| Bishop's CornerChurch
and College
By Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker
 From
the very beginning Methodists in America have been committed to
learning. One of the first two general superintendents of The Methodist
Episcopal Church, Bishop Thomas Coke, inspired the Methodists to
establish Cokesbury College, which was modeled after a school John
Wesley founded in England. Even though this college was abandoned after
it burned, Methodists continued to establish colleges.
Some of the leading institutions of
higher education in America today were established by the Methodists.
Some of them, including Wesleyan, Vanderbilt, Southern California and
Northwestern, have cut their ties to the church, but others, including
Duke and Emory, have maintained their relationship to the church.
There is a renewed desire across the
nation by both the schools and The United Methodist Church to
strengthen the ties between colleges and universities and the church.
The presidents and the bishops are planning meetings to discuss how to
develop closer relationships. Warmer relationships between schools and
annual conferences are being developed in many places. The Florida
Annual Conference is fortunate to have a close relationship to both
Florida Southern College and Bethune-Cookman College (which is related
directly to the whole denomination).
In the past the schools were like the
children of the church, but over the years the schools have matured so
that their relationship to the church is more like the relationship of
an adult with another adult. As the schools matured sometimes they
tried to assert independence form the church in the same way children
become independent from their parents. Often there was tension and
misunderstanding between the schools and the church. Yet, just as
adult children seek to re-establish close ties with their parents the
schools have been reaching out to the church for a closer
relationship.
My hope would be that over time the
relationship between the schools and the church would be not only
institutional, but also intellectual. I would hope that the
church-related schools would become places not only where there are
worship and moral formation for students, but also an engagement
between all the disciplines of learning with the truth found in the
wisdom of the Christian tradition, especially at it is understood in
the Wesleyan heritage.
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