Salutary Skepticism: A European Atheist Attending a Christian College in New York City

Jan Gerber || Photo courtesy of Micah Paulec.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon in Manhattan’s Financial District, a young man reclined at a booth in the Starbucks on Broad Street. Sporting a professional, yet cozy-looking blue sweater, he sipped a pumpkin spice latte and perused some books for his research job. Flipping through a sizable book by Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch political economist, he appeared as comfortable as if he was enjoying a light fiction read for a book club.

The particular young man was Jan Gerber— a junior at The King’s College, a private Christian school in New York City. 

He is majoring in the school’s staple PPE major— the trifecta of politics, philosophy, and economics. An energetic scholar with a passion for ideas, he enjoys philosophical discussion at Stoicism meet-ups, as well as engaging the cultural life of the city with The Morningside Institute. As founder and president of the John Quincy Adams Society, he applies political principles to contemporary foreign policy issues. 

Serving as vice president on the John Quincy Adams Society executive team, Camille Bever thoroughly enjoys working with Gerber and thinks highly of his abilities.

“Jan is an exceptional fellow who unceasingly utilizes his intellect to further his understanding of the world,” she said. “His academic ambition, personal fortitude and high moral integrity continues to astound.”

In the spring of 2017, The King’s College surveyed its student body for religious demographics. Of the 141 individuals who responded to the survey, 95 percent identified as Christian. Gerber has a lot in common with many of his peers, but he has one exceptional attribute that distinguishes him from most students at King’s: he is an atheist. 

“My story begins in Poland,” he said. “I was born 21 years ago to a semi-religious family in the Polish Catholic tradition.”

Though he comes from a different country and culture than most King’s students, religion and Christianity are not foreign concepts to him. He was surrounded by the vestiges of Catholicism growing up in Poland, a nation where politics and religion relate to each other differently than in the United States. 

“The whole society is structured around the church in Poland,” he said. “Especially for children, because religion and Catholicism is inculcated in the public schools in Poland, which is ironic for Americans.” 

Though raised in a country literate in Catholicism, Gerber does not describe his family’s beliefs as dogmatically traditional. 

“My family was not orthodox Catholic,” he described. “But they took me and my sister to church every week. I was baptized, and I took my first Communion when I was eight. By the time I was confirmed, however, I was actually not religious anymore.” 

When he got older, he attended a Catholic high school in Boston for two years, which was not altogether foreign to him given his exposure to Catholicism in Poland. In contrast to the instantaneous ‘conversion’ moment that many Christians describe, Gerber came to his non-religious conclusions unhurriedly. 

“It was a very gradual process,” he said. “By the time I went to high school when I was around 15 or 16, I was pretty sure I didn’t believe in any kind of god. The reason I didn’t believe in a god was because of Catholicism— I was not convinced by it.” 

Recognizing himself as nonreligious was not the end of his story, however. His internal dialogue would continue to expand when he came to New York City. 

“I never came across any good arguments for or against God that persuaded me,” he said. “By the time I came to King’s, however, I had to face some really good arguments for and against God, and I got really interested in the conversation.”

The King’s College differs from many other private Christian schools in that it does not require incoming students to sign a statement of faith. Thus, the religious climate among the student body is different than that of many other Christian colleges. Still, Atheism is not the status quo at King’s. Gerber outlines two ways in which an atheist can respond to this intellectual elephant in the room.

“You either have to dismiss the issue,” he said, “or you have to always be on your guard and make sure you have good reasons to offer when people ask you, ‘why don’t you believe?’”

Fortunately, Gerber says he generally receives an attitude of open curiosity toward his beliefs. 

“People at King’s are really serious about their belief in God, as well as serious about pursuing knowledge,” he said. “Generally they are very interested in why I am an atheist, what my moral code is and how I derive that...You end up having serious philosophical debates with your best friends.” 

Justin Cox, a King’s graduate and a Christian, has engaged in quite a few friendly debates with Gerber. Each time they have a conversation, Cox has come away from the experience with increased respect and fondness for Gerber, deeply impressed by his knowledge and his integrity. 

“His character and work ethic are what Christians should emulate in their own lives,” Cox said. “His personal ethics put to shame many of the Christians I know.” 

Though Gerber refers to himself casually as an atheist at times, his perspective contains more depth and nuance than mere rejection of a deity. 

“I am more of an agnostic than an atheist,” he described. “I say I am an agnostic-atheist sometimes, because I lean toward the view that we cannot know whether there is a god.”

He contrasts dogmatic atheism with open agnosticism. He sees it as less close-minded and more open and accepting to new ideas.

“Agnosticism… is a really creative, dynamic, healthy space to inhabit in life,” he said. “I think Christians could learn a lot from this. If you look back to Aquinas, Anselm and Augustine–– some of the most profound Christian thinkers were agnostic in some sense. They would never come up with the arguments they did for God had they not entertained the idea that God might not exist.” 

Gerber recognizes the immense challenge of questioning one’s convictions, as well as logically defending them. But he sees this courage as necessary to come closer to the truth. 

“It really takes a lot of intellectual courage, integrity and tenacity to be able to question your most deeply held beliefs that you think inform all of who you are,” he said. “But I think that that is the space we need to live in, whether we are Christians, Muslims or atheists. We should all be agnostic in some sense.”