What happened to the “M” in Southern Methodist University? At least once or twice each semester someone asks me this question. Sometimes it’s a letter from a person in the Dallas community, occasionally someone who finds it incredulous that SMU requires neither chapel attendance nor courses in religious studies for graduation. In principle, each question reflects a concern: Does the “M” in “SMU” still have substantive meaning relative to the United Methodist Church to which it points? More often than not, this question — and the way it is put — reveals a misunderstanding of the United Methodist Church’s historic involvement in founding and subsequently supporting higher education in our society. I regularly assure those bearing such questions that, yes, indeed, the “M” has both significant and effective meaning and that such meaning is both contemporary as well as historic.
For folks concerned about such things as institutional ownership and control, constitutional authority and fiduciary trust, Southern Methodist University is today and since its founding has always been owned – every brick, roofing slate and blade of grass — by what is known today as the United Methodist Church. The agency of that ownership is the church’s South Central jurisdiction. Whether SMU is perceived as Methodist “founded,” “related” or “affiliated,” the “M” in SMU has both historic and contemporary significance.
But what does it mean to be Southern Methodist University? First, Methodism has clearly, across more than two centuries in America, affirmed the dynamic inter-relationship between the life of the “spirit” and the life of the “mind.” Methodists, however, characteristically do not seek to impose theologically delineated doctrinal criteria, standards or restrictions upon the processes of intellectual inquiry, reflection, and learning. The quest for Truth (or truth) in this context is just that — an authentic quest — not dependent upon that quest’s outcome. That means no dogmatic straightjackets.
Second, this quest for Truth and the advancement of knowledge it sometimes produces does not proceed according to or within preconceived notions of what truth should be or what knowledge of truth might be appropriately transmitted. The Johannine dictum, “Veritas liberabit vos,” SMU’s “motto,” points to the liberating dynamic of Truth in all its fullness, not exclusively religious truth, and certainly not one expression of religious truth. Third, at United Methodist institutions of higher learning you will find no “litmus tests” of religious faith to which our faculty or staff or students must subscribe, no credological requirements for appointment, admission or continuance as a member of this community. This reflects the typically Wesleyan tenor of the Methodist Church’s historical and theological inclusiveness, a setting at ease with disparate and diverse – even conflicted – intellectual traditions, theological methods and faith perspectives. This liberality marks an important characteristic of Methodism’s support of higher learning in the liberal tradition of American Protestantism.
Because the Methodist Church stands squarely in the tradition of American Liberal Protestantism, albeit reconstructed theologically during the early part of this century, Methodist institutions of higher learning are often regarded as citadels of non-conformist thought and unfettered inquiry. Consider some of our sister institutions who share Wesleyan intellectual parentage and similarly commitments to intellectual discourse: Emory, Duke, Syracuse, Northwestern and Boston Universities, to name a few. USC had its genesis in Methodist concern for higher education and was originally a “Methodist” institution. Our denomination’s practice of founding institutions of higher learning, and commissioning them to become settings where Truth is pursued without regard to dogmatic prescriptions or methodological proscriptions, is often misunderstood by folks whose own roots reflect more rigid and restrictive orthodoxies.
Such openness to theological pluralism does not mean, however, that issues of religious faith and theological insight have no place in the schema of a United Methodist institution of higher learning. On the contrary, so confident were the founders of Methodist-related universities and colleges that Christian theology and practice could bear the freight of serious scholarly examination; they deemed it essential to reject traditions of teaching and “professing” restrictive social and intellectual conventions. They refused to certify only one theological methodology, or world view for that matter, as acceptable.
At SMU today, every student, faculty and staff member is a free agent of his or her religious faith commitment or non-commitment. Southern Methodist University welcomes and encourages a broad spectrum of religious faith traditions, even providing a collegial structure for their communication and effective programming on campus through the Campus Ministry Council, the Office of the Chaplain and University Ministries and more than thirty different and active religious life groups. Students may register for scores of classes in religious studies as undergraduates and may pursue graduate and professional studies in programs respected around the globe in institutions of church and academy. It is my hope, as Chaplain and Minister to the university, that students and faculty will subject their personal religious faith to the scrutiny of rigorous intellectual critique and that in such explorations significant personal growth will take place. Indeed, there are few, if any, environments outside those of institutions such as ours that are more conducive to the kind of maturation of faith that comes from the combination of intellectual challenge found in the classroom and the communal spiritual nurture of individual faith communities.
The “founder” of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, was an Oxford don who appreciated the dynamic interplay between intellectual rigor and religious fervor. With Wesley’s own concern for the vital linkage between faith and reason, the synergy of intellectual and spiritual aspects of the human personality, it is little wonder that people called Methodists readily founded and continue to support institutions whose principal concern is the fullest integration of God’s gifts of disciplined intellectual curiosity and social responsibility.
The “M” in SMU is alive and thriving in the liberal tradition of United Methodist Church-related higher education, just as it ought to be: in its emphasis upon the freedom and responsibility of focused intellectual inquiry – in its nurture and encouragement of human service as a vital and essential component of learning, social vocation, and faith; in its uncompromising appreciation of the pluriform nature of Truth, both ultimate and provisional; and in the celebration of the mystery that Truth discovered reveals.
About the writer:
William M. Finnin, Jr., Th. D. is the Chaplain and Minister to the University.
