Business & Government

At Jefferson’s Secular University, a Talk About Religion

Dozens of students braved a “biblical, torrential downpour” Monday on the way to the University of Virginia Chapel to hear a talk about what place religion should have in politics, public service and campus life.

The conversation between UVA President Jim Ryan, who leads a university founded on secular principles, and Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, came at a time when religion and politics remain intertwined in a contentious election cycle.

Kim emphasized public servants of faith should live their lives in a way that encourages the bridging of differences, rather than using faith as a tool to divide.

“To those outside the Christian faith, which I presume includes folks here, there’s an opportunity for collaborating toward the common good,” Kim said. “If we spend time understanding each other deeper, we would recognize that in this particular moment of polarization, what binds us together is far deeper than the forces that would push us apart.”

Kim, a former Charlottesville pastor and a chaplain at Yale University, visited Grounds as part of UVA’s Public Service Week.

Kim sits parallel to President Ryan as they talk in the University chapel

Kim, a former Charlottesville pastor and Yale University chaplain, leads the National Association of Evangelicals. He speaks to Ryan about how evangelicals should be open to collaborating with those of other faiths, or no faith, for the common good because “what binds us together is far deeper than the forces that would push us apart.” (Photo by Emily Faith Morgan, University Communications)

“We pause to take time to highlight and celebrate the University of Virginia’s public service mission,” Louis Nelson, vice president for academic outreach, said in welcoming the crowd. “Public Service Week is an opportunity to invite units across the University to just pause and think about, ‘What is the public service legacy, the impact, of the work that we do?’ Sometimes it’s really clear and sometimes we have to think kind of creatively about that work. But that’s important because it’s substantiative to who we are as a public university.”

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UVA founder Thomas Jefferson, Ryan told the crowd, “was a huge proponent of religious liberty. I’m curious, how do you see … universities dedicated to the pursuit of truth and knowledge, how do you see that pursuit especially from a students’ perspective, with faith? How do they fit together?”

“You have both the opportunity,” Kim said, “and increasingly the mission and responsibility to cultivate the student as a whole person. … We have the opportunity to not only to teach knowledge, but wisdom.

“That, I would humbly argue,” Kim continued, “is one of the incredible opportunities for life at a university. Making space to have religious points of view represented, which this conversation already signifies, is absolutely critical, a permission to say in this diverse society that religious point of view is an important point of contribution.”