The Idea of a Quaker College

Douglas C. Bennett
August 30, 2000

Both passionately and casually we talk about Earlham as a Quaker college, but what do we mean by this? What strengths do we derive from being connected with Quakerism? What distinctive commitments or practices do we draw from that identity? What unrealized aspirations does it set before us?

It matters a great deal to me that Earlham is an institution deeply grounded in the Religious Society of Friends. I believe the spiritual understandings and testimonies of Quakerism have nourished nearly everything that makes Earlham distinctive or vibrant. I also believe that we need in each generation to re-examine the connection. Quakerism must be more than our history and heritage. If it is to be a living, present and vital connection, we need to explore what new programs, what new forms of service, what new spiritual understandings we can draw from the spiritual ground of the Religious Society of Friends. Today I want to take up that exploration.

Several recent activities at Earlham have provided opportunity and perspective for reflecting on the idea of a Quaker college.

 

I write this with a number of valued books and essays reflecting on Quakerism and Quaker education close at hand. Sometimes on the first day of a course a teacher will give a brief, broad overview of what will be considered in the weeks ahead. This is also in the nature of what I want to do today. Many of the books on the syllabus were written by members of the Earlham faculty.

If you want to understand Quakerism, its history and essential beliefs, you cannot do better than to read John Punshon's Portrait in Grey or his Encounter with Silence. John Punshon has held the Leatherock Chair at Earlham for the past 10 years.

If you want to understand Quakerism in the United States, how it has changed and diverged into plural traditions over the past century and a half, it is essential that you read Tom Hamm's The Transformation of American Quakerism; Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907. Tom is, of course, Professor of History and Director of Earlham's Quaker Archives. I would also want to insist you read Tom's Earlham College: A History, 1847-1997, a very fine work framed around the question of the relationship — sometimes rocky — between Earlham and the two Yearly Meetings in Indiana with which it is affiliated.

Another indispensable book for the syllabus is Paul Lacey's Growing into Goodness: Essays on Quaker Education, which he published last year. Paul's writings also include a number of other valuable shorter works, including essays entitled "Education and the Inward Teacher," "Leading and Being Led,"and "Quakers and the Use of Power." Paul has been our esteemed colleague since 1960.

An older book of note on this syllabus is Elton Trueblood's The Idea of a College. Published in 1959 and widely read when it appeared, it tried to articulate what makes for excellence in any college, not just a Quaker College. He drew on his Quaker roots, however, in framing his understanding of excellence. Elton Trueblood was a Professor (and much more) at Earlham from 1945 to 1965. This fall we will celebrate his 100th birthday with a day long celebration on November 12 to which you are all invited.

There are many other works by Earlham faculty that should appear on this syllabus, more than I can name. Taken together, these writings provide another context for considering what it means for Earlham to be a Quaker college. If you do not know these works, I hope you will consider reading them. Like a course syllabus at Earlham, however, these writings provide simply a valuable point of departure for us to explore together the idea, the reality and the promise of a Quaker college.
I do not expect you will find anything novel or pathbreaking in what I am going to say today. I intend these remarks, rather, to knit together an image of a Quaker college that you will recognize. No doubt there is idiosyncracy in the picture I will sketch, and in the days and weeks ahead I will be interested in hearing your conceptions of the Quaker college we should aim to be.


The Condition of Friends in the United States

The national consultation the Earlham School of Religion conducted last year with Quakers in the United States involved 24 focus groups in 22 locations across the United States. We conducted them across the geographical and theological terrain of Quakerism in the United States, from North Carolina to the Pacific Northwest, from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting universalists to southern California evangelical Friends. We also conducted 35 interviews with especially knowledgeable Quakers. The participants were chosen in close consultation with clerks and superintendents of Yearly Meetings.

The results of the consultation were published last year in a report entitled Among Friends. We learned a great deal from the national consultation and gave focus and weight to many things we had suspected. Four observations about the condition of Friends in the United States stand out in my mind as relevant for understanding the possibilities of a Quaker college today.

First, Quakers are worried about the continuing decline in the number of Friends in the United States. There are growing Yearly Meetings and vital Friends Churches in this country, but overall the total number of Quakers is declining. Today, there are fewer than 90,000 Quakers in the United States. The two Yearly Meetings in Indiana with which Earlham is affiliated have been declining in numbers now for several decades. Quakers do know that their numbers are declining, but only occasionally do they talk candidly about this predicament. The consultation gave them an occasion to reflect on this.

When we say a college is a Quaker college, I think we mean that it is a college nurtured by a living community of Quakers, and grounded in the their beliefs and practices. If the number of Quakers are declining, what will become of Quaker colleges or other Friends institutions? We have an important stake in the continuing vitality of the Religious Society of Friends.

Second, the consultation confirmed the continuing existence of deep divisions among Friends. Some Quakers gather in silence without anyone having prepared the worship service or a message; Friends speak as they feel called. Other Quakers (including most of those in the mid-West) are pastoral: they have pastors and a planned worship service including a spoken message. Some Friends believe it is important to affirm that they know, love and obey Jesus Christ as Teacher and Lord; others are reluctant even to speak of Jesus Christ except perhaps as one great spiritual teacher among many others. And there are other divisions. If a Quaker college is to draw sustenance from a living Quaker community, how do we navigate the conflicts within that community? Earlham understands itself as a crossroads of Quakerism, a place where the various fractions of Quakers come together . We are more interested in those things that draw Friends together than we are in the differences among them. We experience both joys and tribulations in our commitment to being a crossroads of Quakerism.

Despite the declining numbers and the continuing divisions, a third finding of the consultation was a strong affirmation among Friends that Quakers have vital ministry to offer the world. "There's a crying need out there for what Friends have to offer," said one participant in a focus group. "We have a valuable witness to the world," said another. That sense of the continuing importance of Friends ministry was broadly shared among the consultation participants. One summarized what Friends have to offer as these two assurances: first, "that we can know God directly and experientially," and second, that this gift is "available to all people everywhere." These are remarkable treasures to share generously.

Finally, the consultation suggests that Quaker schools and colleges are probably the most important outreach today of the Religious Society of Friends. Over two thirds of the Quaker leaders who participated in the consultation had not grown up in Quaker families. For many of these, their first contact with Quakerism was through a Quaker school or college. We know that many others who attend Quaker colleges never become Quakers but do graduate with a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the faith and practice of Friends.

I believe that Quaker schools and colleges have become a vital source for Quaker renewal. There may be continuing decline and division among Friends, but Quaker colleges are a countervailing and renewing force. The community of Quakers may nurture Quaker colleges, but just as certainly Quaker colleges nurture the community of Quakers. You can see this symbiosis here in the relationship between Earlham and the three Richmond Friends Meetings: Clear Creek, First Friends, and West Richmond Friends; but I also encounter the generative power of this and other Quaker colleges whenever I visit Friends churches and meetings across the United States.

Stages of a Quaker College

Quakers have not had a single unvarying conception of the value of education or of the mission and programs of their schools and colleges. Early Friends were deeply skeptical of education. They rejected the learning of the established churches and of the universities associated with these churches, finding this learning hollow and lacking in spiritual depth.

When Quakers first established schools, their purpose was to teach "all things civil and useful." I do not believe we can find in these first Quaker schools (and they were certainly not colleges or universities) a full commitment to the liberal arts and sciences we embrace today at Earlham. Their intent was more practical. Certainly they were hostile to speculative ideas or theoretical inquiry. These first Quaker schools were generally meant to be for Friends alone. They were to provide a 'guarded education' safely within the confines of the Religious Society of Friends. (It is also important to note here that Quakers also established some schools for those otherwise excluded from education including women, poor children, Native American and African American children.)

In the twentieth century, Quakers opened their schools to others. They accepted both as teachers and as students those who are not Friends. At first those non-Quaker students and teachers were a distinct minority. You can see this as a third stage in the evolving Quaker attitude towards higher education: they became institutions whose primary purpose was the education of young Quakers, but which were also prepared to educate others and along the way introduce them to Quaker beliefs and Quaker practices.

We are now without question beyond this third stage. Today, at virtually every Quaker school and Quaker college, Quakers are only a very small minority of the students, staff and faculty. At Earlham we have worked very hard over the past few years to seek out and attract Quaker students and faculty. I believe we are doing a better job at this than any other Quaker college, and we will certainly continue these efforts. I believe it is impossible to conceive of our being a Quaker college without Quakers among the students, faculty and staff. No matter how successful our efforts, however, Quakers will remain a distinct minority at Earlham.

With Quakers necessarily a minority among students, we can no longer say our mission is primarily the education of young Quakers. Rather, our mission must be "to provide the highest quality undergraduate education in the liberal arts, including the sciences, shaped by the distinctive perspectives of the Religious Society of Friends(Quakers)." [In case you didn't recognize it, that is from our mission statement.] Believing that there is 'that of God in everyone,' our mission is to make available to any and all an education that is a witness for the Religious Society of Friends.

Essential ideas

What, then, are the 'distinctive perspectives of the Religious Society of Friends' out of which we shape our education? Answering this question is no doubt more difficult because of the divisions among Friends. No two of us would name these foundational ideas which Earlham draws from Quakerism in quite the same way, but here are a few that seem most important to me.

First, this college is about seeking — about the search for truth.

George Fox, the founder of Quakerism (if any one person is to be so designated), spent much of his young adult years in spiritual searching. He was disappointed by the ministers and teachers he encountered, until, in a moment of despair, he found the voice of Jesus Christ was available to him if he would only seek to hear it. That same voice is available to each and every one of us if we will seek for it and listen: that is at the root of the Quaker belief that there is that of God in each and every person. We honor Fox's seeking and his discovery in the college's mission statement when we speak of our goal as "awakening the teacher within."

A commitment to seeking the truth must be the first principle of any college or university, but I believe it has special force for a Quaker College. At Earlham we also insist on an unusual breadth, too. Intellectual seeking must be at the very center of our enterprise, but at a Quaker college intellectual seeking must work in concert with spiritual seeking.

We are committed to the conversation of intellect and spirit, but we know these are not always comfortable bedfellows. Earlham has weathered several episodes where the tension between intellect and spirit has given rise to sharp conflict. Joseph Moore, Earlham's second President, was a biologist who was one of the first Quakers to wrestle with the scientific insights of Charles Darwin. As with many others, Moore found this difficult. He believed that Darwin and the Bible could eventually be reconciled, because he believed that all truth came from God. And he believed that the intellect as well as the spirit could help us know the truth. Late in the 19th century, there were fierce arguments about how to read and interpret the Bible. These and other conflicts between intellect and spirit are recounted in Tom Hamm's history of the college.

As a college we remain steadfastly committed to continual spiritual and intellectual seeking, and to the belief that all truth is God's truth.

How do we create a setting for the conversation of intellect and spirit that is essential to the vitality of a Quaker college? By creating an ethos of worship, which I believe is the second essential feature of a Quaker college.

Of course we do not have mandatory religious observances at Earlham. We do have a wonderful College Meeting for Worship each Sunday — or First Day as Friends say. It is patterned on pastoral Friends worship and carried through in a manner that welcomes students, faculty and staff of a variety of faiths. I relish saying to members of our two Yearly Meetings that we have the most authentic and the most experimental worship service anywhere in Indiana. And I do not believe there is a college or university in the United States with more vital regular worship. But we do not require attendance at College Meeting for Worship, and we should not. We invite each to worship (or not) as he or she feels called. The statement on "Religious Life at Earlham College" we approved in the spring of 1999 affirms that we will make it possible "for students, faculty and staff to celebrate their own holy days, hold their own retreats and say their own prayers together."

Two other practices at Earlham create the ethos of worship which is essential for the conversation of intellect and spirit. We often begin important gatherings with a 'moment of silence.' I hope we do not treat this a mere ritual or an empty practice. And I hope we recognize that 'silence' is not what is essential to the moment. The moment of silence is an occasion for each of us to listen. In the silence we have an opportunity to listen to the divine capacity within ourselves. In the silence, we prepare to listen to the divine capacity within all the others we will encounter. In the silence, we strengthen the foundation of our learning community. The occasion of silence is an occasion of worship, one that helps to shape an ethos of worship that pervades everything else we do.

Remarkably, we conduct business in a spirit of worship. When the Faculty gathers every other week in Stout Meetinghouse, we begin by settling into worshipful silence to prepare to listen deeply to one another and to seek a unity deep at the center of things. The Board of Trustees conducts its business in the same manner, and we intend that students will learn this manner of conducting business as well.

I hope this ethos of worship also pervades our classrooms. Parker Palmer, a remarkable Quaker teacher, was the keynote speaker at the gathering of Quaker educators we held on the Earlham campus this summer. His life of helping others to become better learners and better teachers is grounded in an image of the classroom as a "Meeting for Learning." I suggest adding Parker Palmer's writings to our growing syllabus on "The Idea of a Quaker College," but just that phrase, 'meeting for learning' captures something essential.

We had nearly 400 educators at this June's gathering at Earlham. There were teachers from Quaker schools, Quaker teachers from k-12 public schools, pre-school teachers, teachers at Quaker colleges, Quaker teachers at private colleges and public universities — and more and more.

Paul Lacey gave a memorable opening address on "Quaker Education: Ethics and Ethos." He suggested that a college's ethos is the most powerful influence on what we can learn. And he urged us to remember that a college's ethos is as frail as it is powerful, something constantly being shaped and reshaped by the actions of each and every one of us. I believe that the joining of seeking and worship are vital to Earlham's ethos as a Quaker college.

I hope that what I have said about these first two essential features of a Quaker college does not strike you as odd or disquieting. I hope you recognize longstanding, fundamental commitments of Earlham. But I do want to pause to note that many in higher education would recoil from one or the other. At many religious colleges, the commitment is not to seeking but to faithfulness to an established set of beliefs. A religious creed is insulated from inquiry.

At many non-sectarian colleges and universities, conversely, the commitment to an ethos of worship would be unwelcome. Intellectual seeking is all that is revered. Spiritual seeking is to be practiced beyond the campus or in private. In committing ourselves as a Quaker college both to seeking and to worship, we establish ourselves on very uncommon terrain. I also believe it is very rich soil on which to nurture communities for learning and transformation.

At the end of the gathering of Quaker educators there was a palpable sense that we shared approaches to education. I do not know anywhere else in the world of education where teachers in k-12 schools and teachers in colleges and universities could comfortably and joyfully agree on common strategies for effective education. Without any pretense of doing justice to the rich discussion of that assemblage, let me briefly mention three aspects of this shared approach, ones fully in evidence at Earlham: education that is experiential, interdisciplinary, and experimental. Taken together these constitute the third essential element.

By experiential we mean learning that is hands-on, engaged with the world. We teach science by drawing students into research settings in the field and in the laboratory. We invite students to learn about other countries and cultures by immersing them in foreign study. Community settings provide sites for experiential learning in many other courses and programs. And we do very little teaching by lecturing at Earlham. Instead, we draw students into real dialogue about the most important issues we face today.

Because they allow us to grapple with real questions and real issues as wholes, interdisciplinary programs are increasingly a feature of the best of Quaker education — and a feature of the best of non-Quaker education. Moreover, interdisciplinary programs can put values at the center of education. At Earlham, many of the interdisciplinary programs that have taken shape over the past few decades are organized around Quaker testimonies: Peace and Global Studies' grounding in the peace testimony, for example, or the Management program's emphasis upon consensus decision making.

By an experimental approach to learning and teaching we mean refusing to settle into one method of educating or array of programs. An experimental approach, rather, is constantly looking for fresh approaches. Educational institutions can be hostile to innovation, but the idea of a Quaker college requires a readiness to listen to new ideas. 'Experiential' and 'interdisciplinary' are terms we probably would not have used four decades ago, and may not be terms we use so readily four decades in the future — precisely because of an experimental approach. I hope we welcome each new member of the faculty with a willingness to hear his or her new leadings.

Education that is experiential, interdisciplinary and experimental: none of these would matter without excellent teachers. "It is easy to envisage a good college with poor buildings," Elton Trueblood wrote in The Idea of a College, "but it is not possible to envisage a good college with poor teachers." It is an unusual feature of Earlham College's mission statement that it explicitly includes this recognition: "To provide education of the highest quality with these emphases, Earlham's mission requires selection of an outstanding and caring faculty who are committed to creating an open, cooperative, learning environment."

Earlham College has enjoyed decades of extraordinary teaching from a succession of extraordinary teachers. We are once again at a moment when we are facing a succession of retirements. It is very much on my mind that many of those retiring are extraordinary Quaker teachers. But is also very much a reassurance to me that Earlham continues to attract Quaker teachers and also to attract teachers committed to teaching within the context and supportive ethos of a Quaker college.

We place a very high degree of responsibility upon students: this is a fourth essential feature of a Quaker college. We do this from students' first arrival at the college, both within the classroom and outside it in community life. This, too, is an aspect of our experiential approach to education. We believe students learn more and learn better by bearing responsibility for their own learning, for their conduct and for community life.

For three decades, the Community Code has been the main instrument by which we have invited students to bear responsibility for their conduct and for community life. This past year we carried through a review and renewal of this document, and it has been rechristened "Principles and Practices of the Earlham Community." Quakers may be only a minority of the community, but a process in which all could participate produced a statement organized around five Quaker testimonies: respect for persons, integrity, simplicity, peace and justice, and consensus governance. Rather than set rules that state minimum requirements for conduct, "Principles and Practices," poses queries for each of us to inquire, time and again, whether we are doing the very best that we can. Queries are a Quaker discipline for stretching our aspirations.

Finally, an essential element of a Quaker college is an insistence upon connecting knowing to acting in the world. From their beginnings, Quakers have insisted that what is in one's head and heart must guide one's conduct, especially when what is in one's head and heart is the fruit of conscientious intellectual seeking and gathered worship. We teach and learn as if these activities make a difference to who we are. "Let your lives speak," we challenge our students and our alumni.

Put another way, the goal of a Quaker college is not to improve students' skills or capabilities, though we certainly do that. Our goal is to turn the souls of our students. Our goal is to shape and deepen character. Our goal is transformation.


Challenges ahead

I want to conclude this re-exploration of the idea of a Quaker college by identifying a few challenges I believe we face if we are to be a Quaker college in the terms I have been sketching.

First, there are some curriculum challenges. There are experiences and activities which we have insufficiently embraced at Earlham. For many decades, Quakers had a closed attitude towards the arts. We are still overcoming that narrowness. Recently we have been strengthening our programs in music, fine arts, and theatre, but there is much more that we can and should do.

Another example: for years we have been reluctant to embrace the body in our education. We have recently added a wellness program. We are off to a good beginning, but it will be some time before that program comes fully to maturity. And there is another challenge we should face involving the body: we need to embrace and celebrate athletic competition much more fully than we do today. Sometimes we let a Quaker emphasis on cooperation lead to denigration of athletic competition as if it were a surrogate for destructive conflict. We should recognize, instead, that athletic competition is an ennobling form of human excellence. It is a kind of visible excellence. It can strengthen a broader ethos of accomplishment.

A different kind of curricular challenge involves interdisciplinary programs. Over the past few decades we have spawned a rich array of interdisciplinary programs. The belief that they are an essential element of our educational program is broadly shared. But we have not yet found satisfactory ways to support and sustain these programs into the future — especially if we also want to sustain majors in a full array of traditional arts and sciences disciplines. This is a difficult challenge we may be working on for some time.

A second kind of challenge we face in being a Quaker college today involves diversity. Recognizing that Quakers are necessarily a minority of our students and faculty, I believe, opens the door for us to embrace diversity more fully. Because Quakers are now inevitably a minority, we cannot be a college where a majority tolerates minorities among us. We are rather a college grounded in a witness to some transforming insights, chief among which is the recognition that there is that of God within each and every one of us. The statement we wrote and approved last year on "Religious Life at Earlham" embodies this understanding of diversity, but it will take conscientious efforts by all of us to make Earlham a college that genuinely welcomes all and genuinely encourages each to bring her gifts to share with us.

Third, we face a challenge to be a 'moral institution.' Should Earlham conduct its business in a different manner because it is a Quaker institution? If so, how? This challenge we have wrestled with for many years, but we have now promised ourselves to face it with renewed energy. The queries of the Community Code set high moral expectations for each of us. The new "Principles and Practices of the Earlham Community" extend those expectations explicitly to include faculty and staff, even Trustees. And "Principles and Practices" goes yet further in saying that "Through the workings of our regular governance procedures, we endeavor to make all college policies, rules and procedures consonant with the principles articulated in this document."

A final challenge is more in the form of an opportunity. Can we be a better Quaker college by working in partnership with other Quaker institutions? Quaker schools, Quaker homes for the elderly, and Quaker service institutions are also witnesses for the Religious Society of Friends, grounded in the same essential beliefs that ground us. Can we help each other by working more deliberately in partnership with one another?

This past winter's collaborative conference with Quaker international service representatives led to a number of intriguing possibilities about regular partnership programs we might establish with the American Friends Service Committee and with other Quaker service agencies Could we have both better service and better learning and teaching as a result? I hope so.

There are other kinds of partnerships we may explore. The national consultation is leading us to devise more accessible strategies for the Earlham School of Religion to prepare ministry leadership among Friends. These new strategies look for partnerships with Yearly Meetings. Should we work more in partnership with Quaker schools in preparing future teachers? Can our Management program, grounded in consensus governance, be a resource for Friends organizations seeking to improve their planning and decision-making?

This year we will be visioning the future shape and main activities of our fledgling Institute for Quaker Studies. The Institute may be an important vehicle in helping us build these partnerships.

We have at Earlham, at the college and at the School of Religion, the finest assemblage of Quaker teachers, intellects and scholars anywhere in the world. Nowhere else even comes close. This claim is not just the commonplace bragging of a college President (though I'm not above that). It is rather a recognition of gifts, one that I believe brings some special responsibilities upon us. We have a large stake in the future vitality of Quakerism.

I have on my desk a survey instrument sent to college and university presidents across the country. It asks me to name a few colleges that I worry Earlham could resemble in a dozen years. It also asks me to name a few colleges that I hope Earlham will resemble in a few years. I am having trouble enumerating institutions for either list, but I know what I want to say. Today Earlham fulfills my idea of a Quaker college — the college I want us to be — more fully than any other. There is no other college I yearn for us to resemble. But I believe that by working in partnership in other Quaker institutions we may be stronger yet, and they may be stronger, too.


Now, I'd like to invite you to share some worshipful silence to close today's Convocation.