CRYSTAL LUONG
News Editor
In the 19th century, religious divisions sparked a unifying movement. The result: the Church of Christ.
In the 20th century, a spiritual commitment established the intersection of religion and academics. The result: Pepperdine University.
Now, into the 21st century, the pairing of the Church of Christ and higher education provokes continued discussion.
Pepperdine has skirted the fringes of the nation’s Top-50 universities in the past decade after peaking at No. 47 in 2002. U.S. News & World Report currently ranks the university at No. 52.
But how does Pepperdine’s Church of Christ affiliation affect academic enterprise?
The tension between the two is one that enters cycles of varying intensity based on leadership and time period.
“Pepperdine experienced a severe identity crisis in the 1970s and early 1980s, when there was far greater tension than there is today between the university’s relation with Churches of Christ, on the one hand, and its commitment to academic excellence, on the other,” said Dr. Richard Hughes, director of the Center for Faith and Learning.
In the present cycle, University administrators and faculty alike express conviction that Pepperdine’s Christian heritage enhances its ability to compete among elite institutions.
“The world doesn’t need another Stanford or USC (University of Southern California),” said Seaver Dean David Baird in an e-mail interview. “It already has those. It needs an alternative to an educational establishment that sees no connection between the life of the mind and the life of the spirit.”
Wannabe Ivy League?
Harvard, Princeton and Yale are among the nation’s top-ranking universities that began with Christian heritages. But as they gained broader appeal, secularization gained momentum. The Ivy League model presents a contrast between principles and eventuality for Pepperdine.
Dr. Stan Warford, professor of natural science, said when he first came to Pepperdine 30 years ago, there was open talk about the Ivy League phenomenon of secularization.
“There was even debate about whether Pepperdine should make a conscious decision to go that route,” Warford said. “It was a hotly debated issue.”
But then-President Howard A. White, according to Warford, rejected that notion and countered the trends in higher education to strengthen Pepperdine’s link to the Churches of Christ.
Current leadership aligns with White’s objectives.
“I don’t see Pepperdine going the way of the great secular universities,” wrote Provost Darryl Tippens in e-mail. “Is it possible that we could go that way? Yes, of course, if we don’t mind our business, if we start desiring prestige more than we desire fidelity to our mission.”
But it could be an unavoidable future.
“I do believe that it is almost a ‘law of nature’ that schools with a Christian heritage gradually give it up,” said Dr. John Wilson, professor of religion and a former Seaver dean.
There are many complex reasons for this eventuality, according to Wilson, but he thinks the willingness of Pepperdine leaders to make unpopular decisions to hold back secularization have steered it away from this course for the time being.
“But the project is a little like trying to sweep back the tide with a broom,” Wilson said. “You can do it for a while, but eventually you have to hand the broom to someone who just doesn’t have the will or the courage to keep sweeping.”
Christian compatibility
The Church of Christ, founded from an early 19th century movement led by rationalism, insists that God’s will can be discerned by reading and meditating on God’s word.
Some say these aspects can make the heritage especially conducive to academia.
“Although it may squelch the emotional side of religious expression, rationalism is a strong basis upon which to found a university,” Baird said.
Bob Cargill, adjunct professor of religion, considers Pepperdine progressive among Christian schools.
“The Religion Division is not just about indoctrinating people,” he said. “It’s about looking anew at Scripture in an analytical sense. The Churches of Christ allow critical scholars the freedom to analyze, to make interpretations, to study.”
Along its main lines, the university engages three avenues to enhance Christian dimensions within education: the Convocation series, a three-course general education religion requirement and annual Bible Lectures.
Although pleased with the university’s efforts to further faith and academics, Cargill emphasizes a need to translate ideas to action and progress.
“The University, moving into the 21st century, is moving forward with an infrastructure very much tied to an old style,” he said. “Pepperdine has a major identity crisis. We must redefine the heritage and mission.”
Cargill said his conclusion stems from sentiments first observed as a Pepperdine graduate student and now what he hears from student opinion.
Perhaps the crisis, however, is not a result of an unclear mission. It bears semblance to what Hughes labels in his 1997 essay, “Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University,” as an inherent ambiguity in the school’s church relationship, due to the university’s lack of any creedal standard and its affirmation of values that are hardly distinguishable from conservative American values.
Hughes said he thinks Pepperdine’s mission has clear direction but shares a view that the time for action has arrived.
“Our task now is to implement it (the mission statement),” Hughes said.
Faculty and the administrative “ceiling”
Roughly one out of three Seaver faculty members belongs to the Church of Christ, according to the University Fact Book.
This was not so before Pepperdine’s fourth president, William S. Banowsky, set far-reaching goals in the cycle of change, according to Hughes’ historical account. When the Malibu campus first opened in fall 1972, more than three-fourths of faculty belonged to the Church of Christ.
Banowsky changed the composition of the university by inviting non-Church of Christ men and women to join the Board of Regents and hiring Christian faculty who were not necessarily Church of Christ members.
The quality of students enrolling, as Hughes points out, has systematically improved since then, in measures such as GPA.
However, the Christian dimension fell behind across the board, and presidents since Banowsky have worked to reinstitute a focus on the Church of Christ.
Today’s administration does not have a quota per se for Church of Christ hires, but qualified candidates are given much consideration.
“We have what you might call a ‘soft’ target,” Tippens said.
The argument then arises whether non-Church of Christ members confront a “ceiling” for advancement at Pepperdine.
“Although I have heard this argument over the years, I do not think it is consistent with the facts,” Warford said. “I have never seen data to support the argument that promotion and tenure are biased in favor of Church of Christ candidates.”
Dr. Jeff Banks, professor of humanities and business, has been with Pepperdine for 18 years. Banks, who is Jewish, says he has gotten the opportunity to mentor tenure-track hires for the past three years and has not observed religion dictating the quality of professors.
“When I think about the Business and Humanities divisions, who I would consider some of the most outstanding faculty, in Business, both are Church of Christ,” Banks said. “In Humanities, both are Catholic.”
The ceiling myth may not prove true for faculty advancement, but it exists for higher ranks within administration. The university’s charter requires that the president be a member of the Church of Christ, along with 51 percent of the Board of Trustees, but with good reason, administrators say.
“That should not surprise anyone, for the university was established as a Church of Christ school, a fact that is frequently forgotten,” Baird said. “That Notre Dame would have a preponderance of faculty who are Catholic is not considered unusual or limiting, nor is it questioned by internal and external observers.”
What’s in a rank, anyhow?
Although Pepperdine has slowly slipped in national ranking in recent years, the shared opinion is that Church of Christ has nothing to do with the subtle drop.
“While great weight is given to ‘reputation,’ I suspect it has more to do with the success of our basketball team or political image than to academics,” Baird said. “Put differently, it has to do with popularity rather than scholarly attainments of students or faculty.”
The verdict on the dichotomy of the Church of Christ and academic enterprise thus remains open for future cycles of change.
03-31-2005