GOD AND (WO)MAN ON CAMPUS: Southern Methodist University:
Evans, J Claude
J. Claude Evans SOUTHERN METHODIST SOUTHERN Methodist University came into existence out of the fright the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, experienced on losing control of Van-derbilt...
...If one is to judge the mission of a university qua university...
...A freshman might have one of the most senior professors on campus for a teacher...
...It had required biblical studies, a growing school of theology, and required chapel...
...But it was purgatory, and not hell...
...There is no pressure at SMU from the church, university, or faculty to conform to any certain type of religion...
...James A, Perkins suggests the three criteria of the open search for knowledge (research), the transmission of knowledge (teaching), and the application of knowledge (service to the community...
...A new SMU faculty member, after one year here, said SMU was not "southern," nor "Methodist," and now he was wondering if it were a "university...
...Prior to World War II, SMU was more of a church college striving to foe a university, than a university itself...
...The nature of man emphasis on religion has too little intellectual rigor to counterweight fundamentalist convictions...
...Religion, thank goodness, is not over-stressed at SMU...
...There are a great many students whose lives are characterized by individualized searching for a sense of import in the immediate...
...There are many religious functions here, but as far as the classroom, there really isn't much discussion of religion at all...
...The major missional advancement for SMU in this period was the Master Plan of 1965 which reiterated SMU's dedication to the educational goals of a university, while insisting that the truth to be sought was "not mere empirical truth," but truth having "to do with moral values and religious faith," and must not be confused with "inflexible dogmata which proscribe free inquiry and critical exploration...
...But church ownership alone is no guaranteed bulwark against the ravages of secularism as we shall see...
...fundamentalism and vocationalism promise this...
...These quotes are selected, of course, but they point to the privatism that has created the void into which convinced fundamentalists and insistent vocationalists have moved...
...Required Bible and/or philosophy courses were dropped...
...Some feared that the Dallas business community was taking over the educational policy-making task of the university...
...And even the hiring of a fundamentalist football coach introduced an era when SMU was in more trouble for NCAA rule violatiom than at any other period in its history, while the coach reintro-duced dorm segregation and special treatment for athletes in a way that violated the Master Plan and its goal of a humane education for every student...
...The firing was done by SMU's Board of Governors (mostly local businessmen who serve as the executive committee of the larger board of trustees) without even a formal meeting for discussion...
...He was telling us something every church-related university needs to hear...
...psychological man, sociological man, political man and so on A special University College was created to which teachers from every school were loaned to leach in these interdisciplinary courses...
...Listen to these student-written perceptions: . "1 have found SMU to be very conducive to religious life, but I don't think religion is dealt with in class...
...SMU faculty are good at debating values in one-to-one discussion, but shy away from it in class...
...Yet we still see students who get turned on when they see subject matter that has bearing on their lives," he continued...
...Led by the School of Theology, SMU became the first major, private university in the South to integrate...
...and the values of faith (ethical principles...
...Out of it came a program of educational renewal that included interdisciplinary courses that began during the freshman year and continued through the senior year...
...Having no budget of its own and dependent on regular departments for its faculty, departmental pressures for "publish or perish" are making it difficult to secure top teachers for the interdisciplinary courses...
...United Methodist bishops of the South Central jurisdiction began to act like bishops (fathers in God) and presented a thoughtful position paper to the trustees...
...Also, the teaching of religion in the interdisciplinary courses failed to stem the tide of a fundamentalist resurgence on campus...
...The faculty was galvanized overnight into, of all things, a faculty...
...Required Chapel had succumbed earlier because of larger enrollment and opposition of students...
...The sympathetic talents of a former president were employed as go-between and trustee-faculty-student committees hammered out new by-laws, which the trustees adopted, that make impossible ever again such a misappropriation of power by the "governors' executive committee," a new title, now official, also by trustee action...
...I really don't feel that religion is a part of the life at SMU...
...If one is to judge the mission of a church-related or church-owned univer-city, one must add to these three, the scholarly presentation of the truths of faith (biblical studies, etc...
...The same kind of mentality that bends the knee to big-time athletics up and fired an exciting new president after he had served only two years...
...Despite its name, SMU is not thought to be a strict religious school...
...It was a dark day for SMU as a university...
...Big-time athletic budgets became a problem A series of expensive coaches with expensive staffs have so far failed to turn the program around...
...Out of it came the faculty nomination of this president for the Alexander Meiklejohn Award, and its later presentation (April, 1965...
...While these were exciting days at SMU, there were clouds on the horizon...
...Three fairly distinct periods may be delineated in the history of Southern Methodist University as regards these missional goals...
...It is left up to the individual with little or no influence coming from professors...
...It spoke its mind to trustees and administrators alike...
...I don't think SMU is all that religious...
...He was not bad-mouthing SMU...
...Value-free education simply will not get the job done...
...hell, 1 already know from my Protestantism, does not...
...If we can become a university where the three goals of university (teaching, research and service) are wedded to the explicit presentation of the truths of the Judeo-Christian tradition, then SMU would make a contribution that no state and most private universities do not, and possibly cannot, make...
...The University College of Master Plan fame is under increasing pressure...
...It is really a part of the Sunday church-goers who constitute most of the ones who are religious here...
...This Master Plan was the fruit of months of shared work by faculty, students, administrators, committees of trustees and other friends of the university...
...Religion was included in the Nature of Man course for freshmen, so that the Judeo-Christian understanding of man could be discussed parallel to biological man...
...Yet it was a great day for SMU...
...There is a growing realization among students of the perceived irrelevance of university education," says a philosophy professor...
...There are other missional weaknesses...
...traditional education does not promise this...
...Fundamentalism is so rampant that students are openly advised by adherents not to take courses in the religion department or to attend Sunday Chapel lest they "lose their faith...
...Purgatorial days are here for Southern Methodist University...
...However, this early, sectarianism had in its structures a carry-over from John Wesley's emphasis on the union of "knowledge and vital piety," so that even in those early days, there was more academic freedom at SMU than at most state schools in the Southwest, It was after World War II that SMU began to become of age in its missional goals...
...Not once did the president ever ask a faculty or staff member to cool it, or hush up-or even make threats, veiled or unveiled...
...And the realization of these goals depends on whether significant educational and fiscal support can be found for these goals of a church-owned university.hurch-owned university...
...It was a program that broke through old departmental hierarchies of power...
...Its Texas founders wanted a university in the Southwest that would not be simply church-related, but church-owned, lest one day it succumb to secular forces and slip away from its church moorings...
...Of course fundamentalism and the re-emergence of vocational emphasis in education are culture-wide phenomena...
...SMU presidents and administrators became adept at taking verbal criticism, and sometimes abuse, from conservative alumni and friends of the university...
...J. Claude Evans SOUTHERN METHODIST SOUTHERN Methodist University came into existence out of the fright the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, experienced on losing control of Van-derbilt University...
...Its teaching was chiefly liberal arts, its research was minimal, and its service was more to the church than to the community...
...Academic freedom became more secure here than at the prestigious University of Texas, where trustees were notorious in their perennial interference...
...Purgatory, my Catholic friends tell me, has an exit...
...It could well be that the time has come for this church-owned university to reconsider its decision on the dropping of required courses in religion...
Vol. 102 • March 1975 • No. 1
