Richard Hughes

By Christina Littlefield

The general consensus is that Pepperdine, as a Christian institution, specifically looks to incorporate faith and learning together. Religion professor Richard Hughes has worked from this definition in his founding of the Center for Faith and Learning. The Center conducts seminars on how to best integrate the two concepts of faith and learning. 
Seventy-five professors, about 20 percent of the faculty, have attended summer seminars featuring some of the top Christian thinkers in the nation. 
"We give the faculty books to read in concurrence, and then we start chewing on them," Hughes said of the seminar format. "People start thinking in a way they have not. Those faculty take their faith into the classroom."
Dr. Jeanne Heffernan, a Political Science professor, and seminar participant, believes that the seminars can maintain Pepperdine’s Christian identity in two ways--one theoretical, the other practical. “First, the seminars introduce new faculty to an important set of questions that have a decisive bearing on the Christian identity of the university,” Heffernan said. “This set of questions centers around the main issue of how one relates the life of faith to the life of learning. In giving faculty an opportunity to reflect on this issue, and in providing them with sources from the Christian tradition relevant to it, the seminars render a valuable and rare opportunity for common reflection on the vocation of a Christian academic.
“Second, the seminars encourage discussion about the ways in which faculty might translate theoretical insight about faith and learning into practical application in their classrooms and research,” Heffernan continued.
Many nationwide endeavors to connect faith and learning are being funded by two key organizations, the Lilly Endowment and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
“(Pew’s) interest has been in providing funding that will generate top flight scholarship with a Christian frame of reference,” Hughes said. “In the past it was impossible to speak in academia from a Christian standpoint. What you do is objective--you don’t allow the subjective to affect what you do. 
“We know today that no one is objective, but we all bring our perspective to bear,” Hughes continued.
J. Howard Pew, of the Sun Oil Company, began his philanthropic work as a financial supporter of the Fuller Theological Seminary. According to the Atlantic Monthly, “By century’s end Pew had allocated some $14 million to the revitalization of evangelical intellectual life.”
Lilly has also largely aided this effort, providing the grants for Hughes’ Models book. It was the research for this book that spurred the Center for Faith and Learning at Pepperdine. 
“If Lilly had not given us the money for that project, the Center for Faith and Learning would not be here today,” Hughes said. 
Lilly was started by the family that founded Eli Lilly and Company. At one time it surpassed the Ford Foundation as the largest philanthropic foundation in America. (Currently, Lilly ranks among the top six.) Though mainly working with Protestant denominations, Lilly also donated grants to Notre Dame and other Catholic institutions.
Hughes is working on a proposal for more grant money to further promote the connection of faith and learning at Pepperdine.
Nearly a dozen Pep faculty members are in a Lilly-sponsored effort to meet professors at other church-related institutions to discuss common concerns regarding the integration of faith and learning in the classroom.