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Friends United Meeting |
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November 1998
Earlham College
New Faces and Emerging Cordiality with Western and Indiana Yearly Meetings
By Bill Medlin
One person after another stood up to remark how refreshing it was to hear Earlham College discussed at Indiana Yearly Meeting without controversy, divisiveness, or negativity. That had not happened in years, one Friend observed. It did not happen by accident this year.
For over two years, a joint committee appointed by Indiana and Western Yearly Meetings had been working to improve relations between the college and the two yearly meetings with which it is affiliated, and to do so without glossing over areas of serious conflict.
It looked like God was at work in the process, too. A number of institutional changes at Earlham facilitated an openness to a new beginning in yearly meeting-college relations. Perhaps the most important change was the arrival of Doug Bennett as Earlham's sixteenth president in 1997.
He came with a commitment to improve relations with Indiana and Western Yearly Meetings and a desire to see Earlham's Quaker identity grow stronger. "Quakerism is fundamental to our history and our heritage. But it is much more. Our groundedness in Quakerism is a living, present, vital connection. It is our life-root," Bennett declared in his inaugural address.
Other important changes in Earlham's leadership were taking place this summer. Jay Marshall was named as the new dean for Earlham School of Religion. Jeff Rickey was appointed Earlham's dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. Both appointments address areas of serious conflict between the yearly meetings and their college. Marshall has been a pastor in North Carolina and Indiana Yearly Meetings. He holds a Ph.D. in Biblical studies from Duke and is committed to training for pastoral ministry, which some feel has declined at ESR is recent years. Rickey, a Friend who comes out of the evangelical tradition of Northwest Yearly Meeting and George Fox University, is bringing a renewed emphasis on recruitment of Quaker students from FUM meetings in the Midwest.
About three years ago, both Indiana and Western Yearly Meetings authorized their clerks to name representatives to a joint committee to improve relations with Earlham College and the Earlham School of Religion. At the time some people thought that was an impossible mission. The committee had been envisioned in Earlham's Articles of Incorporation and had been activated on at least two prior occasions. Article five of the incorporating document specified "that each Yearly Meeting shall have the right to appoint a Committee, which shall constitute a Joint Committee, whose duty it shall be...to visit the college as often as they may deem proper, inspect its religious, scholastic, and sanitary condition; also its libraries, apparatus and other appliances, and in short, its general condition and management, and submit from time to time any suggestions they may think needful, to the Trustees, either in writing or by conference."
The two yearly meetings gave a three-point charge to the new joint committee: (1) "to make suggestions for improving and strengthening Earlham College as a Friends College;" (2) "to find ways to help Earlham College be more responsive to the Yearly Meetings' needs and concerns;" and (3) "to find ways to clarify and improve Earlham College/Yearly Meeting relations."
The Joint Committee began to meet in June, 1996. Appointed to represent Indiana Yearly Meeting were Susan Kirkpatrick, Steve Howell, Scott Makin, and Johan Maurer. Western Yearly Meeting representatives were Emily Mills, Ed Lawson, Martha Hinshaw Sheldon and Bill Medlin. In its first meeting, the committee asked the two yearly meeting clerksDon Garner and Charles Heavilinto become part of the committee and named Steve Howell as Joint Committee clerk.
Earlham College also appointed a Committee on Yearly Meeting Relations to meet with the Joint Committee. Earlham's committee included faculty members Tony Bing, Tom Hamm, Stephanie Crumley-Effinger, Marya Bower, and Alice Shrock, students Sara Bradbury and Troy Gottfried, and staff member Traci Johnson.
The Joint Committee began its work by trying to develop a process that would foster fruitful dialog with the college without becoming adversarial. It was also important not to ignore the issues that have divided the college and its School of Religion from its sponsoring yearly meetings. The committee also realized it must remember whose business it was doing. Steve Howell set the tone when he said, "What we must do is seek God's will. It does not matter what we want. What matters is what God wants."
The committee decided to study the official documents in which the college and the yearly meetings state their policies and values. Then it listed the core values it found in the documents. From each list it selected the seven values the committee felt would yield the most constructive dialog with the college. Many hours were devoted to this process.
The Joint Committee then invited the Earlham College committee to develop its own lists of the values it understood to be important to the yearly meetings and the college. When the two committees met together to compare their lists, they were very similar. That made it easier for the two committees to reach a consensus on their shared perception of the values. The Joint Committee also made clear that the lists were not meant to be a faith statement nor inclusive of all important beliefs and testimonies. It was a working document for the purpose of dialogue on values most relevant to yearly meeting-college relations.
The combined committees found that church and college have similar values on the importance of spiritual growth, community, and integrity, on the nature of truth, and on consensus in decision making. They also share a commitment to service, nonviolence, and transformation of the world and a "desire to see a growing, vibrant Religious Society of Friends."
In its report to the yearly meetings this August, the Joint Committee identified the major areas of conflict to be sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, and faculty appointments without an evangelical commitment to Christ. Part of the two committees' mission for the future will be "finding creative ways for dealing with these differences that respect the integrity of each institution."
The complete lists of core values is available.
An important early decision by the Joint Committee had been to determine not only areas of unity and conflict between church and college, but also to look at areas in which each could help the other grow stronger. For example, the committee found that Earlham does a better job of community building and nurturing an international vision than most meetings within the two yearly meetings. The yearly meetings can help recruit students, pray regularly for campus concerns, and "help students and faculty stay connected to the 'real world.'"
Student and faculty recruitment has been a serious issue within the yearly meetings. Few students from Indiana and Western Yearly Meetings have enrolled at Earlham in recent years. Tom Hamm estimates that between five and ten students from the two yearly meetings sponsoring Earlham have attended each year during the past decade. That is less than 1% of the student body. Overall Quaker enrollment is around 10-12%, most from Friends General Conference and "United" meetings on the east coast. There is a perception among many IYM and WYM Friends that Quaker recruitment has been concentrated in the east in past years. There is also a perception that the cost of Earlham is too high for families within its sponsoring yearly meetings. These are two perceptions Earlham hopes to change.
"We need to do a better job of presenting Earlham to prospective students," Doug Bennett said to Earlham's campus newspaper, The Word. After consulting with Bennett, Jeff Rickey intends to be available to visit the home of every college-bound high school senior in Indiana and Western Yearly Meeting this year. With his evangelical credentials, Jeff Rickey should find a welcome in many Midwestern Quaker homes.
Earlham is also anxious to correct misunderstandings about its cost. Tuition and fees are $19,354 this year, with room and board adding another $4,674. But a high percentage of students receive substantial financial aid. An article in The Word reported an enrollment last year of 1025. Of those students, 622 from families with incomes up to $100,000 per year, received scholarship and other aid averaging $16,944 each. Even from families with annual incomes over $100,000, 62 students received an average of $10,997 in financial aid. Some funds are set aside specifically for Quaker students.
Bennett is concerned about recruiting more Quaker faculty. Most of the generation of Civilian Public Service workers who came to teach at Earlham after World War II have already retired. Many of the remaining faculty with a strong Christian Quaker identity are retiring in the next few years. The biggest deficiency in Earlham's claim to diversity in its faculty is evangelical Friends, who constitute two-thirds of the Quakers in the world. While insisting he could not make specific beliefs a criteria for employment, Bennett said that "we are going to make a great effort to recruit Quaker faculty and are certainly going to be looking hard among evangelical Friends."
Bennett is also concerned that Earlham School of Religion better serve the Society of Friends. Last February, he presented a draft report for Earlham's Special Board Committee on ESR. The report concluded that "a gulf has grown up between ESR and many in the Religious Society of Friends. We believe that we must enter a period of remaking the relationship between ESR and the Religious Society of Friends."
This July, Jay Marshall began as the new dean of ESR. In announcing his appointment, Bennett said "I believe Jay has an unusual balance of capabilities to handle both the internal and external responsibilities of being dean of ESR. Moreover, I believe he will help us forge a stronger relationship between ESR and Quakers across the United States."
At his installation September 19, Marshall said "ESR should offer an opportunity to study within a Christian community. For me, that means we have agreed upon a Center which is Christ. That goes with being a Christian community." He said ESR must be "academically rigorous" but that its reason for existence "is to make a contribution to the Religious Society of Friends, and to represent our Quaker values to society at large as we prepare men and women for ministry.... The world does not need one more irrelevant example of Christianity in general or Quakerism in particular."
The Joint Committee of Indiana and Western Yearly Meeting plan to emphasize work to improve relations with ESR during the next year. ESR expects to announce next spring a new faculty appointment in pastoral studies. Who is appointed to that position will have a major impact on how much relations with the yearly meetings improve.
One committee member remarked that two questions must remain before it: "What does it mean to be a church-related college? and What does it mean to be a college-related church?"
Those questions will be before the yearly meetings and their educational institutions as their work together continues.
Bill Medlin is pastor of Lynn Friends Meeting in Indiana Yearly Meeting and also pastored in Western Yearly Meeting. He is author of several books on history, genealogy, and Quakerism. He and his wife, Poh, are the parents of Joshua, Anne, and Sarah.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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