Editor’s Note: The following op-ed was published in the Greenville News, May 5, 2011. However, one must be a paid subscriber to read the article in the online version of the paper, so Pastor/Moderator Elect Putnam graciously provided (with our appreciation) a copy of the text as posted on the Erskine Facebook Page.

Academic Freedom and Faith Are Not Enemies

By Nancy S. Campbell, President, Erskine College Alumni Association, and Andrew K. Putnam, Moderator-Elect, General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

In higher education, a perception exists that the academic inquiry found in an excellent liberal arts environment and a genuine commitment to Christian faith are essentially incompatible.

However, in our roles for Erskine College and Seminary as president-elect of the Alumni Association and moderator-elect of the General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) Church, we see these two elements as not only complementary, but essential components of the Erskine mission. Furthermore, we believe as with other important apparently opposing values, maintaining balance between them is worth the hard work—even when it means working through family feuds and differences.

A year ago, members of the Board of Trustees and alumni of Erskine were engaged in just such a dispute with the institution’s founding denomination, the ARP Church. Support of opposing views on these issues had polarized supporters to the point of breakdown.

That breakdown threatened to dismantle the board and resulted in a series of procedural and legal actions. These actions were both supported and opposed by many from within the denomination and the alumni. As expected, they also attracted the attention of the press and the institution’s accrediting associations.

With an agreement to keep the duly elected board in place, the legal action was dropped. This is where the story moves from the predictable to the notable.

Over the past year, we have repeatedly witnessed genuine collaboration and commitment to achieving the wholeness that includes Christian faith and academic excellence.

Rather than allowing a stalemate to cripple Erskine, the original, intact board found common ground. First, the board unanimously appointed Dr. David A. Norman to succeed the retiring Dr. Randall T. Ruble as president. Not only was this decision unanimous, it took place within two short months of the height of differences. Next,
the board created a bylaws committee comprised of trustees, alumni, faculty, ARP ministers, and members of other denominations to address accreditation recommendations and organizational concerns.

The two of us are serving on this bylaws committee. Our group has proposed a collaborative framework for the board and denomination to work together more effectively to place gifted leaders on the board. In addition to putting words on paper, we have witnessed notable progress in building collaboration between Erskine supporters across diverse, passionately held views.

What has propelled this progress? Dr. Norman’s inspiring vision of an institution where both authentic Christian liberal arts and genuine academic inquiry flourish.

While the board addressed its governance issues, excellence in education at Erskine continued as expected. For example, over the past year, 100 percent of Erskine students who applied to medical school (about ten percent of the graduating class) were accepted. Nearly half of the 2010 graduates continued their studies at graduate schools, several of them going directly to doctoral programs.

More recently, accrediting associations have recognized the institution’s atmosphere of academic freedom. Evidence of Erskine’s Christian influence appears not only across the campus in academics, arts, and athletics, but across the upstate and into the world in churches, businesses, government and non-profit organizations.

We view the events of the past year as a God-given learning opportunity. The time for assigning blame is well over. Erskine is focusing on the future. This past Friday, April 29, Erskine inaugurated Dr. Norman as its fifteenth president. We are grateful for the ways in which God has blessed Erskine, and we are excited about working toward the vision Dr. Norman describes for Erskine. We have an excellent faculty and collaboratively engaged alumni and denominational leaders.

Regardless of your connection to Erskine, we hope you’ll witness along with us how genuine academic excellence and authentic Christian faith are blended and balanced to prepare graduates who flourish as whole persons—intellectually, physically, and spiritually—to become leaders who are locally active and globally minded in guiding their families, careers, churches, and communities.

Andrew K. Putnam is moderator-elect of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian denomination and senior pastor of Tirzah Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church near Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Nancy S. Campbell, a 1986 graduate of Erskine College, is president of the Erskine Alumni Association and serves in leading local non-profit organizations in Honea Path, South Carolina.

Erskine College, established in 1839 and located in the academic village of Due West in historic Abbeville County, is South Carolina’s oldest church-affiliated four-year liberal arts college.