DATE: Sunday, September 21, 1997            TAG: 9709210087

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   95 lines

PROFESSOR STRUGGLED TO FIND PEACE AFTER ANGER HIS LAWSUIT AGAINST REGENT LED HIM ON A TORTUROUS ROAD.

Clifford W. Kelly, a professor who once sued Regent University over tenure and lost, stepped dripping from a YMCA pool a few weeks ago and walked back into the arms of the school.

Specifically, he walked into the arms of President Terry Lindvall, who was wearing a business suit at the time.

``We were kind of like the `Men in Black' beside that pool,'' Lindvall said, laughing. ``I said, `Cliff, I'd like to welcome you back to Regent,' and he ran over and hugged me, and my suit got all wet.

``So,'' said Lindvall, who can't resist finding humor anywhere, ``I had to fire him again!''

Actually, Kelly does have a job. Lindvall put him to work in the university's Center for Leadership Studies. Kelly, 52, now teaches doctorate-level leadership courses via the Internet.

This seemed very unlikely two years ago. But since then, Kelly has made a tortured journey as a professor and a Christian, unable to find work, nursing bitterness toward Regent, and finally finding peace in forgiveness. He even apologized to Regent founder Pat Robertson.

It's the second time recently that a legal opponent of Robertson's has had a change of heart. In July, Mark A. Peterson, former president of Robertson's direct-marketing company, dropped his defamation suit against Robertson, saying his religious convictions had caused him to forgive his former employer.

In 1994, Kelly and four other Regent professors sued the university over its new contracts: Regent said it had no such thing as tenure. The professors said they thought they had tenure, and they didn't want any part of a system that didn't include it.

Tenure, the practice of giving professors an almost guaranteed post for as long as they want it, is seen as a guarantee of academic freedom. But Robertson and his wife, Dede, testified that they didn't care for true tenure, without any periodic review.

Later, two of the professors' lawsuits were split into a separate filing.

In August 1995, a judge ruled against Kelly and his colleagues. They were stunned, and Kelly had a hard time dealing with the loss of the suit and his job.

``I had come to have a lot of hatred for these people and this place,'' he said. ``You carry that around with you for a while, and it's poison.''

Kelly sent out 142 resumes to other schools. But he believes, and Lindvall agrees, that suing the university had ``blackballed'' Kelly nationwide. He couldn't get a job. He had to sell his house, he went through his savings, and his marriage suffered a tremendous strain.

He kept returning to a Bible passage that troubled him. In 1st Corinthians, a letter from the apostle Paul to early Christians, a passage urges them not to sue each other.

``When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints?'' Paul wrote.

Kelly said, ``I had been really struggling internally with whether the lawsuit was the way we should have expressed our cause. . . . I'm not minimizing the dispute. There was wrong done on both sides.''

For his own peace of mind, he finally decided this summer, he had to apologize to everyone involved - his wife and children, Terry Lindvall, and Robertson himself.

``I had to swallow my pride, and there was a whole lot of it,'' Kelly said. ``It went down hard. You could hear the gulp throughout Hampton Roads.''

Kelly and Lindvall weren't exactly best pals, aside from the lawsuit. When both were professors at Regent and the university was young and experimental, the staunch conservative Kelly and the more moderate Lindvall had political arguments that often escalated in the hallways.

``Students would practically buy tickets to hear us debate,'' Lindvall said.

When Kelly apologized to Lindvall, he did not ask for a job. Lindvall mentioned he'd like to see Kelly work there again, but Kelly didn't take it seriously.

Even more potentially intimidating was Robertson, who looms large at Regent and tends to inspire intense feelings in people.

On July 10, Kelly and another professor in the suit, Elaine Waller, met with Robertson for 30 minutes. Kelly said he was careful to apologize only for having sued.

``I wasn't apologizing necessarily for taking a stand,'' he said. ``I do feel mistakes were made on both sides. It's hard to distinguish these things, but it's important.

``We laughed a little bit, and talked a little bit.''

Robertson let Lindvall know he wouldn't object if Kelly were re-hired. But the new school year was quickly approaching, and there didn't seem to be a place in the budget.

After another interview in mid-August with Kelly, Lindvall and other administrators decided to find a place for him anyway. They recalled that he said he was taking his family that afternoon on the only vacation he could afford - to the YMCA.

The three men hunted through the pools at two YMCAs before finding Kelly, still swimming, in Chesapeake. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Clifford Kelly KEYWORDS: LAWSUITS

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