The Episcopal church and the university

Boone A. Turchi, Professor, Department of Economics

Ever since I was a college student, I have believed that the Episcopal Church and the University share a particularly strong affinity. I have seen my fellow Episcopalians demonstrate daily that the life of faith and the life of the mind need not be mutually exclusive and that secular scholarship can be enriched if it is undertaken within the framework of Christian faith. While Christians have much to learn from the University - I've always thought that Jesus' third commandment should have been "Use thy brain" - the Church also has much to offer the University.

In an environment where the pursuit of knowledge can easily take place in a moral vacuum, the Church can ask the difficult questions that place scholarship into a moral context. I say "the Church" but what I really mean is that Christians, with the support of their Church, can ask these questions. At the Chapel of theCross we are a collection of Christians located at the edge of UNC's campus, and this proximity gives us a special obligation to confront the University. We can do this by:

• Offering Episcopal students a place and opportunity to integrate their lives as students with their lives as Christians
• Giving faculty a way to assert their Christian perspective on campus without abusing their obligations as faculty members at a secular public university
• Providing access to a Christian community for those members of the University who are seeking a moral dimension to their lives that is not inconsistent with their lives as students and scholars. I used to believe that the Chapel of the Cross had a mission primarily to the un-churched at UNC; now I believe that the mission extends also to the "badly churched" (students, faculty and staff who find their religious backgrounds increasingly at odds with their own learning and teaching)
• Serving as an alternative to those Christian denominations that claim to speak on campus for all Christians but do so in a way incompatible with the Gospel.

Finally, because of our historical role in campus ministry, the Chapel of the Cross has an obligation to advocate for a strong and effective campus ministry both at the diocesan level and beyond. Although, by the standards of other dioceses, the Diocese of North Carolina has a history of relatively generous support for campus ministry, that support has been fitful and in many cases ineffective. Colleges and universities are simply too important to the life and future of the church not to be a principal focus of any missionary endeavor.

In all these things, I believe that we are extremely fortunate to have the Rev. Tambria Lee among us and I hope that she will receive our full support as she expands her own ministry to the University.

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© 2005 The Chapel of the Cross