We must begin with respect for the contributions of intellectual inquiry to faith and spirituality, with recognition of the difference between colleges and churches and with gratitude for the dynamic presence of God in even our most secular universities. We must avoid typologies of colleges and universities as being more or less Presbyterian, more or less faithful, but rather seek to understand the differing ways in which their Presbyterian roots inform their ongoing educational ministry. Only then will our minds be open to respond to the current spiritual context of young America and the enormous religious potential of all colleges and universities. We will be ready to chart a new 21st-century course for the higher educational ministry of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Reclaiming the Reformed tradition
I often say that I am proud to be president of a Presbyterian related college because the Presbyterian tradition has contributed so much to American and global higher education. It is time to reclaim the great intellectual heritage of the Reformed tradition, not to bemoan its defeat by secular learning. The Presbyterian and Reformed tradition shaped the nature of American higher education in the 19th century, especially the culture and mission of liberal arts colleges, and the Reformed tradition still shape those university and college values today.
The place it began, and the place to which we return, is Princeton University. John Witherspoon (l723-l794) is credited with bringing the tenets of the Scottish Reformed educational tradition to Princeton and from thence to the rest of the country. Central to those values were the importance of the encounter between faith and knowledge, the creation of a college as a moral community, a belief in a Christian sense of vocation, and the preparation of students for service to the wider world. These precepts informed the many institutions that were begun by Presbyterians and patterned after Princeton, especially Presbyterian liberal arts colleges.
What became distinct, and is still distinct, about the American liberal arts college is its emphasis on educating for a life beyond self, beyond pure knowledge, its emphasis on character and on the full human potentiality of all persons. These values persist to this day.
To be sure, many are not familiar with the origins of this educational model. In re-stating the historical framework for Agnes Scott College this year we decided that we wanted to say something with pride about this Presbyterian tradition:
While their (our founders’) leadership extended into the South the Presbyterian educational movement that began with Princeton, Agnes Scott was established with a new mission, to educate women . . . . The Reformed tradition in which the College was created helped shape the intellectual, spiritual and ethical values affirmed to this day: individual inquiry, commitment to the common good, the importance of character formation and engagement with the world. These are reflected in its motto from II Peter 1:5, “Now add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge.”2
And what happened to faith and knowledge at Princeton University? It is common to trace the growing demise of the Presbyterian-affiliated college to Princeton University’s decision to sever its ties with the Presbyterian Church. Let’s take a closer look at Princeton University today.
The importance of Princeton is not that it was once Presbyterian and has “lapsed.” It is that it still embodies some of the strongest aspects of the Reformed educational tradition, public service and, yes, the encounter between faith and knowledge. The structure is no longer via an institutional affiliation with the church, but in the multiple ways in which faith and learning continue to intersect at Princeton.
A thriving Presbyterian church has pride of place on Nassau Street; a strong and creative Westminster Fellowship ministers to sons and daughters of Presbyterian families that seek a strong intellectual education — and continuing touchstones for their faith. A vigorous religious studies faculty contributes many different perspectives on the Bible, Christianity, ethics and world religions. I watched my son, Graham, navigate between these various perspectives: the encounter between faith and learning was very much a part of his college experience. Wallace Alston Jr. (whose father Wallace Alston was president of Agnes Scott when I was a student!) was minister at Nassau church during his college years, and there Graham encountered a searching intellect with a powerful faith that communicated both to this university community. A class with Elaine Pagels on the historical Jesus raised questions he had not previously addressed about the social and intellectual context of the Holy Land during the time of Jesus. Yes, this course challenged some of his beliefs, but it also sent him back to the Bible for a closer textual reading. Leadership on the interfaith council provided him the opportunity to organize a seminar series on science and religion, inviting professors to address topics such as the big bang, evolution and genetic engineering from both a scientific and religious perspective. And Mark Orten, the Westminster chaplain, organized Friday night fellowship, food and nurture for a group of students who had shared Montreat youth conferences and church involvement as high school students. What more could a Presbyterian parent want?
Princeton is not alone in being a “secular” institution where religion still plays a role in the life of the institution. Harvard’s Jewish president, Laurence Summers, chose the Tuesday prayer meeting at Harvard to express his concern about recent anti-Semitic protests. Harvard prayer meeting? Yes, Harvard University, as an institution, has sponsored a daily gathering for Christian prayers since its inception. Harvard’s Memorial Church also occupies pride of place, in the middle of Harvard Yard, and it too has not been turned into a museum, but is a living, active, vigorous church. I have worshiped there on a number of occasions, including Palm Sunday, and have always been impressed by the full pews, dignified Protestant service and feeling of a spiritual community.
As Presbyterians we begin our ministry to higher education by renewing our understanding of John Calvin’s fearless emphasis on the necessity of inquiry to faith, and by recognizing anew that no Presbyterian need fear the “secular” university or the apparently secular college. Only when we embrace this concept can we begin the complex and urgent task of imaging new forms of ministry to students at our largest, most secular, and most prestigious institutions, as well as liberal arts colleges throughout the country.
Students today
And the students — what are today’s students really like? An entire issue of the Association of American Colleges and Universities monthly magazine Liberal Education was recently devoted to religion on campus, the first time it has ever done so.3 Titles of articles tell part of the story: “Growing Spirituality During the College Years,” “Religion: A Comeback on Campus,” “The Future of Religious Colleges,” “Out of the closet and into the classroom, the yard, and the dining halls: Notes on Religion at Harvard.” Highlighted passages tell more:
We have reached a moment in higher education where our students are now more likely to ask, “Where do I meet God?” than to ponder the question “Does God Exist?
What is one to make of all of this?
While it is too soon to predict the future of this movement we can make several observations. The first is that students today are far more “religious” than their respective faculties, at almost any institution. The second is that Christian fundamentalists and the para-church movement are often more visible on college campuses than members of mainline Protestant denominations or Roman Catholics. The third is that the increasing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists as well as Christians from Asia, Africa and Latin America on American college and university campuses are exposing students to the religions of the world beyond Christianity and Judaism daily and often for the first time. The fourth is that there is a growing spirituality movement that cuts across all faiths and is very attractive to young Americans. The fifth is the passion of this generation for service, for volunteer activity. And, finally, that the Enlightenment epistemological canon of rational objective knowledge has been challenged by post-modernism and related movements. This opens the door, within the academy, to a more open-ended view of knowledge, one that includes subjective as well as transcendental possibilities.
It may at first seem heretical, but a few further comments on spirituality, religious pluralism and post-modernism may contribute to a deeper understanding of why these movements can be seen to be opening new doors for Presbyterian ministries to higher education.
Several years ago Wellesley College sponsored a national conference on “Education as Transformation: Religious Pluralism, Spirituality and Higher Education.” More than 1,000 participants came, including college and university presidents and representatives of boards of trustees. Presbyterian colleges represented included the College of Wooster, Davidson, Agnes Scott and perhaps others. Most of us came as delegations, including faculty and trustees. Recognition that spirituality was a legitimate topic in an academic context was a radical new idea that has not been around since perhaps the early part of the 20th century. Recognition that education, higher education, can be seen as spiritually transformative challenged rationality at its very core.
Some of the emphasis on spirituality has come from greater familiarity with religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism where meditation leads to enlightenment or salvation. But religious pluralism, a feature of American society that is especially pronounced in many college and university settings, also brings new awareness of the faith practices and rituals associated with different religious groups. For many, such as Muslims, daily prayer rituals are practiced de rigueur and periods of fasting are honored far from home. Exposure to these different traditions rarely makes Christians want to become Muslim: it does awaken in them a greater curiosity about their own religious traditions, many of which have always been taken for granted or honored in the breach. It awakens in them a new curiosity about inherited belief systems, encouraging deeper study and often more active participation with their own church families. At Agnes Scott College we find that our religion courses – whether biblical or about world religions — are full and overflowing.
It has become common to chastise postmodernism for its denial of any objective truth or knowledge, and its rejection of traditional forms of literary or historical or religious authority. But post-modernism, at its core, represents a new way of looking at knowledge. It opens the classroom door to subjective, personal, experiential knowledge instead of enshrining only objective scientific knowledge. And in recognizing the power of experiential knowledge it opens the epistemological door to faith.
Today’s students are exposed to all of these movements, and more. In their search for personal meaning and in their extraordinary commitment to service they are bringing their own transformative power to college and university campuses around the country. An effective Presbyterian college ministry must be conscious of this milieu, must be ready to reinvent itself in order to be present in the interstices of student life — whether it be in times of quiet spiritual meditation, inter-faith dialogue, restrained Protestant worship, exuberant African-American song or robust Christian fundamentalism.
Presbyterian colleges — a varied, expansive mission
To be sure, the range of these movements and of these different population groups vary from region to region and from college to college. Every college and university has a distinct constituency and a distinct mission, including those affiliated with the PC(US A). And this is why we should be careful about our typologies of Presbyterian affiliated colleges and universities. The September 2002 issue of Presbyterians Today did an exemplary job of highlighting — and honoring — all of the Presbyterian affiliated colleges, while also pointing to some of the different ways in which church affiliation is expressed.
As I have come to know my sister institutions, I have been impressed with the attention given to what it means to be a Presbyterian college, including how we can assist in training a new generation of church leaders. Recent funding from the Lilly Foundation has enabled many of our institutions to create programs on exploring Christian vocation. Douglas Oldenburg, former moderator of the PC(USA), visited Agnes Scott, among other institutions, meeting with potential ministerial candidates. Our collective focus on service complements and reinforces the mission of the church. And our many encounters with different faith groups further the Presbyterian emphasis on interfaith dialogue.
But a college is not a church, and there is a tendency among church circles to transfer criteria that are relevant for church membership to college and university communities, to think of a college advancing the mission of our specific church, the task of expanding the Presbyterian constituency. This is asking both too much and too little. Too much because it is difficult for colleges to be successful at a task that has proved elusive to church and family, as Presbyterian numbers continue to decline. Too little because an effective and innovative Presbyterian ministry in colleges and universities could position the Presbyterian Church to be once again an expanding national influence and even world leader, in the all-important, continuing dialogue between faith and learning. The church often regrets the decline of its institutions into “secularism” without examining what the engagement with the secular, intellectual forces of our times requires.
As this article suggests, such an engagement means first and foremost reclaiming John Calvin’s confidence in the necessity of the intersection between faith and learning, and that requires renewed respect from church people for intellectual inquiry. My favorite Calvin quote is from the Institutes, and I often use it at Agnes Scott College: “Indeed people who have either quaffed or even tasted the liberal arts penetrate with their aid into the secrets of divine wisdom.” Such an engagement also recognizes that the location of such engagement can be anywhere, anytime and with anyone. Presbyterian-affiliated colleges have a mission to support the faith journeys of all of their students, and at whatever points along that journey. Presbyterian chaplains at research universities should contribute to the university’s ethical, humanistic debates about science or the struggles over diversity, as well as to the regular members of the Westminster Fellowship groups. There is no single model and no one has a monopoly on the best ideas for how this is done.
Two years ago the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities held its annual meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, revisiting the roots of Presbyterian higher education. John Kuykendall, former president of Davidson College and one of the speakers, reflected an appreciation of the breadth of Presbyterian higher education by noting his concern with the “poorly camouflaged conviction — or must we say bias — that only this or that particular model will suffice as a proper paradigm or template for what it means to be an institution which really intends to maintain the relationship between faith and learning.” He went on to challenge the many Presbyterian college presidents that had assembled in Scotland to continue to pay attention to the communion between faith and learning:
Here, I believe, is a distinctive feature of our particular heirloom: Our tradition simply will not be put into that sort of strait jacket. We have before us a remarkable opportunity to express and exercise faithful insights in different ways pertinent to different settings and environments. To treasure the communion of faith and learning in education is the focal birthright of our tradition.
This conference concluded with Sunday morning worship at St. Giles Cathedral, the home of John Knox and the Scottish Presbyterian movement. The many Presbyterian college presidents who attended from around the world returned to their home institutions with a deeper appreciation of the intellectual and spiritual power of the Reformed tradition, renewed in our separate, distinct and yet united educational mission.
1 John W. Kuykendall, “Doctor Witherspoon’s Bequest,” an address to the annual meeting of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities, June 23, 2001, p. 19.
2 Mission of Agnes Scott College, Foundations, August 2002.
3 Association of American Colleges and Universities, Liberal Education, Vol. 87, No. 4 (Fall, 2001).
Posted Nov. 1, 2002 
Mary Brown Bullock is president, Agnes Scott College (Ga.).
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