DATE: Tuesday, November 4, 1997             TAG: 9711040302

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   71 lines

DAVIES STRIVES TO DEFINE HIS NEW ROLE AT WESLEYAN

Longtime Virginia educator Gordon K. Davies on Tuesday discussed his role as director of the Center for the Study of Religious Freedom at Virginia Wesleyan College.

What he will direct, however, remains to be seen.

``It would be presumptuous of me to come here and tell you what the Center for the Study of Religious Freedom is about,'' Davis told students, faculty and trustees.

``Because I don't know.''

The outspoken Davies, 59, headed the State Council of Higher Education until he was voted out in April. In September, he was named the head of the center in hopes of sharpening Virginian Wesleyan's reputation and boosting a sagging enrollment.

The Tuesday talk, billed as a ``brown-bag conversation on the nature of the center and the limits of tolerance,'' was long on tolerance and short on nature. The discussion touched on the types of topics the center, scheduled to open next fall, might explore in its infancy.

Like prospective parents, students and faculty are waiting to see what they're going to get. The Center for the Study of Religious Freedom has been in the planning stages for more than a year. There have been seminars for students to offer ideas, and meetings with an advisory committee of trustees.

Two rooms in a multimillion-dollar academic building under construction on the campus have been set aside for the center. One of those rooms will be an office for Davies.

Craig S. Wansink, assistant professor of religious studies, was involved in a seminar for the center held last school year. He said Davies has interesting ideas and an ability to motivate people.

``I'm looking forward to next year,'' Wansink said. ``When Dr. Davies is here and teaching on campus, that will give us a better idea of what direction the program will take.''

Student Kat Rosensteel is waiting.

``I think a lot of us worry about the center,'' the 20-year-old said. ``We know we'll be gone in two years. We sign up for classes and go to the lectures. . . . But it seems silly to base this at a center of education when you aren't informing students.''

Rosensteel attended a seminar last year and has been to the lectures.

``I still haven't seen a list of goals,'' she said.

The school's mission statement, written more than a year ago, professes that Virginia Wesleyan students will have ``abundant opportunity to learn the founding principles of religious liberty, that every person, protected by disinterested government vigilance, has the right to believe and practice any religion, or to refrain from belief and practice.''

Davies said the center would exchange ideas and engage students in the study of history and the motives that drive many faiths. It would also promote tolerance and mature reasoning about issues of faith, foreign and domestic.

He spoke of strife in Bosnia. Of religious war in the Middle East. Of closed-minded politicking here in the commonwealth. Of things far removed from a small liberal arts college that had fewer freshmen this year than graduating seniors.

All of those things, no matter how far off, touch the local community, he explained.

Davies invited questions and comments from assembled faculty, planning committee members for the center, administrators and the few students in attendance. All, he agreed, would be good discussion topics for the center.

``My responsibility would be to help the community find its program, and then sharpen it,'' he said.

``I see in Virginia and elsewhere a rising tide of intolerance and exclusion in politics, a rising disinclination to accept differences.

``I would hope this center would be a small antidote to that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color file photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Gordon Davies

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