective can also shape a more meaningful, balanced view of work that goes beyond idolizing efficiency, financial rewards, and status. “Faithful people need to say, 'That's not what God made you for. You're not a machine,'” she said.
In April, during his final legal ethics class at Harvard, students debated whether judges should be elected and whether there should be term limits. At the end of the class, Okediji distributed a list of more than 100 values, including “balance,” “tolerance,” “generosity” and “trustworthiness,” and asked students to circle the 10 values they most identified with. Okediji thanked the students for the opportunity to teach the class and said he wrote individual notes to each student.
One of her former students, Nathan Bartholomew, said Okediji challenged common views of the law and dealt with difficult ethical situations in her classes, and her openness about her values inspired him to feel more confident sharing his beliefs in public.
“She's a bold and courageous person who lives her faith, which is unusual at a university like Harvard,” Bartholomew says. But Okediji's public expression of her faith isn't intrusive or dogmatic, he says. It's an “authentic” and “undeniable” part of who she is in and out of the classroom.
“She was always someone who would speak out loud about her faith for others to understand,” he said.
For Okediji, bringing faith into the public sphere means acknowledging and respecting the whole person, regardless of their circumstances.
“Our dignity is affected in every area of our lives, whether we are working, having fun, learning in school, worshipping in church, whether worship is internal or external,” Okediji said at BYU. “We are fully integrated in every area.”
This article appears in the September 2024 issue Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.