Andy Hoyal (’75)
Attorney
Seattle, Washington

This reflection differs somewhat from others because it looks at the department from a distance of fifty years. It is a remembrance of a time and of professors, most of whom have passed, whose influence in shaping the department and its students is still felt.

In 1971, no one came to UT planning to major in Religious Studies. But when I could not get the 12-hour biology course I planned to take that summer, I quickly put together courses meeting liberal arts requirements for my math major, including Lee Humphreys’ excellent class on Ancient Near Eastern Religions. The following year, I took David Dungan’s course on the New Testament and his first-ever class on Images of Jesus. I was hooked. I switched majors and never looked back.

For students such as myself, who had grown up in the religious atmosphere characteristic of the south, religious studies provided the opportunity and tools to critically examine our own perspectives, opening up new worlds. I discovered something else about the department not advertised in the catalog: individual attention and personal relationships. As advisor and teacher, David Dungan discussed with me at length papers and courses and future graduate and professional school options. He was the first person with whom I seriously discussed law school. Through these conversations, I worked through or at least sorted out my personal religious issues. I am profoundly grateful for his patient listening and perceptive guidance. I named my first cat Eusebius.

The department was an exciting place in the early 70s. Ethics scholars from around the country gathered for the inaugural symposium of the Journal for Religious Ethics, founded by Charlie Reynolds. David Linge, with whom I first studied Augustine, brought Hans-George Gadamer to Knoxville for a lecture. Students from philosophy, history, psychology, English, anthropology, and even accounting (!) eagerly spent precious electives on religious studies classes. The lingering effects of the counterculture had their own influence, and all this made for robust classroom discussion.

But it was the department’s requirement that majors take three courses in Asian philosophy and religion that truly changed my life. Professor Jay Kim taught Buddhism from the inside out, so to speak. We learned the “sense” of Buddhist practices, moral precepts, and doctrine. Our papers explicated the Buddhist meaning of the texts. This approach came home to me in a particular incident. As head of our student Religious Studies Association, I helped arrange campus sponsorship for a presentation at the Student Center by a local Hare Krishna group. To my surprise, Professor Kim attended; it was not a department event. The next day, he came up to me before class and commented, “That was a good talk, but I think what we are doing is better.” I had not considered the matter in this light. We were learning to see the world as if we were Buddhist, at least for a quarter.

Jay became my advisor, mentor, and after graduation, a close friend. He had grown up in tumultuous mid-century Korea. At the University of Chicago Divinity School, he was a student of Mircea Eliade, Joseph Kitagawa, and Charles Long in the History of Religions. Jay’s courses at UT ranged from Confucius and Thomas Merton to Buddhism and myth and ports in between. He brought together the Pieta and the Buddhist Kisa Gotami. His premature death at age 47 in 1982 was not only a personal loss to family, friends, and colleagues; it deprived the department and the academy at large of a scholar and thinker who was making a unique contribution to cross-cultural religious studies.

After my graduation, and with the encouragement and support of Jay, David Dungan, and Stan Lusby, our department chair, who was always especially helpful to me, I attended the University of Chicago Divinity School, obtaining a master’s degree. But I eventually went to law school at Vanderbilt and became a lawyer, first in Nashville and then for the last thirty years in Seattle.

My religious studies education proved surprisingly practical. I had learned to write papers firmly grounded in the sources and texts, the ideal training for a lawyer. Dungan’s 5-page limitation on papers seemed particularly onerous at the time. Yet years later, I established myself at my firm by explaining a complex case to a senior lawyer in a page and a half—a skill learned from Dungan.

As a lawyer, I have been fortunate to have handled a wide variety of cases, including school funding and prison conditions in Tennessee, the techniques for aluminum production in France, sophisticated tests for the detection of cancer, and injury to almost every part of the human body. No undergraduate major would have ever prepared me for all of these subjects. However, my religious studies education at UT gave me the ability and confidence to master and explain these diverse subjects to lay audiences of juries and judges throughout my career.

Once Jay told me that I could continue studying religion regardless of how I made a living. And looking back over fifty years, that is what I have done. I acquired the “reading list” at UT and graduate school, and I have never stopped. It has been enough to last a lifetime. And I have learned that by attending to this religious “stuff,” you will run across religious books, practices, and/or communities that will serve as a resource for and make a difference in your own life.

I have never regretted my decision to major in religious studies. I am honored to share my experiences and to receive the Charles H. Reynolds Distinguished Alumnus Award.