Davidson president, alumni agree on ‘power’ of liberal arts
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, April 20, 2005
The packet of e-mail from Davidson College alumni – a packet the board never received before it voted to allow up to 20 percent of the trustees to be non-Christians – includes an exchange between one alumna and Davidson President Bobby Vagt that questions the truth of the Christian faith.
It is an exchange that revisits the controversy over whether Jesus is the only “way, the truth and the life” – as Christ asserted – that was a major debate in the Presbyterian Church (USA) until the 214th General Assembly in 2002 approved a statement titled “Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
That statement, which was written by the Office of Theology and Worship, was an attempt to end the backlash that occurred after a Presbyterian minister, Dirk Ficca, spoke in 2001 at a national PCUSA peacemaking conference and suggested that other religions are pathways to God. “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” Ficca asked.
“Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ” affirmed that Jesus alone is the savior for the world.
But both Vagt, an ordained Presbyterian minister who has never served as a pastor, and the alumna, Ruthie Farrior-Rygden of Sweden, did not seem to agree with that belief.
Farrior-Rygden, a 1985 graduate of Davidson, wrote an e-mail supporting appointment of non-Christians that was recorded in Vagt’s office at 2:53 p.m. Jan. 19.
She said she grew up in a missionary family, but that her views about religion and Christianity were reshaped by humanities studies at Davidson when she was exposed to “people whose background was very different from my own, particularly in relation to the Church. I’ll never forget a Humanities class where we were reading from the Old Testament and one of my classmates did not know how to pronounce many of the names. I was so surprised, and that was my first real clue that Christianity wasn’t a given in everyone’s lives.”
Farrior-Rydgren said she was married to a Swedish agnostic and she did “not feel compelled to be a member of a church … I think it is very presumptuous of us to believe that Jesus’ love can only be experienced within the walls of the Christian church. My experience living abroad and traveling extensively has convinced me that God is far too big to fit inside one religion of human making. I fear that if Davidson insists on its board members and trustees being members of a Christian church, then we will miss out on the gifts of faith of many who do not believe exactly as we do, but who, in their own ways, can bless us greatly.”
Vagt responded at 3:25 p.m. Jan. 19 – less than an hour after receiving Farrior-Rygden’s e-mail. His return e-mail sounded like an endorsement of Farrior-Rygden’s view of Christianity.
“To be honest,” he said, “I feel undeserving to respond to your letter. Seldom do I receive something that reflects your thoughtfulness and candor … I share with you the ‘after-effects’ of the humanities program,” Vagt said.
“With respect to the proposal before the Board, I can only assure you that the motivation is born of a desire to practice what we say we believe, but to do so in a way that affirms and honors our ‘particularity’ with respect to faith,” he added. “This part of the by-laws has been in effect since 1966; but change of any kind, even of a relatively recent practice, is often difficult. My hope is that our broad family will see this in the way that you do.
“I am privileged to have been the recipient of a wonderful ‘statement of purpose’ [Farrior-Rygden’s e-mail], one that deals not only with your personal faith, but also with the power of the liberal arts,” he said.
Vagt, a Davidson graduate who earned a master of divinity degree at Duke Divinity School, was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1972 by the Presbytery of Concord, which provided much of the leadership that established Davidson College in 1837. Vagt never served a local church as its pastor, instead becoming a businessman and executive of an oil company.
At some point, his ordination lapsed, but his orders were restored in 1995, two years before he became Davidson’s president.
In her reference to God being “far too big to fit inside one religion of human making” – an assertion that conflicts with the Reformed understanding that the Christian faith is not a human achievement but a gift of God – Farrior-Rygden was echoing a phrase Vagt used in his inauguration as Davidson’s 16th president in 1997.
He said then that Davidson’s Presbyterian heritage was “a Christian tradition which recognizes a God who is bound by neither church nor creed.”