EMBRACING THE SACRED IN OUR SECULAR SCHOLARLY WORLD.

Abstract

I am honored to speak to you as our sixty-fifth president. Sitting down to prepare my remarks, I realized that I could talk with you about absolutely anything. I decided to talk about us. I hate to say it, but I fear that we are not all that we can be. Please don’t worry—this will not be another presidential address that will call on us to be relevant. We are plenty relevant. The fact is this should be our Golden Age. But something is very amiss. Something is keeping us from being all that we can be. As you can tell from my title, I think that “something” is our reaction to what I am calling our secular world. My goal here is to at least provoke us—and who knows, maybe even to inspire a few of us—to live our lives differently. My address comprises three parts. I will briefly talk about why I think this should be our Golden Age. I will then take a look at our secular world and share what gives me pause. In so doing, I will talk about the audit culture that has emerged around us, our problematic reaction to it, and the consequences of that reaction. And I will close by reminding us of the sacred nature of our work. But I will not just leave it at that. I want to share an idea or two about how to move forward. Some of us will need to summon some courage if we are to live in a world where we can thrive.