Ever since its conception, Pepperdine University has been involved in a perpetual balancing act.
Pepperdine University has certainly come a long way, having just celebrated its 75th anniversary just a few months ago. In its current state, Pepperdine is planning to expand on its duality of faith and religion with additional programs. However, the current Pepperdine only came about after a long period of indecisiveness in whether or not it should promote its faith or its education.
The turning point in Pepperdine’s approach to faith and academics came in the form of the Board of Regents’ new mission statement on March 26, 1999, Selby said.
“Pepperdine is a Christian university committed to the highest standards of academic excellence and Christian values, where students are strengthened for lives of purpose, service, and leadership,” the statement said.
Since the mission statement, Pepperdine has been focused on promoting both its academics and its faith.
This mission has thus far led to a fairly devout campus if the statistics of Pepperdine’s admissions office are to be believed.
Currently, Pepperdine houses a relatively diverse population of Christians, statistics said. 65.7 percent of the student population belong to a Christian denomination ranging from Church of Christ to Presbyterian.
A dominant portion of the religious demographic still remains Churches of Christ or Catholic at 16.1 percent, the statistics said.
Pepperdine is also aiming for at least 50 percent of its faculty members to be of the Church of Christ as stated in an announcement made in 1997, Hughes said.
The admissions office could not disclose information regarding the religious make-up of the staff.
“We’ve been very successful in [promoting] faith,” Andrew K. Benton, president of Pepperdine University since June 2000, said in an interview regarding Pepperdine’s current status.
Much of Pepperdine’s broad plans for its future rise in prominence lie within Boundless Horizons, Benton’s 2010 inaugural paper.
In order to establish itself as a prominent Christian liberal arts university, the college will gauge its progress based off of five major themes: superior scholarship, commitment to faith, community, diversity, and Benton said.
A series of programs intended in integrate faith and learning developed over the course of this period of time to fulfill the goals outlined in Boundless Horizons.
In 2001, Pepperdine established the University Chaplain’s Office to provide pastoral care to students, teachers, and staff, Selby, the current director of the Center for Faith and Learning, said. It also coordinates special events such as mediation groups and Thanksgiving and Easter worship services.
In 2002, the annual faculty retreat was established so that the faculty could “explore their roles as Christian teachers and scholars,” Selby said.
To help enforce the duality of academics and faith, Pepperdine established the Nootbaar Institute for Law, Religion, and Ethics in 2008, Selby said. The institute allows students to explore the intersection between law and religion.
On January 2011, Pepperdine students formed the Graziadio Christian Society, Selby said. Its mission is “to serve as a community for business students devoted to living a Christ-filled life, preserving values in business and fostering spiritual growth through fellowship.”
The Society also sponsored the attendance of about six students at the annual Believers in Business conference, Selby said.
One institution to gain a particular focus was the Center for Faith and Learning.
On October of 1999, the University administration announced the creation of the Center for Faith and Learning, the introduction page of the Pepperdine Voyage said.
The Center for Faith and Learning was created through a $2 million grant from the Lilly Foundation, Selby, the current director of the Center for Faith and Learning, said.
Contributing to the formation of the Center for Faith and Learning was a series of faculty seminars that fellow faculty member Stephen Monsma and he presented in the summers of 1992 and 1993, Hughes said.
One of the goals Boundless Horizons set was to strengthen the Center for Faith and Learning, Benton said.
The Heart, Soul, Strength, and Mind proposal Gary Selby presented on September 5, 2012 at the September President’s Briefing is to be that very foundation the Center for Faith and Learning will use to grow, Selby said.
The proposal outlined a list of possible future programs to further promote Pepperdine’s Christian mission, Selby said. However, the future of most of the programs will depend of Pepperdine’s funding.
However, one proposal, the Spiritual Life Committee, was drafted in the June of this year, Benton said.
The purpose of the committee is to consolidate the various branches of Pepperdine University in order to create and implement a “university-wide vision for spiritual formation at Pepperdine,” Selby said.
Representatives from different branches of Pepperdine — 15 representatives in total — are slated to meet sometime in the spring, Selby said.
Despite the advancements made in recent years, Pepperdine in the past has had somewhat of a inconsistent history when it came to implementing religious policies.
“Religious commitment ebbed and flowed,” said Gary Selby, the director of the Center of Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University.
Since its founding in 1937, Pepperdine has had somewhat of a mixed relationship with the Church of Christ due in part to its founder’s approach towards the role of faith in the University,
Hughes said. Pepperdine believed that a college should be a private institution not connected to any church.
The ambiguity of Pepperdine’s affiliation with the Churches of Christ led to much disagreement over whether or not Pepperdine should strengthen or weaken its ties with the Churches of Christ, Hughes said.
When Batsell Baxter became the first president of Pepperdine’s campus, he emphasized the themes found in Christianity, Hughes said.
However, academics became the focus of Pepperdine in 1940 when Earl V. Pullias was president, Hughes said. Many of the faculty members he hired were of multiple religious traditions.
In an attempt to bind Pepperdine to the Churches of Christ, Pepperdine’s board of trustees, who were all members of the Church of Christ, chose M. Norvel Young to become Pepperdine’s president in 1957, Hughes said.
As the new president, Young was not only tasked with rebuilding Pepperdine’s bonds with the Churches of Christ, but with rebuilding the faculty and creating a stable financial base for the university, Hughes said.
Young decided to resolve two of the three problems simultaneously by hiring administrators and faculty with close ties to the Churches of Christ, thus rebuilding the faculty and Pepperdine’s bonds with the Churches of Christ, Hughes said.
He attempted to further rebuild Pepperdine’s ties with the Churches of Christ by enhancing Pepperdine’s Bible lectureship, which was designed for members of the Churches of Christ, Hughes said.
Unfortunately, Young had to turn business communities in southern California for support, which consequently redefined Pepperdine’s mission statement to focus more on civic and business constituency, Hughes said.
Even when Pepperdine branched out to Malibu and became a university, Pepperdine still retained its ambiguous status.
“I think that then and several years after, faith was underplayed,” Christopher Stivers, web administrator and instructor of digital media, said when recalling his time as a student in the 1970s. “There wasn’t a lot about faith in the admission material, or handbook, or curriculum.”
A new generation of faculty hired for the new campus, many who focused on academics over Pepperdine’s spiritual mission, Hughes said.
When William S. Banowsky became president in 1971, he broadened Pepperdine’s base beyond the Churches of Christ to include people who cared about American ideals and conservative values, Hughes said.
Only after David Davenport became president in 1985 did Pepperdine begin to shift its focus back to faith, Hughes said.
Since Davenport’s time as president, Pepperdine has managed to consolidate its need to provide a quality education and its faith.
“We are now in a position where we think we can do both,” Selby said.
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