Deal Hudson's Dealings With The Jesuits

Deal Hudson’s spiritual migration—he’d been a Southern Baptist minister before his conversion, in 1984—was animated by his wish, as he put it, “to wed the truth of philosophy with revealed truth."

But Hudson’s firm doctrinal orthodoxy placed him in the minority within his new faith, as he discovered, to his surprise, soon after taking a teaching job in the philosophy department at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution, in 1989. One day, he was chatting with a sociology professor, a former Jesuit, who asked him why he’d converted. Hudson shared his conversion story, and talked about the perfect accord he’d found in the Catholic faith between mind and soul. His colleague smiled and said, “I used to feel that way, but I don’t need it anymore.”

“I realized that the Church I had learned to love, and had converted to, was very deep within the detritus of the post-Vatican II confusion,” Hudson recalls.

Link to the full articlein the New Yorker entitled, Party Faithful, Can the Democrats get a foothold on the religious vote? by Peter J. Boyer.