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President Eaton Sets Direction for a New Year
As the 2005–06 academic year opened, Seattle Pacific
University President Philip Eaton spoke before many campus
audiences, laying out his priorities for a new year and a
new era. Among his presentations were three key events:
State of the University Address, “Building
on Ancient Foundations”
September 21, 2005
After celebrating the strong momentum Seattle Pacific is experiencing,
President Eaton officially unveiled to faculty, staff, and
student leaders the 10-year plan for the University’s
future titled 2014: A Blueprint for Excellence. The plan,
he said, is driven by vision. “Our vision is this: We
want to change the world with the transforming gospel of Jesus
Christ. Can a university change the world? Well, that’s
what our vision says. We want to enter into God’s big
drama for his world, and God’s drama is about changing
things to be better. For all of his children. Everywhere.
Always.”
Welcome to New Students and Parents
September 22, 2005
Speaking to the largest and most highly qualified class of
new students in Seattle Pacific’s history — and
their parents and families — President Eaton stated
that a great university requires “big ideas and great
people.” “This education is not just about your
career,” he told the students. “We will, of course,
pay attention to that, but we also want to give you a big
picture for your life, a big purpose. You are joining one
of the finest Christian universities in the country, a university
with a big, audacious sense of calling and a deep, abiding
commitment to Christian community.”
Opening Convocation, “What We Need Now Is a
Conversion of the Imagination”
September 27, 2005
As the entire campus community gathered to launch the academic
year, President Eaton spoke about Seattle Pacific’s
responsibility to President Eaton Sets Direction for a New
Year address poverty, inequality, and pain in the world. “The
cultural, social, economic, religious, and global shifts taking
place in our world today are seismic, and must change the
way we do education,” he said. “We cannot withdraw
into the comfort and safety of an intellectual ghetto. We
cannot indulge in Christian separatism. ... We have to look
right into the heart of all this profound and confusing change,
and offer a response that is meaningful and helpful.”
The President’s Bookshelf
What books does a university president read in his “spare”
time? An avid reader, President Eaton’s choices are
eclectic. Here are some recent selections, with his comments:
David McCullough, 1776.
“McCullough captures in amazingly fresh detail the great
pivotal year of 1776, when the future of America, involved
in a war of independence with Britain, hung in the balance.
We get the war with all its bloody, messy chaos, and we get
the hero, George Washington, with all his faults and indecision
and, ultimately, his heroism. Somehow McCullough takes us
right into the white-hot confusion of battle where things
could have turned out very differently.”
George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe,
America, and Politics Without God.
“This is a fabulous book reflecting on what is happening
as Europe persists in cutting itself from its Christian roots,
an all-out effort, as Weigel sees it, to secularize Western
civilization. Weigel argues that the culture we enjoy today,
with values like the rule of law, dignity of the individual,
freedom of speech, and civility of discourse, all have Christian
roots, and we cut our ties with those roots at our peril.”
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