By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

ATLANTA—One thing has held true so far for J.C. Aevaliotis: this scholar and performer has done what he has loved academically and the scholarship money has repeatedly followed.

With a tattoo on his arm that says “so it goes,” so on will go Emory University senior Aevaliotis to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland to pursue one of his academic loves—likely writing. His studies will begin this fall as a recipient of a yearlong Robert T. Jones Jr. Memorial Scholarship Fund Award.

This news of the dean’s list Catholic from Conyers, whose given name is James Carl, probably comes as no surprise to those who know him.

Aevaliotis attended Emory on a Robert W. Woodruff Scholarship that covered all expenses. His activities at the university included performing comedy, writing fiction, studying religion and being a resident adviser.

Over 40 Emory seniors applied for the Jones scholarship established in 1976 in memory of the golfer and law school student. Four students were selected, including his best friend, based on academic excellence, a record of significant leadership, and academic interests they can pursue there. Studying at Emory’s sister school in the town of St. Andrews from October through May, Aevaliotis may either earn a master of literature in theology or creative writing, or take classes and travel around Europe on his stipend.

“They look for students who will be outstanding ambassadors of the university,” said Deb Hammacher, assistant director of communications. “It’s a very, very competitive scholarship. Only a lot of really excellent students apply for it.”

Aevaliotis applied in January and received the good news by February.

“There’s a lot of joy. I was running around like an idiot when I first found out because it is such an incredible opportunity,” said the parishioner at St. Pius X Church, Conyers. “(I feel) relief, some pride, but I try to not place too much stock in that, a lot of humility because there have been some great people that have won this scholarship and it’s sort of a big investment that some people are making in me so I want to be sure to not disappoint them.”

Even though he now is leaning toward pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing, he fell in love with Emory and became interested in studying religion the summer after his junior year at Salem High School in Conyers, where he was salutatorian. That summer he attended Emory’s Youth Theological Initiative, sponsored by the Candler School of Theology. The program involves a month of theological exploration, service and worship.

Having been very active in high school drama, he had been nominated for the Governor’s Honors Program for theatre, but the day he got the rejection letter for that he also got a brochure for YTI.

“I sort of applied accidentally and it ended up being a really important thing,” he said. “It was really one of the first times I remember being around so many like-minded people. I thought I was just odd in being interested in questions of faith and how they impacted the ways in which I lived my life and how they impacted the ways in which I interacted with those around me. (It helped me) to not feel strange for thinking those sorts of things and having a faith which is important,” he said.

“That was a radical idea to me, that in having a strong faith, questioning was not only important to that but essential. That was really the beginning of my own honest interaction with my faith in all my doubt and all my fear and also in all the things I celebrate and enjoy about my tradition. It was the first experience I had of genuine worship.”

As he pondered life’s meaning there he also studied its lighter side, learning improvisational comedy. He went on to perform throughout college with the Rathskellar improvisational comedy troupe, the oldest college troupe in the nation, and has taught with the comedy troupe the last two summers.

Yet after the YTI program, he returned to Mass at his parish where church seemed boring and the homilist preached that the church is not a democracy and that it gets its authority from the pope, Scripture and traditions. “All that’s correct but when you’re 17 and you’ve had sort of an intellectual awakening experience it’s not the best thing to hear.”

So while many drift away, he intentionally disconnected from church for a time. “In those years I never felt like I left the church because when people asked me what was my religion I would still say Catholic without missing a beat. But I felt it wasn’t genuine of me to go to worship and participate in rituals I didn’t fully believe in . . . It was an all or nothing attitude.”

Finding his major at Emory in the religion department studying Christianity, he had plenty of help from faith-filled professors to find his beliefs. He grew more interested in the intersection between faith and film and literature and how religion affects people. After all, he noted, even atheists have rituals and are affected by religion and seek meaning.

“Everything is influenced by religion,” he surmised.

“Authors like Walker Percy, who converted to Catholicism, or Flannery O’Connor, their entire aesthetic in their novels is deeply shaped by their experience of being Catholic. I’m interested in the way religiosity shapes aesthetics and world views. I’ve also developed a sort of hermeneutics of religion, religion as a way to analyze behavior,” he said. “Most every film has an aspect of religion in it and it’s generally more complex than just a Jesus figure. Religion can be a pretty decent lens through which to view art.”

And one’s neighbors. “At Emory I’ve been given a sense that religion is a very dynamic factor in people’s lives and really enriches the way people live. And any understanding of people will only be helped by an attempt to understand their religion as much as we can. And all those things have sort of animated me in my own faith more,” he said. “I study religion as a living thing and it’s very easy to see the ways in which my own tradition is very much a living thing that needs to be treated with the respect that’s due to living things.”

If religion has been the fuel of his fire, then comedy has provided sparks preventing burnout. Performing about six times a semester with the troupe through which he has found his closest friends has been an important school activity. He recently returned from a pilgrimage with the group to the “comic Mecca” of Chicago’s Second City, an improvisation theatre from which actors like Dan Ackroyd have emerged.

One may not immediately think that this 22-year-old, who seems peaceful, poised and precocious yet passionate, is a comic. Yet enthusiasm permeated his Emory apartment when the lanky, 6-foot 2-inch senior with dark hair explained that improvisation involves games based on audience suggestions. In one recent scene he and his partner received an advanced guide to a micro-pathology textbook from which they became scientists constructing a robot.

“You make up things on the spot which can be really nerve-wracking, but there’s also something tremendously exciting about that. It keeps me sharp in a lot of ways; it keeps me thinking,” he said.

The lunacy of improvisation helps him make sense of life. And six of the troupe’s members are also religion majors so many of their scenes involve religion.

“It’s just a space that’s very important to me and in an odd way it helps me sort through a lot of things, whether they’re troubles in my life or particularly confusing issues in classes,” he said. “A lot of the synthesis of all the things I’m learning or thinking about occurs in improv scenes. You sort of draw parallels between things that don’t seem to be very similar.”

“Freud says that in comedy we’re free to basically attack the things we don’t like to talk about in polite society—religion being a really big one—so comedy sort of frees up space to think and talk freely where normally we would repress the desire to talk about faith or community in polite society.”

He’s writing his honors thesis on how performing comedy, like church, can affect understanding of God and theology, exploring how it unleashes free thought and joy. Some of his favorite Gospel passages are Jesus talking about children.

“It’s a very childlike thing and connects us to the things which Jesus seemed to like. There’s something about encountering God in one another playfully which is very important but often downplayed, which is an important way to interact with one another and with God I hope,” he said.

There’s another aspect of comedy that Aevaliotis finds fulfilling. “Making someone laugh is one of the nicest things you can do for someone and I enjoy doing it.”

He will always be a creative writer who loves the English language and manipulating it. He wrote for school literary magazines, and finds it useful to plug into various creative outlets. Still, religion is where he said he has found his home.

“There are so many ways to study it,” he said. “I became discouraged my second year of college that I wasn’t writing like Faulkner or Joyce, which is really unreasonable. The last couple of years I’ve realized 50 is considered a young writer and the stuff of good fiction is experienced. Most of my favorite authors had two or three careers before they settled down on writing.”

One particularly awakening experience he’s had was a trip to Northern Ireland last summer, through the Office of Religion, called Journeys of Reconciliation. Group members met with Protestant and Catholic religious and political leaders and scholars and listened to their stories to foster reconciliation. They learned how the conflict is deeper than just about religion but also about poverty, class, ethnicity and nationality. The idea was “in telling their stories they’ll come to a deeper understanding of it themselves.”

The trip led to his own reconciliation with his church. “There’s something incredibly important about worshipping in a group setting and participating in rituals every week. And Northern Ireland was the first time I went to church several weeks consecutively and there I really just (realized I) missed it. The Mass just feels right and the order of Mass is still very, very familiar,” he said, and now he realizes you get out of it what you put into it.

He’ll return as a program leader this year from May 15-30 where he hopes to continue the learning process.

His dad, Jim, admires his son’s interpersonal skills like those used in Northern Ireland.

“I can see him maybe moving in the direction of diplomacy and things of that nature,” he said. “He’s always been outgoing and just a real likeable person and he couples that with a drive and his drive doesn’t push people away. It sort of fits in with people.”

His mother, Bette, described her son as a “humanitarian,” having a “gentle spirit.”

In his search, Aevaliotis has struggled with his perception of God and divine nature but has always felt God’s presence deeply in relationships and finds comfort in private prayer and Mass.

He still has many questions about the church’s position on certain issues, such as the ordination of woman and not allowing priests to marry.

“I’ve sort of come to hope that there’s a lot of room for tension in the church,” he said. “All in all, what is really important is the experience of sharing worship and encountering Christ and God in one another in worship. Mass has become very, very important to me, something that I have to do every week or I don’t quite feel normal.”

One thing this Phi Beta Kappa scholar has had less struggle with is excelling academically. But it has been difficult coping with his mother’s health problems, since she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997.

“My energy has been very divided at times when my mom is in the hospital . . . It’s tough to be at school when my family is struggling. They’re very important.”

Aevaliotis credits his parents and others for helping him believe in himself.

“There are many people who aren’t as privileged as I am—haven’t had the opportunities,” he said. “Part of it has just been my parents and other family and the church community making me feel like I could. I’ve been blessed to have people around me who always pushed me to go after opportunities and make me feel confident in trying.”

But he is ever mindful that the work remains up to him. “God has to have something to do with it,” he said. “I’ve never thought about why or how this has all happened. I’ve just tried to keep doing what I’m doing and enjoy the people I’m with. I just work as hard as I can and these opportunities keep opening themselves up and hopefully these opportunities will keep opening themselves up.”

For his own future career, he said that the priesthood “is something that I really don’t want to do, but it keeps popping up as a possibility. So it’s a possibility I’m open to, but I’d also like to have a family—but I might not have a choice in the matter.”

Whether preaching, performing or however else he might serve the Lord, he can keep sharing his gifts of faith, intelligence and comic relief.