Life Lines
a coup for the college
In 1968 the Academy College, as it was then known, took a giant step from
the second floor of Benade Hall to new and modern Pendleton Hall across the
road. This was the beginning of a dream for the College.
Eight years later the Academy celebrated its centennial with a memorable
album, Toward a New Church University, put together by Sanfrid Odhner. It
focused on the 100-year foundation of the dream.
Its concluding “Challenge” states: “Since Benade a century ago proclaimed
its birth – ‘The Academy lives!’ – the rhythms of growth have brought to the
Academy each 20 years a new and crucial challenge. Upon what threshold
does the Academy now stand for which in 1976 we light a hundred candles?
There is a new mood in the school. From two decades of self-improvement and
expansion has come a sense of stature, competence and mission – a restless
stirring to reach out and touch and influence society. . . .
“Chancellor [Willard D.] Pendleton, responding to that mood of mission,
sees the Academy as the ‘hope of the future in a nihilistic world,’ and calls upon
her for ‘a band of warriors.’ And President [Louis B.] King says of the Academy’s
role, ‘As the effects of the Last Judgment continue to manifest t hemselves in
our materialistic environment there is a desperate need for the descent of the
New Church.’ Both stress the critical necessity for vigilant fidelity to doctrine,
a distinctiveness shaped from within.”
In this 21 st century Bryn Athyn College has blossomed into an impressive
campus, on track to becoming that New Church University. And that does
not speak just to a growing enrollment and multiplying programs but to the
College’s expanding reputation and place in the academic world.
One significant sign is the Swedenborg and the Arts International
Conference taking place on the campus this June. With its impressive guest
list of 25 eminent scholars from 10 nations – and the serious scholarship
they represent – the conference is helping to put Bryn Athyn College on the
academic map.
President Brian Blair says proudly, “As the only New Church College in
the world, hosting this exciting event is a natural outgrowth of our mission.”
And he sees “this intellectual gathering of international artists and scholars”
257