A College of the Church

A “College of the Curch.” To what appears to be an increasing number of people, these two words, “college” and “church,” represent concepts that in some way seem mutually exclusive, oxymoronic, or incompatible--that somehow the word “church” when applied to “college” restricts academic freedom, threatens our goals for diversity, or restrains us from becoming really “top notch.” To those holding such opinions one might point to the Christian Tradition in general, itself replete with seeming contradictions and paradoxes. Witness, for example, countless sayings and teachings of Christ, e.g., “the first shall come last and the last shall come first,” or “only by dying to this life do we gain eternal life.” Or again, consider the chief symbol of Christianity, whose upright member, stretching skyward, is “crossed” by the horizontal bar, a striking sign of contradiction. Then, of course, is that Person who was gibbeted upon that cross: a King born a pauper whose palace was a stable, a Person possessing two, distinct, if you will, “contradictory” natures, the God-Man. The ancients, both Jews and Gentiles, recognized the contradictory nature of the Christ and his cross. St. Paul addressed them in this fashion in his letter to the Corinthians: “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and a folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Paul, as well as any other, understood that the Person of Christ and His supreme act of reconciliation upon the sign of contradiction set aright for all people and all ages all contradiction. As the Church, a community of faith, we are extensions of the body of that Person who reconciled us to Him; we are the body of Christ on earth. Thus, apparent contradictions are all too familiar to Christians, and the tension exerted from each pole, rather than confining and contricting, has historically unleashed an extraordinarily creative and liberating force in this world. Baldly stated, this is our Christian heritage.

Cognizant of this heritage and of the knowledge that we have been suffused with the grace of God, a grace freely bestowed, we have been blessed with the potential to operate in our quest for knowledge and truth in the context of the liberal arts with a confidence informing our lives and our mission that can only be described as truly “liberating.” But notice, please, that I used the word “confidence,” not “arrogance.” It has historically been a tendency of communities of faith to take this confidence of which I speak to one of two extremes: one extreme manifests itself in a narrow, hubristic parochialism that excludes others of different traditions on a whim, resulting in a triumphalism every bit as damaging and destructive as racial bigotry.

At the other end of the spectrum lies a more seductive temptation, especially for intellectuals living in a pluristic society--one to which many Christian communities and colleges of the Church have succumbed. Instead of operating in the confidence of God's grace, they allow themselves to devolve into operating out of a kind of complacency. Through a false sense of openness and Christian charity, they abandon all critical perspective of their own and others' traditions and, holding nothing really in value but despairing all things equally, they reduce all faith to its lowest common denominator. By doing so, they shroud the community in a pall of skepticm, a kind of intellectual despair that carries its own condemnation, namely that nothing is true but everything is valid.

St. Olaf as a college of the Church has a duty to itself, to its alumni, to its contituency, to its students, and to its God not to slip into either of these extremes. We must never betray or abandon our birthright but rather, keeping our sight ever fixed on our rich heritage and traditions, walk the tightrope held taught by the natural tension between faith and reason, Church and academic institution. We must strive to become as fine a liberal arts college as possible, as fine a college of the Church as possible, as fine a Lutheran college as possible. This might sound strange coming from a man who was educated in Roman Catholic schools and who has remained a strongly committed, orthodox Roman Catholic. In many ways, I am, indeed, “a stranger in a strange land.” As a long term “guest” at St. Olaf--it's only been 25 years now--I would never presume to insist that St. Olaf should in any way compromise its traditions to accommodate me personally. On the other hand, as a guest, I can insist that this community respect me for my beliefs, and I can say with a great deal of gratitude that, excepting only a handful of anti-Catholic, prejudicial incidents over the course of a quarter century, St. Olaf has welcomed me and my outspoken Catholicity with open arms. For my part, I have come to appreciate, if not to agree with, the Lutheran tradition, and, in fact, I am convinced that my own Faith has been bolstered by my interaction with and participation in this community. Would that everyone at St. Olaf might always be able to say the same thing about their interaction with our community.

My wish and prayer for St. Olaf is, then, the same as Paul's prayer was for Timothy: that in its quest for teaching the truth and excelling in the transmission of those arts called liberal, the College will always endeavor “to preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill [its] ministry.”

James M. May

February 6, 2002