Unity in essentials

According to a study done by Institutional Research, in the Fall of 2024, Eastern was made up of 17% Evangelical church-goers, 12% Catholics, 1% Orthodox and 40% listed no affiliation or left it blank. With this statistic in mind, how do we welcome students of all Christian traditions, without denying our historical Baptist identity?

“I would say we are robustly ecumenical… with an affection to our Baptistic roots,” said Rev. Joe Modica, the university’s chaplain. “We say to our mother, ‘we still love you, but we’re very different.’” He explained to me that all professors must assent to and annually sign the Apostle’s Creed. “It’s kind of I think a good blueprint for what it means to have unity in the essentials and liberty in the nonessentials and charity in all things,” he said. “We want unity in essentials because we come from [different] backgrounds. The reason why we chose the Apostle’s Creed is that it’s a little bit more minimalist.” Holding onto the school’s original Baptist identity seems far from his mind.

“I’ve been kind of delighted by the context at Eastern, because I think we have a school that embraces Christianity in the broadest sense,” Dr. Jonathan Reimer, a history professor here at Eastern and the faculty sponsor of the Newman Club, agreed. “I think one of the things that’s kind of great about this place is it is a place for… universal Christian faith. Not one that’s homogenizing. … [it’s] a place where genuine disagreements can happen,” he said.

Reimer noted that it could be difficult to pin down exactly what a Baptist identity would look like in the case of Eastern, anyways, considering the history of the American Baptist tradition. Eastern began under the American Baptist branch. “American Baptists have always been a little more expansive,” Reimer said. In other words, Eastern was birthed from the DNA of a Baptist type that is a little more progressive, in the first place–theologically and otherwise. “What would be the utility of holding onto particular Baptist distinctives,” he asked, especially considering the fact that those distinctives historically grew on live theological soil?

On the student side of things, Ambrose Bushelli, vice president of the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, exemplifies how Eastern’s ecumenical lifestyle can be lived out on campus. He opened up about life as a liturgically practicing student participating in a non-liturgical worship group on campus. “When I went to Wednesday Night Worship, I was like, wow, these songs are really something,” he said. “I could see how everyone around me… really loved God in the way they were praising Him.” He was able to appreciate non-liturgical worship, right off the bat. “The first time I went, they played the song “Lord, I Need You” and I remember… it was an endearing song that I could connect to, and it was spiritually profound,” he said. “It’s not backed up by a thousand year tradition of music… but there was still so much beauty in it.”

Overall, it seems that this last statement of Bushelli’s encapsulates Eastern’s faith identity in a nutshell. The university has become a place where beauty in different forms of worship is appreciated, while acknowledging that all these forms unify around one beautiful God. The expansive-leaning theological roots of the college show in students like Bushelli, who are willing to broaden their mental schema of what might be included in holy worship.