By Christina Littlefield

Harvard. Yale. Princeton.

These prestigious Ivy League schools started as theological seminaries. Now separate from the rest of their respective universities, these seminaries are all that remains of the Christian heritage upon which these great American universities were founded. History shows that as academic, faith-based institutions move up the ladder of intellectual prestige, they shed their Christian heritage to appeal to a broader segment of the culture-at-large.

Administrators, faculty and staff at Pepperdine University are well aware of this history.  And as the school's national stature grows, Pepperdine finds itself at a crossroads.  Can it continue to excel academically while promoting its Christian identity, which is linked directly with the Churches of Christ? Ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the 49th best university in the nation, Pepperdine is moving up the academic ladder of success. The question remains: What will become of the university’s faith? Will Pepperdine remain steadfastly Christian to the end, or will it lose its soul to become a Stanford or Harvard wanna-be?

“Harvard’s seal still bears the words, ‘In Christ We Glory,’ precisely as the Puritans put them there in 1636,” former president Dr. William S. Banowsky told the Pepperdine faculty in 1999. “If we neglect our mission, our stately cross will be even more visible.”

Current President Andrew K. Benton is committed to preserving Pepperdine’s Christian mission. Though Pepperdine is arguably the strongest it has ever been spiritually, the majority of Benton’s recent inaugural address called for a deeper integration of Christian faith and learning, and a deeper relationship with the Churches of Christ.

“I am very concerned that Pepperdine remain a strong Christian influence,” said Communication professor Dr. David Lowry, president of the Seaver Faculty Association. “Our Christian heritage brought us right to where we are today. Some say that to really be a player we need to get rid of such old fashioned ideas  as our being as a Christian university. It is really tempting as you move up - 49th, 48th. You could really sell your soul. But you lose your distinctness.”

Many professors agree with Lowry. Few, if any, believe the university should throw off this identity entirely in return for higher academic standing.  “We want to be as good as anyone else as part of the head component,” said Dr. Keith Whitney, chair of the Business division, “but the distinguishing thing about Pepperdine is touching hearts and hands to lives of service. I think that if we weren’t trying to do something so dynamically different, we wouldn’t be getting the attention. This is our arena, and I think this is what we should continue to do.”

Brad Cummings, associate pastor for Malibu Vineyard, believes that incorporating faith and learning is Pepperdine’s greatest weakness in its Christian identity. “Just because a professor goes to church on Sunday doesn’t mean it is a Christian university,” said Cummings, who graduated from Pepperdine.  He asserts that there was “nothing inherently Christian” about his education.

“The capacity to bring faith into the classroom should be a huge component, or else what is the difference between what is being done at UCLA?” Cummings said.

Cummings acknowledged a definite renewal on campus in the last year, but said that the classrooms have grown “progressively more secular. Only a handful of professors are remarked upon by students,” said Cummings, speaking from his ministry experience. “If faculty had a much stronger stance for Christ then you would hear about it, and you rarely do. If Pepperdine wants to be a Christian university, they should not only look at the academic side, but also whether or not they are a strong Christian witness.”

Campus Minister Scott Lambert of the Malibu Church of Christ agrees that faculty make the difference in maintaining Pepperdine’s Christian identity. “You need faculty members who are really supportive of the Christian mission, actively involved in the Christian mission, active in the lives of students,” Lambert said. “Professors can make a difference, even if the subject is not spiritual in nature - a difference in their lifestyles and actions.”

For this reason, Lambert believes that Pepperdine must recruit a “critical mass” of Christian students and professors, and that many of these should be specifically from Churches of Christ.

“Pepperdine will only remain a Christian school if it remains tied to its heritage,” Lambert said. “That is a strong statement, but I believe in that, with a mentality of inclusion. We are not strong enough to just be an unattached Christian school-there are very few of those around. A very long history bears out that most schools that don’t remain anchored to a heritage fall away from their Christian mission. If you cut ties with the heritage, you cut ties with the Christian mission.”

Lambert is far from alone in his belief that Pepperdine needs to hold on to a specific heritage. “While there are a few examples of Christian colleges without denominational affiliation that have maintained a strong religious identity, they are rare,” notes political science professor Jeanne Heffernan, who is of Catholic background and received her doctorate in Political Science from Notre Dame.  “It has always seemed to me that ‘mere Christianity’ is an abstraction and that one’s Christian identity is inevitably rooted in a particular tradition. As in individual life, I think that institutions need to be grounded  in larger, historic traditions to give shape to their identity.

 “As such, I think that Pepperdine’s affiliation with the Churches of Christ is valuable and should be preserved, not only for the sake of continuity with its heritage, but also because the affiliation connects Pepperdine to a living faith community,” Heffernan continued.

Religion professor Richard Hughes, the university’s point-person for discussions on Pepperdine’s Christian heritage, would argue that while the affiliation to a heritage is necessary, the affiliation to the Churches of Christ has specific benefits. As he argued at a conference, “The Future of Religious Conferences,” each of the faith communities represented there has within its own tradition distinctive resources for promoting education that is very deeply Christian.   The conference was sponsored, ironically enough, by Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance.

Hughes also observed that each tradition can learn from one another, as he illustrated in the book which he co-edited, Models in Christian Education.

“Beyond just maintaining our connection, what  resources of the Church of Christ can maintain us in our work for academic freedom?” Hughes said. “Why should we value this tradition? Because it can support us.”

President Benton agrees that there are resources specific to the Church of Christ tradition that sustain the university. “Our contribution to the broad spectrum of higher education will come from our unique perspective, from our roots in the Restoration movement,” said Benton. “I will always celebrate the faiths expressed at other colleges and universities. Frankly, I am grateful for the example of Notre Dame, Wheaton, and Calvin, but their mission is not our mission. We shoulder our portion of the responsibility by doing what we do, by doing it very well and in a manner true to whom we profess to be. We envision a big, inclusive tent, if you will, and we invite many to come make their own contribution to Pepperdine. Staying with the metaphor: Our structure, however - pole, post and peg - is in the Churches of Christ.”

Truly nondenominational schools, such as Wheaton College, require faculty to sign confessional statements of faith. “Most faculty continue to view the imposition of any credal statement as an unwarranted infringement on an individual’s freedom in Christ and on academic freedom,” Hughes wrote in his Models book.

Spanish professor Ted Parks agrees. “I would be very uncomfortable with that,” Parks said of credal statements. “I don’t like someone else defining finer points of my beliefs. As a developing person, I might change my mind about my beliefs and I would hate to see a break in my development.”

Parks, while supporting the university’s Strategic Plan quotas to have 60 percent faculty and 20 percent of students from the Churches of Christ, also believes that diversity is necessary, as do many other supporters of the quotas. By diversity, Parks means Christians from other denominations, non Christians, and people of different religious traditions from all races and socio-economic backgrounds.

“One thing that is encouraging to me is that I don’t think that Pepperdine’s identity as a Christian school is in tension with its desire to be diverse,” Parks said. “On the contrary, I think that being a Christian institution by definition means accepting people, crossing barriers. Christianity is specifically sensitive to social dimensions. It calls us to reach out to the underrepresented minorities and to reach across lines that may actually be in tension, not with the Christian university, but with the wealth of the people here today.”

Many feel that the hiring of Church of Christ faculty and admission of Church of Christ students over other applicants creates an unfair atmosphere. 

The difficulty in enforcing quotas, some faculty note, is that someone has to determine whether a faculty member falls into the “Church of Christ” category.  That is made more difficult by the fact that at least half a dozen faculty who came to Pepperdine as life-long Church of Christ members now worship at Malibu Presbyterian Church.  Are they still “Church of Christ,” or do they no longer satisfy the quota requirement for Church of Christ faculty?

Cummings believes that this process creates divisions that undermine the unity movement within the church, and diminishes Pepperdine’s effectiveness as a Christian witness. “If they want to be a Christian university then they need to take much stronger strides towards being ecumenical,” Cummings said. “If they want to be a Church of Christ school, they are. There is a doctrinal distinctiveness. I would refer to them as a Church of Christ school and not a Christian university. That’s not to say they aren’t Christian; they just have a real bias in their Christianity.

“There is a strong Christian population that goes beyond the church on campus, and there are internal biases that promote the Church of Christ students over other Christian students,” Cummings continued. “There is a civil war between those that are in and those that are out.”

Parks acknowledges that there is tension between faculty members at times, but that overall the ratio between Church of Christ, Christian and even non-Christian staff members lends to the school’s credibility while retaining a Christian emphasis. The staffs of other Church of Christ schools, such as Abilene Christian University, are 100 percent Church of Christ members, and the student body at ACU is 70 percent Church of Christ. Parks and others see this as limiting those schools.

“I believe that it is healthy, but it is difficult, and it makes people mad at times,” Parks said. “Sometimes I think there is a backlash against members who are Church of Christ. In faculty discussions people complain because they have felt that some faculty were hired because they were members of the Churches of Christ and not because they were qualified.

“It creates tensions,” Parks continued. “I am sorry for those tensions, but I don’t know how to resolve them. But in the bigger picture of things I haven’t seen a model that would work.”

Business professor Jeff Banks, who is Jewish, feels that he has been accepted at the university. He has been invited to pray and speak at different functions and teaches a class entitled Human Relations and Values.

“It is quite a gift of trust to give to a non-Christian a course that has values in the title,” Banks said. “I feel very accepted. The new president has certainly made me feel like part of the family.”

Banks is highly supportive of Pepperdine’s mission statement and specifically its connection of faith to learning. He uses the paradigm of Matthew 25 to encourage his students in service learning, and he incorporates prayer into the classroom from students of all faiths, even atheists. For these reasons, he has enjoyed attending Hughes’ seminar on how to better connect students to the Christian mission.

“I am very much in favor of what Richard Hughes is doing with the Center for Faith and Learning; as a non-Christian I don’t feel that there is anything he is doing that I can’t relate to, because he is reaching out to us all.”

He doesn’t see tension in the hiring of Church of Christ professors, but does feel that relations could be better, and that the hiring should focus more on the Christian mission than the Christian denomination.

“I would like to see hiring based on support of the mission and on high quality faculty,” Banks said.

The debate between Church of Christ faculty and non-Church of Christ faculty continues with students facing similar dilemmas. The admissions office actively tries to recruit Christian students, believing that this is essential to retaining the university’s Christian mission. Recruiting is accomplished through Church of Christ scholarships, special recruitment officers and touring groups like Won by One, and by buying databases of Christian students who can be targeted for recruitment.

Paul Long, Dean of Admissions, thinks that Pepperdine is on the right track in its attempt to recruit a high percentage of Church of Christ students.

“Does the Christian thing hold us back?” Long said. “No, it is our identity as a university. When we came to Malibu we had to restart our identity. It was hard to attract the students we wanted. We didn’t have as much choice before.”

Now with more than 5,000 applicants for the 2000-2001 academic year, student selectivity has increased dramatically.

Long said that the admissions office rates spirituality as well as SAT scores, aiming for a student who will do well both academically and spiritually. This has been criticized as a lowering of the university’s academic standards.

“With a straight academic leaning, you want the highest GPA, the most National Merit Scholars,” Long said. “But we admit above 3.5 GPAs and 1250 SAT, and still admit only 33 percent. We bring in diversity - students who bring in the service component. We could have 4.0 and 1550 students over the 3.5 and 1200 students, but we would rather have someone who can compete and do well and bring in Christian commitment.”

“If you are strictly an egghead you may have no depth to you,” Long said, noting that the dividend from this emphasis is alumni who are known as quality people. Pepperdine’s current freshman class is 21 percent Church of Christ and has the highest average GPA of any freshman class in the history of the university.

Pepperdine excels academically compared to other Church of Christ schools. “We are the only Church of Christ institution that is clearly a national institution. Others are regional and don’t have the national reputation that Pepperdine enjoys,” Hughes said.

“But Pepperdine is not necessarily better than they are. Abilene is a first-rate school, but it doesn’t have the location we do. Abilene Christian would still be regarded by Church of Christ people as the flagship institution.”

Thus, Pepperdine continues to shake the stigma of being the black sheep of the family. According to Hughes, when former President Norvel Young tried to raise money for Pepperdine, it was “written off [by Churches of Christ] as Hollywood, too liberal because Pepperdine’s rules were not as strict. In terms of finances, we get virtually nothing from the Churches of Christ.”

“In the last ten years our stock has gone up, and I attribute that to Jerry Rushford and the Pepperdine Bible Lectureships,” Hughes continued. “Out in Church of Christ land, they feel we have the best lectures, and suspicion decreases.”

Pepperdine also gained national recognition as a Christian university of high academic standing in Atlantic Monthly’s September feature “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind,” which lists Pepperdine as one of the seven best Christian universities.

According to Lambert, it is this attention that creates what he calls the “golden age of Malibu.” And indeed, student involvement is soaring, with ministries such as Common Ground, and events such as Total Surrender, Sacred Ground Coffeehouses and United We Pray, United We Play. Most agree that Pepperdine is stronger than ever before. Students from the Malibu Church of Christ, the Vineyard and Malibu Presbyterian Church do assemble and worship together and support each other’s common religious purposes.

But the inconsistency still bothers people like the Vineyard’s Cummings. “I think Pepperdine will always be a Christian university in that the people who shape it will have a passionate view of Christ,” Cummings said. “The only danger is not in rules or regulations, but is there a sincere worship of Christ?

“Right now Pepperdine is a nominally Christian university, Christian by name only,” Cummings continued. “But in the past year I have seen a resurgence in that those who call themselves Christian have shown a greater passion, a more integral walk.

At the same time, I as a pastor have seen more drugs, alcohol abuse and sexual activity. They have increased rather than decreased in the past five years.”

According to Hughes, it is in the ongoing discussion of what Pepperdine’s mission is all about that helps further the task of keeping the university on the path toward authentic Christian witness. “What has to happen for Pepperdine to continue as a Christian university?” Hughes said. “We have to keep the conversation alive about what it means to say Pepperdine is a Christian institution.”