Parishioners’ News
Yager on Faith, Work and Vocation
Dr. James D. Yager, a parishioner at Holy Comforter, spoke recently at the National Press Club as part of Virginia Theological Seminary’s Faith, Work and Vocation breakfast series.
Yager, the Edyth H. Schoenrich Professor in Preventive Medicine and senior associate dean for academic affairs at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, focused on his work at Hopkins and on the virtues of compassion, community, and service of the greater good.
“I freely admit that I am not certain about whether or how much God directly intervenes in our lives,” said Yager, “however, I do know that God's work manifested as stewardship of all of his creations is evident in what we do at the Hopkins School of Public Health.”
“So, perhaps this is my faith – that God in some way has ensured that the basic goodness of humans is hardwired into our being.”
“No matter how one sees God’s hand in how human beings exercise their free will, it is through human beings that the stewardship of all God's creations occurs. Therefore my faith is in the strength, courage and kindness of human beings as guided by the virtues of compassion, grace and community where individual self-interest gives way to the greater good.”
Yager continued, “In our school and around the world, we see people of all religions and faiths demonstrating these virtues. And my faith resides in them – particularly the young as exemplified by our students who leave our school to go out in the world armed with the tools to work in the World Health Organization (WHO), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in non-government organizations (NGOs) and elsewhere to prevent malaria, and the spread of HIV/AIDS, to provide humanitarian relief in response to natural disasters and war, and to protect the world population from a whole host of other problems that adversely affect human well being and that of all of God’s creation.”
“In the words of Jimmy Carter,” Yager concluded, “‘my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands - this is not optional - that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.’”
Born into a working-class family in Milwaukee during WWII, Yager attended church infrequently with his Roman Catholic father but later in life was received into the Episcopal Church (1992) along with his wife Joanne.
He attended Marquette University, attending graduate school there and completing his Ph.D in the area of cell and developmental biology at the University of Connecticut. Next, he completed three years of post doctoral work at a cancer research institute at the University of Wisconsin.
In 1974, Yager accepted his first faculty position at Dartmouth where he taught undergraduate, medical and graduate students and continued his research. which focused on how the hormone estrogen causes cancer, a topic he continues to research to this day.
In 1989, Yager accepted the position of director of the Division of Toxicology in the School of Public Health at Hopkins and, with the help of the faculty, led the program to become one of the top ranked toxicology research and doctoral training programs in the country.
Virginia Theological Seminary is the largest of the 11 accredited seminaries of the Episcopal Church and was founded in 1823. The school prepares men and women, representing more than 40 different dioceses and nine different countries, for service in the church, both as ordained and lay ministers, and offers a number of professional degree programs and diplomas.