June 9, 2024
III Pentecost
Colleagues, Friends, Family:
As I prepare to step aside from a 21 year presidency at Huntingdon effective July 1, soon to serve as President Emeritus and for the next academic year as Senior Advisor for United Methodist Polity, I have spent many hours reflecting on the purpose of United Methodist baccalaureate higher education. All of you have been partners of mine who have walked alongside me and supported me throughout the years, some of you from the time of my childhood. It has occurred to me often, over the course of seven decades, that there is a long continuum of purpose in United Methodist baccalaureate higher education that first revealed itself to me during my childhood at Pfeiffer College, now Pfeiffer University, and that has manifested itself right up to this very day.
So, in the spirit of American higher education’s “last lecture,” I offer you this valedictory credo with hope and with prayers that our unbroken common efforts will continue to bear fruit:
“What I Learned Growing Up On A College Campus”
I have been in love with United Methodist higher education since my idyllic childhood and adolescence in the 1950’s and 1960’s growing up on a small college campus in North Carolina where my father, Cameron P. West, served as professor, then academic dean, then president. Growing up on that college campus — Pfeiffer College, now Pfeiffer University — I began to discern my vocation and make decisions about my character, albeit often unknowingly as is the case in childhood and adolescence.
I began even at an early age to ask myself the question, or a version of the question: “What is truth?” And today, seven decades later, I want to speak with you about what I learned growing up on that college campus and about why the verities I began to learn then are so crucial now for the renewal of the United Methodist Church in the Deep South.
I believe deeply that our small liberal arts college, Huntingdon College, exists to do the same thing for our students that happened to me on a college campus so long ago. Huntingdon exists to form the vocation and the character of young adults. Huntingdon exists to provide young adults a place where it is permissible, encouraged, expected that they will ask the question: “What is truth?” And because that is why Huntingdon exists — to form the vocation and the character of young adults, to serve as the testing ground for defining truth — Huntingdon is poised to become the missional center for the renewal of the United Methodist Connection in the State of Alabama and in the West Florida Panhandle.
The South in which I grew up and the South in which we live today are as fundamentally different as two worlds could possibly be…and, at the same time, as fundamentally alike as two worlds could possibly be. And that is the truth — as complex, as paradoxical, as ironic, as difficult to understand as the truth often is.
I learned growing up on a college campus that there is, indeed, such a thing as truth. And so it is today.
I learned growing up on a college campus that people who live together, next to each other, in the same community or same church, can and do disagree about the meaning of truth. And so it is today.
I learned growing up on a college campus that some people have very bad reasons for defining truth the way they do. Some people define truth, and then act on their truth, out of fear or out of blind prejudice that is the result of fear. And so it is today.
I learned growing up on a college campus that some people, on the other hand, define truth the way they do by thinking openly, critically, appreciatively, without prejudice or fear. By studying the meaning of narratives, of stories, of credos that are building blocks of our society — such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Scriptures, the traditions of the Church, the ever reforming practices of the Church discerned in the light of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience. And so it is today.
I learned growing up on a college campus that a college, a United Methodist college, is a place where young adults are permitted, encouraged, expected to think about the meaning of truth, pray about the meaning of truth, and discuss intelligently the meaning of truth. A place to act out the meaning of truth in a community of mutual respect. And so it is today.
I learned growing up on a college campus that truth builds up instead of tearing down. And so it is today.
I learned growing up on a college campus that truth builds relational, connectional bridges across the divides we human beings dig artificially to separate ourselves from those who challenge our ways of defining truth. And so it is today.
I learned growing up on a college campus that truth will set us free to live lives far more redemptively than we had ever imagined. And so it is today.
That’s what I learned growing up on a college campus located smack dab in the middle of the wider world.
Now here we are today, on the Huntingdon College campus — some of us practically all of the time, some of us now and then, some of us only because you and I correspond regularly or from time to time — smack dab in the middle of the wider world in all of its messy complexity. Here we are today, on our little college campus, between and in the midst of neighborhoods of safety and neighborhoods of danger, between and in the midst of affluence and destitution, between and in the midst of opportunity and despair.
This college: Smack dab in the middle of it all, in all of its messy complexity. The South, yes, is a fundamentally different place than it was 60, 70 years ago. And yet, the South is fundamentally the same place it was 60, 70 years ago. A complex place, a messy place where binary forces threaten to rip apart the very fabric of society, the very fabric of the Church that exists to serve our society. A place where truth is elusive, unless we foster institutions that equip us to discern truth and construct lives devoted to living out truth.
What did Jesus tell Pilate? “I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.” And Pilate asked: “What is truth”?
My valedictory word as President of Huntingdon College is this: Embrace Huntingdon as we have never embraced it before. Devote today, devote tomorrow, devote all our semesters and our years ahead to utilizing this college, our college, as the missional vehicle in the search for truth and the living of truth. Use it as a vehicle — Dare I say, THE vehicle in the State of Alabama and in West Florida — to prepare the next generation of leaders for the transformation of the Church and the world. Embrace United Methodist baccalaureate higher education for what it is meant to be: A crucible for the discernment of vocation and the formation of character, taught and learned by listening to the voice of truth.
Unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety.
Faithfully, and with gratitude,
Cam
(The Reverend) J. Cameron West
