The Vegan Catholic Philosophers of Princeton

PRINCETON, New Jersey — Joe Schmid, 26, has spent years arguing that there is no God. Or at least, that you can’t prove He’s up there. As a professional philosopher, he’d devoted his career to writing articles like “Simply Unsuccessful: The Neoplatonic Proof of God’s Existence,” and blog posts like “A Failed Demonstration of God’s Existence.” He even co-wrote a book in 2022 defending the niche theory of existential inertia, the idea that there need not be an outside force—i.e., God—compelling the universe to exist. But recently, he’s changed his mind, or his mind was changed, anyway. These days, Schmid is a devout Catholic.

Joe Schmid prays with a rosary at Princeton University’s Christian community group house. (Parikha Solanki for The Free Press)

“Do you mind if we pray?” he asked me this week. We were at a restaurant right off Princeton’s campus, where Schmid is studying to get his PhD. He wasn’t the only newly anointed Catholic at the table. Noah McKay, 27, is another doctoral student in the same department, and he converted about six months ago. He and Schmid had just come from Mass. They bowed their heads, and when they were done giving thanks, we all dug into a summer hummus board, sans feta cheese, since Princeton’s Gen Z philosopher-Catholics are both vegans, too.

I’d taken the train to Princeton because I wanted to find out what’s in the water in New Jersey. I assumed philosophy was a field where reason trumps faith, and that anyone who thinks about it long and hard enough, in the halls of the progressive Ivy League, will come to the conclusion that there is no Creator. I thought postmodern academia had made everyone believe in nothing. Did these grad students study their way into believing in God, or was the intervention more divine than that? And does it have something to do with America’s much-vaunted “Catholic boom”?

Both these gentlemen were clean-cut—polos, khakis, a leather messenger bag—and clearly brilliant. They talked fast and opined on the finer points of magisterial doctrine from the 18th century, between bites of vegan corn ravioli. They’ve both been studying and debating apologetics for years, and met each other a few years ago at a conference, before they were students at Princeton together.