2011 Adult & Undergraduate Commencements Address, W. Richard Stephens, President Emeritus

Published: April 13, 2021

Congratulations graduates on your successful completion of all requirements for your degree! You are the most recently minted Alumni of Greenville College. This is what we all celebrate with you today. From here forward your life will be forever different because you chose to have Greenville College furnish your mind and heart with knowledge and values. These are the hallmarks of being an alumnus of GC, and for a few minutes I would like to think with you about your being an alumnus. There are no courses such as alumni I and alumni II, but there is a body of knowledge, and a call to a college's daughters and sons to stand by her. She nourished you, and now she needs you to nourish her! It has been observed that if a fish were a scientist, it would be that last to discover that it lives in water-that environment that it takes for granted. The "educational water" in which you have been immersed at GC is the carrier of alumni spirit, and my hope is that as alumni you will carry the essence of the college with effectiveness and thanksgiving to God wherever you go. What is this spirit, and where did it come from? Here briefly is the story so you can tell it to your children.

The roots of GC's mission, character and spirit go deep in the college movement in New England, to a college called Brown founded in 1766. It was like all other colleges, except that it understood its mission was to be informed by following Jesus' expansive call to inclusiveness, to enrolling students from the common people, and through the collegiate experience to produce extra-ordinary people. It was a mission to those who had been marginalized by tradition, by cost, and by much of higher education. The reform-minded president of Brown, Francis Wayland, astounded people when he expressed the call to an inclusive enrollment in this way: "God (did not) manifest himself in the flesh, in the form of a carpenter's son, to create an intellectual aristocracy, and consign the remaining millions of our race to daily toil, excluded from every opportunity for spiritual (and educational) improvements." Two young men, Stephen Morse and John Brown White, roommates, were educated at Brown during Wayland's presidency, and they left as alumni imbued with Wayland's conception of a Christian college. White became president of Wake Forest, but left after a few years for Greenville, Illinois, to join his roommate, Stephen and his wife, Almira, to found a college for women, those who from the beginning had been completely marginalized from higher education and from many other pursuits in that day. In 1855 these Brown alumni founded what became Almira College, one of the first colleges for women out on the frontier of America's advance geographically and in its democratic values.

Mary Alice Tenney and Don Jordahl, authors and GC faculty, point out in their histories that when White left Wake Forest to join the Morses in Greenville in 1854, they also brought with them as Brown alumni Wayland's hatred of slavery. White said that "none of us trained by Wayland could abide the injustice of the system" and they worked to free African Americans from slavery and the Jim Crow margins that society had set for them.

When Almira College became Greenville College in 1892, this Christian and democratic root of inclusiveness of the marginalized gained strength by the faith and action of the new sponsoring body, the Free Methodist Church. Its founder, B. T. Roberts, a Methodist pastor in
western New York state, had been forced out of his church over his incessant call to the church to cease operations that were an offense to the Gospel, especially to the marginalized poor. Roberts, who had started a school for Black children, called again and again for an end to slavery, and for the education and ordination of women as pastors of churches.

It occurred to me as I was preparing these remarks, that I have had the rare privilege of seeing alumni from all classes of Greenville College since my own class of 1953. And, knowing some of you in this class, as I do, the class of 2011, you surely are the realization of the dream of people like Morse and White and Roberts, who conceived of a Christian college whose mission was and remains to open opportunity to many, especially to those like the ones the Apostle Paul described in the early church when he said of them: "not many of you were wise by human standards, not many of you were powerful, not many were of noble birth," attributes of the upper classes in Greek society. And, Paul went on to say, "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what was weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what was low and despised in the world . . . so that no one might boast in the presence of God." And you, class of 2011, have taken advantage of the opportunities the college has offered, and you have not only enriched the college by your learning, but you will bless the world by the many contributions you will make throughout your lives. No doubt, some of you will become, as have other alumni, teachers of the year, successful business leaders who practice high ethical standards, pastors and missionaries of churches which will be communities of love and hope in Christ, doctors who put the patient first in your practice, leaders in all occupations and careers, and for you who become parents you will establish homes where the love of God is experienced. Some of you in your graduate work will complete doctorates that will continue GC's ranking in the top ten among Christian colleges in baccalaureate origins of doctorates. In short, you will be alumni of whom we will all be proud, and you will carry forward a motto used of the college for decades: A Small College Serving a Big World.

So, what does it mean for you to be a GC alumnus? Of course, it means continuing friendships with classmates and faculty life-long, it means memories of struggles to get academic work completed and maybe relief at getting a better grade than you expected, it means recalling commitments made during times of spiritual deepening. But, I want to lift up two special calls to you in your new identity as an alumnus:

First: It means that you must never forget nor fail to treasure the educational and spiritual DNA of Greenville, its call to inclusiveness of others who in the future may be the new ones marginalized by society. History reveals that they will be there, for sure, because society is always changing and in the changes it creates those who are called the poor. Jesus, himself, informed all who would listen-"the poor you will have with you always," those who are on the margins of opportunity, those who are often created by major forces of a changing world, those who may have been their own worst enemies in the conduct of their lives, those who do not fit the ideal that some may hold for one to be a student at a Christian college. Whatever the reasons, resist the temptation to set in concrete as an ideal the student body of your era, and by means of this ideal resist those new students who come from new social Samarias whom the changing world will surely create. Do not pray that God will send down fire from Heaven on them because they do not fit! They, too, must be brought into the kingdom of God on earth, the Church, by educating them to embody that kind of higher education GC has always advanced. I call that education, Education for Love: and what is it but the call to love God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength and one's neighbor as oneself. And, to understand that this love means seeking the true, the beautiful, and the good, not putting one's head in the sand when difficult and challenging ideas are spreading across the world. Always, remember that the clash of ideas is the arena where the quests for truth goes on; think of examples: Apostle Paul in Athens, Martin Luther in Germany, Wesley in England, Ghandi in India, Martin Luther King Jr., in Alabama and Memphis, and others. And, in that clash of ideas remember a central teaching of our beloved GC: that the only good place for a bad idea is right out in the open where it must pass the test of debate even though the process of debating and learning may create disturbance in one's own idea structures. God is up to anything the world may throw up, and those with faith in God can and must love enough to stay in the quest for the true and for that which is right. Eldon Burritt, third president of Greenville, in the early years of GC's history, put it this way commenting on encountering new ideas; "If you fear that contact with science, and philosophy will shake your faith, get more faith." Following this philosophy of education H. J. Long, who served as president of Greenville for twenty-six years, said in his inaugural address in 1936: "It is inconceivable that in a really Christian college anyone should keep a closed mind, whether in the realm of religion, philosophy, or science. This necessarily means that there will continually be a seeking after truth. If so, neither dogmatic liberalism nor dogmatic conservatism will be given countenance. There must be a fundamental loyalty to truth regardless of where it leads." To follow the truth will help save us from a major issue of our day--the call to follow an ideology, which is only a masquerade of the truth, and which is also a major source of partisanship with its offspring as destroyer of community in our nation. An ideology is a system of belief that freezes partial truths into so-called whole truth, which, of course, is to make the partial truths and its ideology a lie. Ideology is like the cat who said to the bird, come let us join together in our search and all will be well, to which the bird said "all I have seen from your including birds in your thinking is not that you become more bird-like, but simply a fatter cat!" Jesus' call was to follow him, not an ideology, in our journey for truth where our path would be lit by love, the very essence of the truth. So, GC alums walk in love, not by ideology, which produces only judgmentalism and narrow partisanship rather than true community.

Yes, fellow alumni, the most recently minted ones, never forget nor fail to treasurer this educational and spiritual DNA; and, lend a hand to Alma Mater to help insure that she will be there for coming generations, as previous generations made sure she was there for you.

Second: Take this educational and spiritual DNA of Alma Mater with you wherever you go in the world, in both word and deed. Yes, Education for Love will work out in the world, because God in Christ, the ultimate source of Love, is at work there . . . yes, before you get there God in extravagant Love is already there at work looking for you to come and show God's presence by your character and actions. People will be astonished at seeing Love at work in your life and likely will ask you about it because it calls for such a great reversal of values of the world. But, one may ask, will love work in all arenas? I believe the answer is clearly yes, but please know that Love is hard work.

It will work in your marriage and with your children because Love does not seek its own way!

It will work with your friends and enemies because Love does not prefer self over others!

It will work on the job because Love compels you to truth-seeking that yields competence!

It will work in your conversations about politics, religion, war and peace, which surely you will engage in because Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude!

It will work in our shrinking world where people of all religious faiths, or no, more and more become our neighbors and colleagues, because Love casts out fear of any kind, and Love calls us to be ready to give a reason for the faith that lies with us. This reminds me of John Wesley's belief that though fellow citizens may differ or be wrong in some of their views, he nevertheless advocated extending the right hand fellowship to them. Said Wesley, "let all these things (differences in religious beliefs) stand by: we will talk of them, if need be, at a more convenient season; my only question is this, Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart'."

Dear graduates of Grenville College, the Education for Love you have received will serve you well in your journey of life. Remember it, treasure it, continue to live by it, improve on it, include others who are on the margins, and as a life-long learner, remember "in all your learning, continue to get knowledge of God," in Whom is that Love revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ, through whom God is redeeming and restoring the world.

This morning I am speaking to you whom Greenville College said a few years ago, because you cannot move to campus, we will bring part of the campus to you, especially its spiritual and educational values and heart. We will provide a GC collegiate level education in your own backyards. No longer will being place bound be a major impediment to your pursuit of higher education. No longer will you be marginalized from continuing your education. How centered this approach is in GC's historic mission to reach to include those on the margins of opportunity: women, minorities, veterans of wars, and now adults and graduate students-all alumni of our beloved GC. I call this, Education for Love, that Love that Jesus showed to be a great reversal of the accepted values.