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By Steve Weatherbe
WHEN Whitney Agassiz toured Europe with the women’s soccer team from Trinity Western University (TWU), she provided standout
defense for the evangelical university.
Like her teammates, she also testified to audiences about her faith in Christ – but with a difference. Agassiz spoke from her heart too, but from her Catholic
heart; since many audiences were Catholic, that was fine with TWU.
She is the product of a unique relationship TWU has with Redeemer Pacific (RP),
a small school committed to teaching the liberal arts from an orthodox Catholic
perspective.
The principal push behind RP and its happy connection with TWU is Tom Hamel.
After 20 years in business, Hamel decided to realize a longtime dream of
teaching his faith.
“I was wary of local public universities because so many of my friends from 20
years before had gone to them, had partied, done dope and lost their faith,” he told BCCN .
So he thought of TWU, which had the advantage of being local and Christian. The
downside was that Hamel still harboured some stereotypes about fundamentalists.
But he remembered many of his high school friends who were evangelical, and how “on fire for Jesus they were.” He had always seen “a need for Catholics to develop more of a personal relationship with Jesus.” At TWU, he found “great people with an openness to Catholic thought.” And he often heard from his classmates “about how so-and-so had accepted Jesus.” As he pursued his degree, the idea began taking shape in his mind that a
similar school was needed for Catholics.
In 1996, Hamel broached the idea to his favourite instructor, TWU history
professor Robert Burkinshaw. This soon led to a discussion with then-president
Neil Snider, who said he’d been wanting to work with Catholics in higher education for some time. Hamel
next approached Vancouver archbishop Adam Exner, who swiftly endorsed the idea.
Burkinshaw remembers, during negotiations between the RP steering committee and
TWU’s board, attending a lecture by American evangelical historian Mark Noll.
“Noll wondered when Catholics and Evangelicals were going together at the level
of higher education. I wanted to put up my hand and say: ‘It’s happening right now.’”
Burkinshaw also recalls giving a lecture on Catholic-Protestant interactions in
Canada – which involved considerable intolerance and violence on both fronts.
“There were riots against Catholics in Toronto and against Protestants in
Montreal,” said Burkinshaw.
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“The interesting thing was the reaction of the students. They wondered why
everyone had been so nasty towards each other.”
Burkinshaw described why things have changed.
“In the latter part of the 20th Century, Catholics and evangelicals weren’t on different ends of the spectrum. They were crowded together at the same end,
with everyone else at the other end.” Moral issues like abortion provided common cause.
RP was established as a ‘teaching centre’ of TWU, providing courses in philosophy and theology from a Catholic
perspective. RP students take the bulk of their courses at TWU and get degrees
there. TWU now offers, through RP, a minor in Catholic studies – and certificates in Catholic theology or liberal arts.
Agassiz said that if TWU is like a supportive community, RP is “a family. The building is a former farmhouse, and the classes are held in what
was the living room. Tom drives the students to mass on Sunday evening, and . . . the secretary has students living in her basement.”
Soccer brought Agassiz to RP: she won a scholarship to play for TWU, which RP
topped up. Characterizing herself as a typical lukewarm Catholic when she
began, she took her first RP classes to meet scholarship requirements – but ended up majoring in its Christianity and Culture program.
“What I learned [at RP] is how to be a Christian, how to let Christ lead my life.
“I think a lot of Catholics struggle with how to have a personal relationship
with Christ, but Redeemer Pacific and Trinity . . . created a space where we
can learn how to do this.”
September 2009
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