THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 6, 1996 TAG: 9609060502
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 139 lines
Virginia Wesleyan College announced Thursday the creation of a center to promote religious freedom and understanding of different faiths.
``We've come here to celebrate the yearning of the human spirit to live in understanding, acceptance and peace,'' said William T. ``Billy'' Greer Jr., president of Virginia Wesleyan, a Methodist-affiliated school. ``We have come here today as Jew and Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist, to find common ground.''
Greer, sounding more like a preacher than a college administrator, spoke in front of more than 300 people in Wesleyan's Boyd Dining Center. The audience, reflecting the ideal of interfaith harmony, included about two dozen local leaders from a variety of religions - Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Jewish and Buddhist among them.
The Center for the Study of Religious Freedom will bring in visiting scholars, starting next fall, to increase the range of courses about religions and challenges to religious freedom. The center will also hold public seminars. The first, planned for November 1996, will analyze state guidelines issued last year on religious activities permissible in public schools.
Local religious leaders say the center could help inspire tolerance and be a locus point for interfaith gatherings. ``We live in a pluralistic society and we need to learn how to live together,'' Bishop Walter F. Sullivan of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond said after the gathering. ``It would be nice to sit down and better understand one another.''
For Virginia Wesleyan, administrators hope the center will help carve out a national reputation and boost enrollment, which has fallen this year.
``This announcement today puts us in the national spotlight,'' Greer said. ``I think it'll separate us from most small colleges. . . . This center is going to challenge our students to wrestle with tough things and hopefully come out of it more tolerant and accepting of all people.''
The center was launched with an anonymous $1 million gift and a grant of $250,000 from the Parsons Foundation of Norfolk. The college will try to raise an additional $4.5 million. The amount it receives will determine how many visiting scholars will be invited - and how many additional full-time professors can be hired for the center. Wesleyan now has two religion professors, Greer said.
The center will be the first of its kind in Virginia, said Gordon K. Davies, director of the State Council of Higher Education. It will be housed in a new academic building, for which ground will be broken next month.
None of the speakers Thursday mentioned Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network, located five miles from Virginia Wesleyan. They are among the leading proponents of conservative Christian viewpoints in the country.
But Rabbi Israel Zoberman, leader of Beth Chaverim, a Reform synagogue in Virginia Beach, said in an interview that Robertson's broad reach was what inspired the center. ``This is truly a response to it, in the form of an invitation to dialogue,'' Zoberman said. ``This is a great opportunity for this region to have this kind of liberal center, which will hopefully draw into dialogue the more conservative center in our midst.''
Robertson could not be reached Thursday. But officials of some organizations connected with Robertson said that the new center's aims complemented their work and that they would like to participate in center activities.
Keith Fournier, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group founded by Robertson, said, ``I'm very happy to hear about the center. These centers are a very good sign of a growing understanding that religious faith and the role of religious faith in public discourse are at the heart of the American experiment.''
Fournier's organization has argued several freedom-of-religion cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1993, it won a reversal of a lower court ruling banning a New York church from showing a film, about family values with a religious message, after classes at a public school.
Terry Lindvall, president of Regent University, founded by Robertson, said, ``I think it's an important issue that needs to be addressed, and the more people that address it, it's exciting. . . . The First Amendment of our Constitution is essential. We look at it from a Christian perspective, but we recognize the freedom necessary for all religious faiths.''
The center's mission statement says it will give ``Virginia Wesleyan students abundant opportunity to learn the founding principle of religious liberty, that every person, protected by disinterested government vigilance, has the right to believe and practice any religion, or to refrain from belief and practice. This principle is fundamental to human freedom and essential to the foundation of human rights throughout the world.''
Speakers Thursday said it was appropriate for the center to be housed in Virginia, where legislators adopted Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.
That law guaranteed that ``no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever. . .but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.''
But even in Virginia, the concept wasn't a quick sell, said Robert Alley, a retired religion professor from the University of Richmond. ``Madison and Jefferson didn't just walk up and say, `We've got a good idea,' and everyone agreed,'' Alley said. ``They had to fight for it in the General Assembly of Virginia and in Congress. What we have to understand is that religious freedom is a politically charged idea.''
In his remarks, Davies, the director of the State Council of Higher Education, warned that two centuries after Jefferson, ``there are disquieting signs that intolerance is on the rise. . . . We are surrounded today by people who have desperately grabbed hold of some truth and are willing to use it as a weapon against others who hold different truths in their hands.''
The last few decades have also incited bigotry against Muslims, said Mumtaz Ahmad, a political science professor at Hampton University who serves as a member of the steering committee for the center.
``Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, Muslims have been subjected to negative stereotypes and their faith and culture have been misrepresented'' across the country, Ahmad said. ``We hope that this center will create an environment within which these misunderstandings will be rectified.''
Ahmad said he felt little hostility in the region, but added: ``If we get along very well, we should not take these things for granted. Things can explode anytime, as they did in Bosnia.''
Virginia Wesleyan has about 1,460 students this fall, down from 1,570 last year. Vice President Martha Rogers said the loss is primarily among transfer students and adult evening students.
Though the liberal arts college is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, only 16 percent of its students are Methodist. Twenty-five percent are Catholic, 15 percent Baptist and the remainder a variety of other religions.
Vickie Stackwick, a junior from Iowa, said a minority of students could use some lessons in tolerance.
``If college students are closed-minded and not willing to hear and accept different beliefs, they're not here for the right reason,'' she said. ``This might help them.'' MEMO: More information about the center is available on Virginia
Wesleyan's home page on the Internet. To find it, type
http://www.vwc.edu. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot
William T. Greer Jr., left, president of Virginia Wesleyan College,
and Stephen S. Mansfield, vice president, announced the Center for
the Study of Religious Freedom on Thursday.
B\W photo by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot
Virginia Wesleyan College students listen to D. Henry Watts,
chairman of the steering committee for the Center for the Study of
Religious Freedom on Thursday. The center will bring scholars to the
school annually to study issues of religious tolerance for all
faiths.
KEYWORDS: INTERFAITH CENTER VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE by CNB