Who We Are

Founding Director Narrative and Vocation

Samuel B Schmitt, PhD, MA

My parents always took me to the church on the hill as a child. I admired the stained glass and became doubly attracted and afraid of the close quiet in the sanctuary after dark—the bare cross, the altar, empty pews, and stowed hymnals. Christmas pageants, first communion, scripture readings, and confirmation came. While I soon left the church, that bare cross and darkened sanctuary followed me like a rumor. Around fifteen I left the church because of a general lack, real or perceived, of intellectual and spiritual depth amongst Christians. Christians seemed to me to be more shaped by politics, petty differences, and popular morality than by an abiding commitment and formative relationship with Jesus. In short, they did not seem much different than non-Christians except that they carried the additional liability of hypocrisy. My born-again conversion in college came through thousands of hours of conversation with campus ministers, fellow students, independent study, reflection, and prayer. Through the following years in ministry and academia, I formed a pattern of life integrating contemplation, scholarship, teaching, community, and public life into a single vocation I believe fits neatly within Providence Hall. It took some time to get here.

In college, I encountered Christians who took Jesus, the scriptures, and the challenge of seeking life after the fall seriously; it was no longer possible to dismiss Christianity as before. I began to drink deeply of the well of Christian thought and engage with a community of believers while simultaneously trying out the wisdom of the world. I read the Gospels, CS Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, JL Mackie, Dallas Willard, Nietzsche, Kant, Locke, Auden, Aristotle, Plato, and Lincoln. I founded the Secular Society on my campus and organized parties at downtown bars. I attended Bible studies and befriended ministers while wondering why God remained hidden from me. I participated in a civic leadership program including repeated collaborative challenges, interactions with Christians, and cause for reflection on the place of faith in public life. I sat with pastors and pressed them on the tension between justice and forgiveness while seeking their insight on how to live the Good Life—and they pressed me on the incongruities of my life and mind. I ached for God through Bill Evans’ solo works, Wagner’s Pilgrim’s Chorus, corn fields and bonfires, Wyeth’s Christina’s World, Central Park, stained glass and hammer-beamed roofs, fresh snow, Coltrane’s Naima, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and the river’s bend. The welcome, wisdom, and wonder of the Christian tradition—and the truth of the gospels—began to take hold.

In time, the person of Jesus, the arc of scripture over creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, the persistence of the Father, move of the Holy Spirit, the living testament of the church, and the evidence of God in all things made Christianity increasingly plausible, respectable, and desirable. God continually placed people, books, music, art, and experiences in my path which made His presence, wisdom, and sovereignty known. Ultimately, I was made alive in Christ in October of 2012.

Lacking a better description, I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as an “evangelical mutt with elbow patches.” The past decade of my career has been characterized by a complex interaction between ministry and academia. After my conversion and baptism in college, I worked for a medium-sized campus congregation (EFCA) and volunteered for Cru before and during graduate school in Ohio. While pursuing my PhD, I served on the elder board and preaching team at a congregation in Chapel Hill, NC (Wesleyan Church). These ministry opportunities allowed me time to soak up campus ministry, lead reading groups, teach apologetics, preach, advise the pastorate, sit with and counsel the doubts of a deconstructionist age, reflect on evangelicals and exvangelicalism, listen to Christians from my left and right, and see friends fall from the faith while others grew like oaks of righteousness. At the same time, I was going deeper and deeper into my academic work. In all, I have taught undergraduate courses, taken graduate courses, convened seminars, and researched topics in philosophy of religion, the problem of evil and suffering, free will, the purpose of the university, the American Professoriate, apologetics, the ethics of peace and war, Christianity and capitalism, political theology, environmentalism, civic theory and leadership, contemporary and historical economic thought, contractarianism, classical and modern political theory, conservatism, egalitarianism, contemporary political philosophy, American politics, the American Founding Era, the First Amendment, constitutional law, American political thought, property and the rule of law, and public policy. In other words, I have been steeped in the academic study of questions surrounding philosophy, politics, economics, and religion while leading in several ministry capacities.

When I became extensively involved with the Christian Study Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, the NC Study Center, these parallel vocations, ministry and academia, came to a head. There, I saw students with a hunger for rich understanding of God, camaraderie, good food, and depth of purpose in higher education come together under a single roof to pray, read, study, and celebrate—all while remaining an integral part of UNC Chapel Hill’s secular campus. It became a place for students to get an excellent Christian education while enrolled at a world-class secular institution. The NC Study Center became my second office in graduate school (I was often mistaken as an employee). I deepened graduate student involvement, piloted an Advanced Topics in Christian Thought series, mentored undergraduates, led seminars, and shadowed the NC Study Center’s Founding Director, Madison Perry, all in service of creating spaces for deep Christian learning, reflection on vocation, and public life. Leaving Chapel Hill for a postdoc at Brown’s Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, I hoped that I might someday serve another Christian Study Center.

Upon taking the post at Brown University, I carried out my normal academic work to my satisfaction. However, God was at work in an unforeseen way. Prompted by a sermon on the importance of following God’s call and pursuing His opportunities despite what may seem rational to the world, I began to pray for the possibility of a Christian Study Center in Providence.

It is an awful thing to wonder at the plan of God. Once one considers what He may ask of you, knowing what His Son took up, what His people endured and still endure, it is fearful to hold to the church. I am, therefore, always skeptical that I should have the blessing to be called to something like Providence Hall. Could God be so good as to set this work for me? The work is so appealing that I am apt to forget what I am giving up—the potential prestige of Professorship, the security of lifetime employment if I should get a Tenure Track job. Yet, looking back on the years of my conversion, infancy in faith, growing maturity and leadership in scholarship and teaching, and increasing involvement in both local churches and the NC Study Center, I have begun to see that God has prepared me to pursue the work of establishing and directing a Christian Study Center in Providence, Rhode Island. He has, in short, formed a pattern of life for me integrating academia and ministry through contemplation, scholarship, teaching, community, hospitality, and public life.

Founding Providence Hall is, therefore, a continuation of many years of study and experience in the Christian life of the mind, the complexities of Christian citizenship, and the hospitality and care of ministering to those seeking answers to the hardest questions of meaning and action in a fallen world. It is only through the blessing and commission of brothers and sisters in Christ that I pursue it and only by God’s grace that it may be accomplished in any measure.

In Christ,

Sam Schmitt