God and Man at Davidson

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The Presbyterians founded Davidson College in North Carolina in 1837”in order, they said, to educate young men “of hopeful talents and piety, preparatory to the Gospel ministry . . . in humble reliance upon the blessing of God.” Davidson has changed since then, expanding the curriculum and opening its doors to women. It is now widely regarded as one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country, and certainly it is one of the hardest to get into.

Throughout its history, college officials have prized Davidson’s churchly ties, and indeed a visitor need not wander the campus long before coming upon the stately Davidson College Presbyterian Church”a name that could not more tightly conjoin college and church. DCPC is a member congregation of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Some students attend the church, as does the college’s president, Robert Vagt.

Two years ago Vagt asked the board of trustees to consider what the college’s church-relatedness should mean today. Last February the board responded by taking a series of actions: revising the college’s mission statement so the school’s ties are not with the “Presbyterian Church” as such but with the “Reformed Tradition”; amending its by-laws to permit, for the first time, non-Christian trustees; and approving the creation of an endowed chair in Reformed Theology.

This story about Davidson College went unreported in the national press and would not have drawn my attention but for the fact that my daughter is a student at the college, and so I learned about the board’s labors from the student newspaper, The Davidsonian . The decisions quickly proved controversial. Few trustees had voted against the measures, but one who did, John Belk, class of 1943 and the college’s largest individual donor, felt so strongly that only Christians should govern the college that he resigned from the board. Many older alumni sided with Belk on the governance issue, while younger alumni, as well as most faculty members and students, supported the decision. Meanwhile, religion professors weren’t thrilled with the new position to be located within their department: We weren’t consulted, they said, and anyway Reformed Theology is already being taught.

Over the months things have settled, and it is evident that the board’s decisions will stick. Still, the Davidson story is worth a closer look, even for those with no attachments to the college. Davidson happens to be one of many older private colleges that started as Protestant endowments and eventually changed their character in a series of steps that came to seem inevitable. For these colleges, the steps taken were often presented in religious terms. The Davidson example stands out in that way, as the recent decisions demonstrate. The board, made up entirely of professing Christians, did not describe the decisions merely as practical ones compelled by earlier precedents. Instead, the board said the decisions were grounded in Christian faith. That, of course, is a basis for action not available to the next board, assuming it includes non-Christians.

The Davidson story begins early in 2004 with the board’s retreat, where it explored “what it means to be a church-related college in the Reformed Tradition.” The trustees unanimously concluded that “Christian faith and the Reformed Tradition” have been and should continue to be “positive influences” at Davidson. But the trustees felt those subjects weren’t properly treated in the college’s Statement of Purpose (first adopted in 1964), to which trustees, administrators, and faculty must give their support. Nor were many trustees satisfied with the by-laws requirement that all trustees must be “active members of a Christian Church.” The trustees concluded their retreat by appointing an Ad Hoc Committee to review the “issues raised” and to draft recommendations. The committee duly labored, and the full board accepted its proposals after making mostly minor revisions.

The new Statement of Purpose differs from the old mainly in terms of the college’s religious relations. Where the old statement said that “the ties which bind the college to the Presbyterian Church have remained close and strong” and that “the college intends that this vital relationship be continued to the mutual benefit of church and school,” the new statement contains neither reference to the church and recasts the ties that bind as ones between the college and “its Presbyterian heritage, including the historic understanding of Christian faith called the Reformed Tradition.” It also affirms the college’s commitment to continuing “that vital relationship, though nothing is said about its being of “mutual benefit” to church and school.

Nor must trustees vow fidelity”as they did under the old by-laws”in “seeking to increase [Davidson’s] effectiveness as an institution of Christian learning.” The new by-laws instead require trustees to “be faithful in . . . seeking to honor the traditions that have shaped Davidson as a place where faith and reason work together in mutual respect for service to God and humanity,” the description of the college as “an institution of Christian learning” now deleted. Since honoring a religious tradition is not necessarily the same as believing its teachings, a non-Christian can serve with clear conscience as a trustee.

The new by-laws establish that prospect. They provide that out of “openness to and respect for the world’s various religious traditions and the variety of religious preferences among the graduates and friends of Davidson,” persons “who are not active members of a Christian church” but are otherwise qualified may be recommended for the office of trustee. They also provide that, “as part of continuing the historic commitment of Davidson to the Reformed Tradition of the Christian faith,” at least 80 percent of all elected Trustees” must be “active members of a Christian church.” Thus, up to 20 percent of the 44 elected trustees”why this quota was chosen was not explained”need not satisfy the church requirement. They may be “non-active” church members, or active or inactive members of other religious entities. Or they may be of no religious faith at all.

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TV’s America

Fri, 01 May 1992 00:00:00 -0400

Watching America:
What Television Tells Us About Our Lives
by S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman
Prentice Hall, 332 pages, $24.95

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God and Man at Davidson

TV’s America