An obscure action of the last General Assembly could make a big impact — for good or ill — on our Presbyterian-related colleges and universities. The GA said it’s high time for us to take a closer look at the denomination’s relationship with those schools.
At each GA the commissioners reaffirm the denomination’s ongoing relationship to about 60 schools, colleges and universities. The normally pro forma action is mostly symbolic, a recognition of each school’s long history with the church, starting with the fact that Presbyterians founded most of them.
Still, that reaffirmation does have consequences. For example, Presbyterian students attending such schools can receive financial assistance from the denomination’s Financial Aid for Service office. And professors and chaplains can receive PC(USA) grants for teaching the Bible.
The problem the commissioners discovered is that they could find no specific criteria for inclusion on the list. So the committee considering that proposal at the 2012 GA, when approving the list, added the request that the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA) “consider developing a more precise and succinct definition of exactly what it means to be considered ‘Presbyterian affiliated.’”
The PMA, in turn, delegated the assessment task to an advisory panel of the Collegiate Ministry Office (CMO). That office got moved to the evangelism area of the PMA staff during department reshuffling.
The good news is the evangelism staff consists of dynamic, visionary, passionate people committed to helping the church draw the unchurched to Christ.
But the CMO doesn’t mesh ideally in that department, since its work ranges beyond evangelism to include networking and supporting college chaplains and others serving students whose faith they seek to nurture.
On top of that, no college or university exists primarily to evangelize or create congregational disciples, but rather to educate students in a wide range of more secular disciplines.
Indeed, Presbyterians have founded so many schools, because “the Presbyterian expression of Christianity has come into American society and culture, as it has come to many other circumstances, with a Bible in one hand, and a grammar, or a textbook, or a telescope, or a microscope, or a spectroscope in the other,” said John Kuykendall, president emeritus of Davidson College, in an address to the presidents’ conference of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities in 2009.
While we rightly expect our schools to provide spiritual formation, the main way our colleges reflect their Reformed heritage is by focusing, both in and outside the classroom, on the pursuit of knowledge, service to others, living in community, respect for everyone and commitment to honor and justice.
In other words, the brief request of the last GA allows no brief response. The answer must address a multifaceted array of topics.
Still, the assignment was a good one, and it will be handled well if the committee considers the breadth of ways that colleges relate to their respective denominational families.
At its meeting in February, the Presbyterian College Chaplains Association offered this summary of the relationship: Because we are Presbyterian-related, our institutions value learning, faith, service, and connection to each other, the Church, and the world, honoring the dignity and worth of every person.
The committee will need to remember that our denomination has never had a centralized program for educational ministries. To be sure, we have trusted professional educators to address questions of curriculum and pedagogy. In fact, we’ve largely left it to the schools to define what it means to be Presbyterian.
The really good news is that these schools want to associate with us. In fact, in an era when denominational labels are seen as an albatross, perhaps instead of deciding what schools deserve our name, we should ask what we must do to keep the colleges and universities from dropping us.
