Ministry of Ideas

ZACHARY DAVIS, MTS ’19

As a Mormon from southern Utah, Zachary Davis learned that divinity schools were “places of dangerous speculation on the road to atheism.” After working on HarvardX online courses for HDS professors Laura Nasrallah and Diane Moore, though, he found himself drawn to the critical study of religion—and to HDS’s commitment to knowledge for the betterment of the world. At HarvardX, he also saw the power of technology, which inspired him as a new student to create “Ministry of Ideas,” an educational program that The Guardian calls “simply the best podcast out right now.”

“We need to have a better grasp of where our ideas come from and how they are manipulated by other forces, so that when we are called to evaluate something, we’re ready to do the duty of a citizen. Being a citizen is a sacred calling, and we can’t be faithful to it if we don’t have the historical knowledge and intellectual tools to exercise good judgment.”

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