Speech: Butler University

The Center for Faith and Vocation
March 21, 2006

Butler University as my alma mater goes way back - even before my college years. You see, I was born while my father was a student at Butler School of Religion, now Christian Theological Seminary.

This school has nurtured me from the very beginning. As a child, I played in these very halls - when it was CTS. Playing school with real chalk boards and student desks - it doesn't get any better than that for an elementary school girl!

I grew up on family walks at Holcomb Gardens - and later, walks with boyfriends there.

I learned about the stars at the Butler planetarium, went sledding on Butler Hill, woke up on fall mornings to the rhythm of band practice, spent Saturday afternoons at Butler football games and winter evenings watching basketball at Butler Fieldhouse. I attended my first candle light peace march by the pond - all at Butler.

It wasn't my original intention to go to school here. I wanted to stretch my wings a bit out of state - and did. But before long, the money ran low and loans ran high, so I came back. And sure enough the "nourishing mother" took me in.

I enrolled as a double major - French and Economics. Ministry was nowhere in the picture then.

Though my parents knew some of the religion faculty here, I steered clear of the religion department. I wanted to keep my distance.

In some ways my path was pretty much running parallel with the university itself. It was not many years after my graduation in December 1975 that Butler cut its ties with the church that had founded it.

It's been interesting to reflect in preparation for this event, about how Butler shaped my life. Mine was not a typical experience - transferring in late, living first with my parents, then with a friend from high school off campus.

And yet it was Butler that nurtured me through one of life's most significant passages. On reflection I realize that though I went away to try my wings, it was back here that I really took off. It was through the mentoring of faculty members here that those wings truly began to carry me.

Three professors in particular took the time and interest - exactly what small colleges and universities claim is their strength. Those three treated me as an adult and in doing so reflected back to me an adult image of myself, so that I could see myself that way for the first time.

Monique Hyde treated me as a leader in the department - not quite as a peer, of course, but not as a kid, either.

Janos Horvath tried his level best to make an economist out of me - took me seriously - told me the truth when I tried to get by with mediocrity.

One time in particular, I handed in a paper that I had started work on with such gusto. But somewhere along the line it had gotten more complicated than I had imagined it would, and I ended up losing steam. It was not a great paper. Professor Horvath afterwards, said to me, "As an economist, your first job is to make the best use possible of your resources. You did not do that. You did not make use of me." Yikes.

Dr. Roberts volunteered to help me find a job - put my name in for interviews, in short, he believed in me. More than I did in myself at that moment.

These three Butler University faculty members helped me make the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

They helped to instill in me a self-confidence that I would need as I moved into the next big chapter of my life - two and a half years in Congo. (In spite of the best efforts of the econ faculty, I wasn't quite ready to settle in the world of business or finance. Now, I understand that restlessness to be the nudging of a different call.)

In Congo, I needed the French from day one. It was the common language of work. The self-confidence instilled in me by Butler faculty, I needed from the moment my new boss told me that, contrary to my expectations, they weren't going to train me to teach in their adult literacy program. They had no program. I was to bring one into being.

The mental discipline of economics - with its models and clear assumptions - helped me write grant proposals for the first time to underwrite the fledgling literacy program.

The Congo experience, which Butler so indirectly, but so well prepared me for, changed the trajectory of my life.

The rest of the detail is not of particular interest here except to say that after Congo the call to ministry became more than a nudge. New mentors stepped in. They helped me name God through the church as the source of my calling.

So I went to the Divinity School at Yale, met my husband there, have served as local church pastor, church relations officer for a church-related university and financial aid officer for a seminary. And now find myself called to serve the church as general minister and president, called to give leadership at a critical moment in the life of the church - a moment, oddly enough, that Butler University shares.

Not that Butler and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are formally related any longer. But both the university and the church participate in the same cultural context and share, to a certain extent, the same DNA.

Butler severed its ties with the church at just about the same time that mainline Protestantism in the United States began what is now seen to be a long-term decline. The timing is not coincidental. Butler's severing of ties was surely an early indicator of the trend.

The interest of the university was to be secular, I think, to be freed of the weight of the church relationship. People of mainline churches, too - especially the young - have chosen secular helping professions and extra-church spiritual pursuits, separating themselves from the church.

Interestingly, though, by the end of the last century, as the mainline continued to be sidelined, American society had seen a resurgence of Christian religion, but a more conservative kind. In fact, the world has seen a resurgence of conservative religion - of fundamentalism - in several faiths.

In North America, into the vacuum left by mainline withdrawal - and into the religious vacuum of a university deciding to be secular - have come more conservative para-church organizations.

We've seen it here on the Butler campus.

Which begs the question - what should religious life be like at Butler? In our time, perfect secularity has not held here. Self-initiated groups have come in with a particular brand of religion. Is there another option?

I think yes. Especially for a school founded by Disciples who long have associated the life of the intellect with the life of faith. Who long have been champions of an education that draws on the newest science of the day as well as the best thinking about matters of faith.

We live in a time when the long curve of history launched with the Enlightenment, has past its peak. When the project of knowing the universe through pure reason has reached its limits. As the pendulum begins to shift back toward a way of approaching the universe that includes space for the unknown, people are beginning to stretch the spiritual parts of themselves, as well.

There is a place in our time for communities of learning that keep mind and spirit in balance and in communication. With its beginnings within the Disciples of Christ, it seems to me that Butler can be one of those places where mind and spirit remain in touch. It strikes me as perfectly appropriate that this Center for Faith and Vocation would be here at Butler University, a secular university but a university that provides a place that gives "students space to reflect on faith and spirituality during their time at Butler."

In our time, people are going to be confronted with questions of faith. A fully fledged adult will need to be ready. A fully educated person should have some tools. A center here that "honors the diverse religious and spiritual commitments of Butler students, faculty and staff" to help "deepen students' understanding of their own faith, diverse religious traditions and meaning of vocation" - a center such as this seems appropriate here.

I finished my time at Butler more self-confident that I entered, ready to take on a world that threw some interesting challenges my way. Today's students and graduates will be challenged as well. Their challenge will include making their way through a varied landscape of faith paths that will intersect and even collide sometimes. A school that was founded by an abolitionist and which admitted women can surely be a place where religious pluralism is explored and celebrated.

As I tell people in my own church - in a world, where people are literally killing each other in the name of God, it's time for us to find different ways to interact around matters of faith. It's time to hone the skills of dialogue. It's time to practice the discipline of mutual respect. It's time to write a different script.

Surely a university like Butler is exactly the kind of place where such dialogue and discipline and respect can be fostered as new generations of students are nurtured by alma mater to meet the challenges of today.

I am grateful for what Butler University has been for me. I am proud to think of what you all as a community are doing even now for others making that transition from adolescence to adulthood in this challenging age.