Inaugural Address of Shirley A. Mullen:
For Such a Time as This

Houghton College, October 5, 2007    

Members of the Board of Trustees, Presidents’ Advisory Board, Alumni Board, Members of the Faculty, Staff and  Student Body, Honored Guests from other academic institutions, friends and family—I am so grateful for your presence here today as we celebrate Houghton’s legacy—and its calling in our time. I know that many of you have come from far away—and we want to welcome you among us.  

I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about Time—and Timing. Historians do that. We argue about why the Russian Revolution came when it did—in 1917 rather than in 1905, for example. We wonder what would have happened in Europe and Japan if Franklin Roosevelt had not died in April of 1945 and he, rather than Harry Truman—had negotiated with Stalin and Churchill at Potsdam in July of 1945. We speculate about what might have happened if Abraham Lincoln had been too tired to go the Ford Theater on that fateful evening in the spring of 1865— What if Ernst Rommel—the German Commander on the French Coast had been at the front on June 6, 1944 instead of home in Germany celebrating his wife’s birthday? The best German tanks might have been sent immediately to meet the Allies and things might have been tougher at the landing than they were. And then what if the Chicago Cubs fan in the stands had not decided to play outfielder that day several year’s ago in the National League playoffs. The fan caught the ball, instead of the fielder and got in the way of the Cubs’ dreams to play in the World Series. Not right up there with D-Day—but if you were a Cubs fan, you might be tempted to think so.  

What if?  What if?   The whole direction of history might have been different.  

And then we celebrate those moments when the gifts and genius of a particular person or institution exactly match the needs of a particular moment—a Winston Churchill in May 1940; Martin Luther King in the 1960’s; William and Catherine Booth and the Salvation Army in the slums of Victorian England.  

In those moments, when people and institutions match their times—when it seems as if the timing is just right-we feel the risk and wonder of high adventure—the magic that something that might not have happened did happen—and that has made all the difference. You will all have your own stories from sports, from history, or from your own life. Timing matters.    

It is this celebration of contingency that keeps history so exciting—and mysterious. It is this contingency and timeliness that is celebrated in Hebrews 11. In situation after situation, somebody stepped out in faith—and met the challenge of the moment—always with a risk—many times risking everything.   It is this contingency and timeliness that climaxes in the book of Esther with Mordecai’s words to Esther, “Don’t think that you will escape. If you don’t come forward, God is able to relieve the children of Israel in some other way.  But your life and the life of your family will be lost.  Who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”   

This is your moment, Esther. You can’t escape the choice. You will have to risk everything—but this may just be what you were made to do. You are the person and now is your time.  

That same word came to Willard J. Houghton, in 1883.  He was a farmer, and Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School agent in western New York. “The word came to him, it’s your time.” Mr. Houghton saw around him a world torn apart by the turmoil of westward expansion, increasing trade, and industrialization—poverty, substance abuse, prejudice and oppression of race, and class and gender. He believed that things could be different—and that education was part of the key. He believed that God wanted an institution of learning in western New York—one specifically committee to the task of “fixing up the world”—of preparing young people to be agents of “light” in the dark and painful places of that time. And so, Houghton Seminary was born.   

In 1908, James S. Luckey, himself educated at Oberlin and Harvard—assumed responsibility for Willard Houghton’s vision.  President Luckey believed that, to be as effective as possible in “fixing up the world,” Houghton needed to be an accredited participant in the world of higher education. Houghton needed to be a place where the best and richest of human learning could be in sustained dialogue with the claims of the Christian faith—a place in the tradition of Harvard and Oberlin and the Medieval universities.  He wanted students to be shaped by their disciplines in dialogue with a deep and tough-minded understanding of the Christian faith. He wanted Houghton students inspired to be agents of transformation—growing out of their faith and their education-- in all avenues of society—government, arts, education, ministry, medicine, law, business, the church—here in this country and around the world.  He also wanted Houghton, as an institution, to be an active presence in the world of higher education.   

It was a bold vision for a small Christian liberal arts college in western New York. But that was the word to James S. Luckey in his time.  And it was that vision that propelled the college forward under the leadership of Dr. Stephen Paine, Dr. Wilber Dayton and then, most recently, Dr. Daniel Chamberlain.   

And now there are over 16,000 Houghton alumni around the world--over 4,000 here in Western New York alone. There are 100’s of doctors and lawyers and educators, business men and women, pastors, musicians and artists, scientists, social workers—all shaped by their Houghton education to be agents of wholeness and social transformation. . “To be part of that great company of people called to “fix up the world”—to bring light to dark places in the name of Jesus Christ.  

But, here in 2007, almost 125 years later, the world is still not “fixed up.”    And today, the needs of our world are more staggering and complicated than ever. It is not the same task that Willard Houghton faced in 1883. Certainly, the challenges of poverty, racial injustice, gender and class inequality, and substance abuse are still with us. We see their impact here in western New York. We see their impact around the world.   

But these are not the only challenges of our time.  

Our very own planet is ailing as never before, bearing the marks of human interference—at worst, wanton destruction, at best, careless inattention.  

Our world is a world fragmented by disciplines, by professional guilds, by ethnicity, by class, by religion, and a thousand other divisions—always leading to discord, and in the cases of religion and ethnicity often leading to violence.  

It is a world tainted by the lure of materialism and consumerism.  

It is a world with the most advanced technology ever available to human beings—but a world where our technology has outstripped our moral categories for ensuring that this technology works for us and not against us.  

It is a world yearning for beauty—in nature, in the arts, in relationships.  

It is a world changing faster than we can possibly imagine.  

It is a world uncertain about where to turn for hope—Religion has been tainted for many by association with dogmatism and intolerance.  Public intellectuals—with a renewed virulence—trumpet the case for atheism or naturalism from books on the New York Times Bestseller List. Even the world of higher education—long associated with hope and unbridled commitment to Truth—has become cautious about even using the term “truth.”  Derek Bok—President Emeritus of Harvard has lamented in several books the commercialization—and the growing loss of purpose that has afflicted higher education. This theme is echoed by Harry Lewis, Dean of Harvard College—in his recent “Excellence Without Soul.”  I read a collection of articles this summer by educators calling for a new emphasis on the “big questions” of meaning and purpose as a legitimate part of higher education—as if this were some novel idea.  

It is, in short, an overwhelming moment in time—whether we are looking at western New York or at the rest of the world.  

It is also, in fact, just the right moment for Houghton College, the very circumstances for which Houghton, as a Christian liberal arts college in the Wesleyan tradition, was called into being.  

We do not have easy answers to the challenges facing our planet—as if the issues could be put on a list and tackled one at a time in some organized linear fashion.   

We do, however, have a well-proven strategy for meeting this moment in time.  

We may not be able to solve these challenges, as if they were so many mathematical problems or research puzzles, but we are in the business of producing the kind of people—marked by a Houghton education—who will meet these issues in thousands of specific situations around the world each day—in the professions, in business, in community development, in ministry.  They will speak to these issues not with words alone but with their lives.  They will be themselves agents of truthfulness, and peacemaking, and hope, in the dark places of our time.   

Our students are prepared to be citizens of a shrinking planet. They know how to take care of the environment—to value the nature world as a sister, to quote G.K Chesterton. (You can see the beautiful system of trails that our students have developed here for their own use and for the use of our neighbors in the surrounding communities.)  As students of a residential college, they know how to live in community—to deal with differences, to negotiate space with civility—whether here in Houghton, or in our Adirondacks’ field station, in London, or in inner city Buffalo, or in Tanzania.  

Our students know how to think and to live across boundaries. They are ready to be cross-cultural bridge builders, translators, if you will, within our own country and around the world. Through their integrated course of study, they have learned to think about issues that cut across academic disciplines. Through internships, they have learned to translate theoretical learning into real world situations. Through off-campus field experience, they have learned to build sustainable communities in places as far apart as Buffalo and Bolivia. They know how to speak across the religion-science divide in our culture; they know how to speak across the religious-secular divide; how to interact with those who profess faith and those who do not. They also know how to graciously explain a religious world view to those in our culture for whom this is a complete mystery (a much needed skill as Americans deal with cultures of the world who take religion for granted).  

I have said that our students are prepared to be citizens of a shrinking planet. Second, they are prepared to be intra- and inter-cultural bridge builders and translators.

Third, our students have the tools to adapt to changing circumstances over time, as well as place. They will not have to be replaced or re-programmed every two-three years like the latest technology. They are prepared to be effective over the course of a life-time. They know how to learn, how to analyze arguments, how to evaluate information, how to write with clarity and grace, how to work in situations where there is no instruction manual.  

These are nice sounding words to say at an inaugural occasion, but they are not just that. I have seen these things with my own eyes. Recently, I had occasion to be in inner city Buffalo to see the work that our students and alumni are doing there in that city. I went first to Jericho Road, an establishment on Buffalo’s west side where one of our medical graduates has worked with other agencies to bring together, under one roof, help for recent refugees—for medical are, for housing needs, and for spiritual needs. When I asked this modern day Good Samaritan how it had all come about he said, “I just knew that medicine could be practiced in new ways in this country—in ways that treated the poor, the refugee, with dignity and with hope.”  Several dozen of our current students travel each Saturday to this center to help with tutoring and other aspects of refugee resettlement.   

I went from there to another establishment where Houghton alumni work with refugees after they have left the care of the government resettlement centers—to help them access education and language skills for themselves and their children. One of last year’s graduates—a philosophy major working with AmeriCorps—had been given the task of transforming the culture of a city block in that area. There was no instruction book for that, but in concert with the local social workers, he was working to establish reading groups, and mentoring groups among the teenagers. He told me excitedly about a conversation he had that week with someone on the street about whether money could buy happiness (a regular gadfly on the streets of Buffalo— Socrates would be proud).  

That same day, I had lunch with several of Buffalo’s civic leaders, people committed to making that city a good place for all of its citizens.  One of them turned to me and said, “I know your students. They are the ‘missing links’ in our culture. They care about more than just themselves. They know what they are doing.”  

That is a picture of one city and only a few of the thousands of Houghton graduates serving as world citizens and as boundary mediators and inter-cultural translators in our world.   The needs of our time are very great.  

Houghton has a demonstrated record of being able to make a difference in meeting those needs.   So, what’s the challenge?  What’s the risk?  What’s the contingency?—for I’ve said that where things come together in time—in just the right way-there is always risk—There is always cost. 

The risk for our community is three fold. This is a word for our community, the rest of you are welcome to listen in. . .  

1. That we would hide away—(like Esther in her palace) out of complacency or passivity or false modesty or uncertainty. We need to be out there, building partnerships with business, with non-profits, with other institutions of higher education. We need to be a center of hospitality—inviting dialogue on the big questions of our time in a spirit of humility, tough-mindedness, and hope. We cannot simply celebrate a heritage of those who met the tough issues of their time.  We honor them most by daring to meet the tough issues of our time.  
2. That we would take our record as a Christian liberal arts college for granted—and not do the hard work—the daily creative task of being a community where truth and truthfulness are linked to humility and not power-- the hard work of inviting and indeed, compelling a truly integrated education to happen, creating and refining the structures that turn a college from being a kind of intellectual flea market, each of us selling our own wares, to being a kind of symphony- a place that honors and promotes individuality, integrity, and intellectual independence, but also that invites all of this into a thing of beauty where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  
3. That we would not do the hard work of explaining ourselves to the world and to the church of our time. Christian liberal art is not well understood in our time. People understand academic high quality.  They understand personal faith. They don’t easily understand how the realm of learning and the realm of the Christian faith can enrich each other in an education or in a life. People understand simplistic sound bytes, and dogmatic assertions. They understand relativism and subjectivism (That is your truth. This is mine.) They do not understand the union of truth with grace. They do not understand conviction mediated in humility, conviction that is always open to learning more.  People understand job preparation; they understand leisure activities.  They do not readily understand how learning and joy can meet in a life of vocation. We need to make ourselves understood.  

We do not get to choose those moments in time when our choices and commitments can make a difference. Of course, we would like to, and as humans, it is always tempting to look to the right and to the left or to some other time or place. It is tempting to think, “If only I had that choice—or if only I were playing that hand. I could be brave, or faithful, or effective.” As academics, we might think “If only we had been with Aquinas in the 13th century or with Newman in the 19th, we could have been Houghton more easily.”    

But this is our time—today—2007.  

We have a great legacy. We are part of a people called to “fix up the world.”  The needs of our world in this time are very great.  

They are needs that especially match the gifts of the Christ-centered liberal arts college in the Wesleyan tradition—a place that cultivates people who embody in their words and in their lives truthfulness, peacemaking, and hope—all mediated in love, humility and grace.  

People prepared to live on a shrinking planet as global citizens and stewards of creation.

People who can think and live across boundaries—bridge-builders and translators. People who are educated for the long haul—for all the seasons and all the changes of their lifetime.  

The word comes to us today—as it did to Esther so long ago, as it did to Willard J. Houghton 125 years ago.  

Houghton College, this is your moment, who knows but that you are in the world for just such a time as this.  

For the sake of our students, for the sake of the church, for the sake of higher education, for the sake of our culture, for the sake for the sake of world—and above all, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ who loved us—and this world, and gave Himself so that we—and the whole world—might become whole make us adequate for our time.  

Make us Houghton for our time—for just such a time as this.     May God make us worthy of this call May he make us adequate for out time.

For Such a Time as This.