Mystic Chords of Memory: The Legacy of Rev. Nathan A. Scott, Jr.

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Collected here are tributes given to honor Nathan A. Scott, Jr. These remarks were delivered at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) by academics whose work and careers have been influenced by Dr. Scott. The AAR session was held on Sunday, November 2rid, two days before Election Day. Each contributor appreciates and reflects on some aspect of Dr. Scott's legacy. The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd, III, Dean of National Cathedral, eulogized Scott as a walker, and these reflections illustrate the myriad ways Scott lived and wrote on the boundary between religion and literature, between the sacred and the secular, between ancient and modern, between theology and culture. The contributors represented here attempt to walk this boundary path blazed by Scott. They may have been colleagues or students; dear friends or respectful acquaintances; positioned in small liberal arts colleges or research institutions; teaching both literary and religious studies; researching a wide a range of subjects and approaches; writing scholarship, belle lettres, and creative writing; active or retired. But each summons an offering that is his or her own idiosyncratic reminiscence about the man who shaped professional development and, in many cases, personal lives. In this endeavor, we are guided by the remarks of Scott himself who, in the essay A Ramble on a Road Taken, (published in Christianity and Literature in 1994) wrote that, is by way of such remembering that we may be able to chart one or another kind of course alternative to the kind of hermeneutical terrorism that prevails in our phase of civility. My phase of civility concluded in 1991, the year I graduated from The University of Virginia with a Ph.D. in religion and literature. It was also the year that Dr. Scott retired. I'm not sure the two events are connected, but after reading some of the comments he wrote on my papers, one might be led to speculate that my mediocrity was the tipping point that resulted in his leaving academia. The virtual sigh of resignation he expressed over my comprehensive exams neatly illustrates a consistent tone that characterizes many of his remarks to his students: Although somewhat disappointed by a certain imprecision of focus have nevertheless adjudged the papers as a whole to be acceptable. While occasionally in casual conversation I refer to him as Nathan, during the entire nine years I was in graduate school and thereafter, I never once called him Nathan. He was always Dr. Scott, or rather Mr. Scott, since the Jeffersonian protocol at the University of Virginia insists that one resists designators of status. Avoiding superiority, however, was not typical of a person as imperious as Nathan; he's the only person I know who wore garters to hold up his socks. From him I learned many things exotic to a girl who was the first in her family to go to college, including the term sui generis for which I am grateful if only because it so aptly describes him. Yet for all his theatricality and grandiosity, Dr. Scott was also legendary for his impeccable manners. He graciously and personally typed out all his correspondence to me, beginning with responses to my inquiries from England when I was a prospective graduate student and on through his retirement years when he would sign and send me reprints of his new publications. The first annual meeting of the AAR that I attended was in 1986, several years after I started graduate school. That year Dr. Scott was president of the Academy. I had no idea what I was doing, so I tagged along behind more experienced colleagues. I know I attended his Presidential Address, but that is not what I remember from that weekend. Rather, I vividly recall a reception hosted by the University of Chicago. There I encountered a gathering of Dr. Scott's former students, huddled together and conducting what could most accurately be called group therapy. …