Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 12, 1990 TAG: 9005110447
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Her progress, she says, has been eased by the ecumenical Education for Ministry program which teaches adults Christian theological reflection on their past and current life experiences.
Huffman, now the licensed lay pastor of Bent Mountain United Methodist Church, volunteered to tell her story as her graduation from the four-year Education for Ministry program nears.
She moved, she said, from a lack of concern for God to a fundamentalist reliance on Biblical literalism and then to an integration of her life experience with the lessons of both Scripture and tradition.
She described several breakthroughs of understanding, including a growing conviction that her Lord seeks people from many walks of life and uses their culture to bring about his purposes.
Huffman, 49, hopes that within the next year she will be enrolled as a student at the seminary of Duke University.
Huffman's story is typical of those who complete the Education for Ministry course. The extension program, which originates at the theological seminary of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., is based on the view that all baptized Christians, whether active in a church or not, are called by God to minister with their lives.
Since the international program of theological reflection for laity came to Western Virginia in 1979, more than 50 men and women have completed the four-year extension course.
A majority are Episcopalians, since Education for Ministry originates at a seminary of that denomination. But several, like Huffman, come from other branches of Christendom.
Huffman said that more important than denomination for those who enroll is a broad view of Christianity and a willingness to see Scripture and tradition as influenced by prevailing culture.
"And people can grow and change," she asserted. "I know. I did."
Huffman's remark reflects the experiential nature of the theological reflection program. It is far more than a Bible class that meets for two or more hours a week for nine months each year, she said.
As part of their enrollment as extension students of the university, adults receive thick white books covering Christian history from creation times to the age of televangelists. Reading these and the Bible and historic documents weekly requires a minimum of five hours in addition to the two to three spent in the required seminars.
Enrollment, which costs $350 yearly and includes all materials but a modern-language Bible, is for nine months at a time. Huffman, like many who stay with the full program until they get a diploma, says it whetted her appetite for more theological learning.
Because it does not confer academic credit - no tests or papers are required and students learn at their own pace - people like Huffman who seek ordination must still fulfill their church's requirements for professional ministry.
But the Bent Mountain lay woman said she wouldn't take anything for her journey through Education for Ministry.
She was born Denise Rotival during World War II in the United States. Her French father left his American wife and children here for safety. She grew up in Europe and Connecticut.
"My religious background was liberal and non-judgmental Congregationalist - very free - until as a boarding student at an Episcopal girls' school I had religion crammed down my throat."
The result for Huffman was a general indifference to God, "not atheism," she emphasizes, but a certain curiosity and doubt mixed.
A broken marriage and a son and daughter to care for took her to a teaching job in Puerto Rico. She worked for Roman Catholic nuns who ran a school for wealthy girls. Huffman remembers with wonder that in those conservative Catholic days they did not object to her French Protestant background nor her lack of commitment to organized religion.
"Then liberation theology entered my life," she remembers. "The example of Pope John XXIII caused them to close the school for the rich and open a mission for the poor. . . I was bitter at losing my job."
Friends induced Huffman to attend a conservative Baptist Bible class. It opened her eyes, she recalled, to Christ found in Scripture, but it did not satisfy her inquiring mind. In time she underwent a painful break with her friends over their insistence that she conform to literalistic moralism. One even called her a heretic.
Huffman said she was sustained by God as a companion, and with other friends began working to build up a "spirit-filled" Methodist parish. About this time she also married a General Electric supervisor, Maynard Huffman, who, like her, has moved from hostility to a fundamentalist faith to acceptance of mainstream Christianity.
When she and her husband moved to Roanoke a decade ago, Huffman said, she found the religious atmosphere "stifling" because of the heavy influence of literalistic Protestants. For her, acceptance came from taking undergraduate and masters degrees at Hollins College where the Rev. Alvord Beardslee encouraged her spiritual bent toward liberal Christianity.
A neighbor, Pat Robinson Wilson now of Lynchburg, brought her into the Education for Ministry program. It, like no other religious exploration, met her needs, Huffman said.
"It was hard to broaden my thinking after encountering Christ [through the more narrow approach to Scripture] but I have softened. I feel the next step on my journey is to prepare myself fully for ordained ministry as a second career."
Huffman will graduate from one of five Education for Ministry groups currently active in the Roanoke Valley. Dorothy Danner, coordinator for the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, said seminar groups also function in other Western Virginia communities. More than 5,000 adults of many denominations currently are enrolled in Education for Ministry internationally.
by CNB