Thanks to the James R. Struthers Pastoral Study Leave Fellowship, I am being treated to a week away from the grind of magazine publication to a week of study in the college library.
It brings back memories.
Like Ozarks, my church-related college (Roberts Wesleyan in Rochester, N.Y.) had a student body of about 600. Like Ozarks, it required at least some chapel attendance; I preached in this morning’s service to a congregation of at least 250, about 80 percent of whom were students. Like Ozarks, the church-related liberal arts curriculum both focused my beliefs and broadened my perspectives. Like Ozarks, my college taught me to think.
Mike Petersen prodded much of my learning. “I think. Therefore I am,” he declared. “Then, again, maybe I am not,” he demurred. Then he threw down the gauntlet: “In either case, prove it.” A crackerjack philosophy prof still in his twenties at the time, he assigned our class on rationalism to prove or disprove, given no additional information, Rene Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum.
Each evening that year I worked a five-hour shift, unloading freight at the Rochester United Parcel Service plant. I worked alone expending all brawn and no brain. So, for that one semester, I reasoned the cogito by the hour. After having filled my head with ideas read in the library earlier each day, I would now wrestle those thoughts while unloading my row of 32 brown panel trucks, backed up side by side to a waist-high conveyor belt. I tested every idea. I argued every proposition. I countered every argument. Before collapsing exhausted into my bed, I’d write down the evening’s hypotheses and inferences.
Eventually, I sat down to write a paper like I’d never written before. Prior to being awarded an “A+” for my effort, prior to him then taking me aside to urge me to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy, I turned in that paper, remarking to Dr. Petersen – with epiphanic satisfaction – “I have learned to think.”
Today I look around the campus of the University of the Ozarks, and I see faces of students who will remark to one of their professors – perhaps this semester, perhaps next – “I have learned to think.”
Being here also brings out appreciation.
My earlier college experience departs somewhat from the one in which I’m being immersed this week. I attended a spiritually safe school – one that, while testing the boundaries of my faith, wouldn’t usually leave me hanging in suspense too long. My all-Christian faculty would resolve my tensions before they’d get the best of me.
In the process I came to believe the narrative commentary on those less safe mainline denominational colleges, especially the claim that they were religious in name only.
That narrative has been rewritten. Through nearly three decades of ordained ministry, I’ve visited many Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-related campuses, and they keep dismantling those old judgments. Sure, presidents and development officers are smart enough to put their schools’ best foot forward when talking with the religious press. But their professors are not so careful. And their students’ candor is unbridled.
That candor has been disarming and compelling. It has told each student’s own distinct narrative – of first-name relationships with professors made possible by low prof-to-student ratios; of work-study convergences fostered by serving on the campus farm; of overseas travel courses; of dabbling in classes on broadcasting and ballet, information technology and occupational therapy, applied physics and abnormal psychology, electrical engineering and Egyptian lit.
That candor has also given witness to faith discoveries emerging in an environment that doesn’t quickly answer the students’ questions but adds more uncertainties to those already being pondered – and yet, still provides the nurture of chaplains and mentors who model a faith reformed, ever to be reformed, a faith that boldly declares, “I think. Therefore, I believe.”
— JHH
