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  1. #1

    Duke and United Methodist Church

    As an alum I should have remembered but somehow forgot until I saw on Jeopardy that Duke has some affiliation with the United Methodist Church.

    What exactly is the affiliation? Does the UMC influence policy at Duke.

    I don't want to get into discussion of politics and religion etc etc etc. Just the facts of the affiliation.

    Thanks

    SoCal

  2. #2

    Today tie more hisoric than real

    Historically the Methodist Church founded many schools and colleges in the US. Many of these have grown into major research universities like Duke. Each institution has its own history but ours is generally as follows: Brown's School House, 1838 Methodist and Quaker then Methodist; 1853, Normal College, state supported; Trinity College, 1859 Methodist; Duke University, 1924. In the Trinity College era, I believe around 1892 when it moved to Durham the Board of Trustees was expanded to include a set percent of alumni which made it independent of the Methodist Church because more trustees were not Methodist than Methodist. This was done to attract more financial support and part of the move to the booming New South city of Durham from the isolated rural setting in Randolph County. Of course THE major player in this was Washington Duke who did it because the school was Methodist as was he. However, the school has had a self perpetuating independent board of trustees since. It elects its own members making nominations to the annual conferences of the Methodist Church in North Carolina. That arrangement was part of the move to Durham to recognize the historic ties to the church. The key here is that the board nominations have never been turned down by the church body thus making the governing board a self perpetuating board.
    Architecturally, the ties to the church are evident by the "towering church" James B. Duke requested when he financed the construction of the campus. However, the Dean of the Chapel is selected by the University and not an appointment of the Methodist Church Deans have been Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican and I am not sure the denomination of the current Dean.
    Through all of this history the Divinity School has ties to the Methodist Church and it receives considerable financial support from that denomination. However, the Methodist Church does not appointment its Dean or determine its curriculum. Many Divinity students are not Methodist.
    This is probably more than you wanted to know and I hope accurate. Details may vary but the independence of Duke is real.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Southern Pines, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by SoCalDukeFan View Post
    As an alum I should have remembered but somehow forgot until I saw on Jeopardy that Duke has some affiliation with the United Methodist Church.

    What exactly is the affiliation? Does the UMC influence policy at Duke.

    I don't want to get into discussion of politics and religion etc etc etc. Just the facts of the affiliation.

    Thanks

    SoCal
    Fast answer, read this quote from Wikipedia:

    Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James B. Duke established The Duke Endowment, at which time the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.

    The university has "historical, formal, on-going, and symbolic ties" with the United Methodist Church, but is a nonsectarian and independent institution...
    As i understand it, the United Methodist Church is in charge of the Chapel and the Divinity School, at least partially. The Duke Endowment is apart from the University which does receive millions of dollars from the Endowment as do other educational institutions mostly in the South. The Duke Endowment also funds the Angier B. Duke Scholarships. The University itself has endowments in excess of 6 or 7 billion dollars. Anybody ever consider that the university could establish an endowment to cover tuition and costs of about 10,000 students for about a half a billion.. That would be nice.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Meeting with Marie Laveau
    Methodist churches helped raise money for the new Duke University. My paternal grandparents led such an effort in their church in what was then Hanes, NC. They continued to feel a strong affiliation with Duke for the remainder of their lives as did my dad. My dad was a member of the Class of 1933... his class were freshmen when the stadium opened and the first seniors to graduate in a completed Chapel.

  5. #5
    My paternal grandfather, now deceased, was a Methodist minister, and used to talk about Wallace Wade offering him a scholarship to play football. Evidently, he preferred baseball.

    My grandmother attended both Duke and Michigan, and I think her time at Duke had some tie to the church. There are pictures of her on campus in the early 30's, which was really neat to see some of those same places looking very similar today.

    I really need to find out more about their involvement with Duke. I don't think my grandmother's degree was from there, maybe summer courses?

  6. #6

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by Reilly View Post
    In my era a few decades ago, sons (and daughters?) of Methodist ministers -- PKs, as we called them in the South at the time -- were not charged tuition but had to compete for admissions slots.

    While the poster above is correct that the University board appointments are now all approved by the Methodist church, it used to be the case that the Eastern and Western Conferences of the Methodist Church originated at least some appointments to the Board. I don't know when that changed.

    Toughest meeting ever at Duke? Long-time President William Preston Few back int he 1920's explaining to the Bishops of the Methodist Church that the athletic teams would no longer be the "Methodists" and that the nickname had literally gone to hell, now being the "Blue Devils," as chosen by the students.
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

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