After a nationwide search, Wingate University has hired its first chaplain. Dr. Ben Sammons, an English professor at Wingate for seven years, will lead faith-based initiatives on campus. He assumed the role last week.
In the past, Wingate has had campus ministers, whose primary responsibility was to minister to students. The chaplain’s role expands those responsibilities to include advising the University’s administration in matters of faith and spirituality as they relate to emerging trends and issues, the campus climate, and institutional norms.
As chaplain, Sammons will organize religious services, community discussions and faith-exploration events; be a spiritual voice at other University events; and serve as a “caregiver” for the campus community.
One of the main tasks Sammons will shoulder is helping to define “faith” on campus. Founded by local Baptist organizations in 1896 and associated with the North Carolina Baptist Convention for much of its existence, the University split with the Convention in 2009. Faith remains a key part of the Wingate experience — it persists in the University’s motto, “Faith, Knowledge, Service” — but its role has been less and less clear as the decades have rolled on.
Sammons says that one facet of his new job that he is most excited about is the opportunity to minister to students from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds. While 78% of students identified as Christian in the latest Bulldog Poll survey, just over 20% professed no particular religion (i.e., “nones”). Nearly 2% professed to follow a religion other than Christianity.
“I think there’s an institutional investment, from leadership, to figure out what it means for us to be rooted in our own history, our own traditions, in a contemporary way,” Sammons says.
As chaplain, he will play a major role in that journey.
“I’m called to minister in many different contexts, to many different groups,” Sammons says, “and I hope I can use words and engage with people in ways that clarify the meaning of faith at Wingate by embodying the love that Jesus lived out and inviting people to work out the shape of faith in their lives.”
Sammons came to Wingate to teach English in 2015, and in 2020 he left to take seminary classes, unsure what his future held. He returned to the English faculty in 2022, and when the chaplaincy search started last fall, he decided to throw his hat in the ring.
“Ben’s humility and thoughtfulness really impressed me, and I offered him the job because I thought he would be the best ‘architect’ for building a system of support for the University’s faith mission,” says Dr. Rhett Brown, president of Wingate University.
As he settles into his new role, Sammons has four near-term goals: support the University’s recent emphasis on infusing the curriculum with “vocational discernment”; implement a “Faith and Film” series; create a dedicated space on campus for “stillness” and prayer, meditation and contemplation; and create a regular newsletter to publicize the spiritual side of life on campus. He will teach two English classes this semester and generally teach two classes a year thereafter.
Sammons majored in English at Mercer University, but the seeds of a ministerial career rooted in the concept of justice were planted in the summer after his sophomore year, when Sammons, who minored in Christianity, did an internship with a community-based ministry in a marginalized community in New Orleans.
“It really introduced me to the centrality of justice in the faith that I had ascribed to my whole life,” Sammons says. “It was a life-changing thing for me.”
It has led him to his new role helping guide Wingate students and employees on their faith journeys. Sammons says the role is important as the University helps “form graduates who live out their full humanity.” He says it’s helpful to remember that the root of “educate” is “educe,” which means “to draw out.”
“I think if we are about education, we are about whole people, and we are about drawing out the depths and engaging the depths,” he says. “I think a figure like a chaplain, and a team, a community and a village, is necessary to keep us engaged with our whole selves, to not get constricted down into some flat academicism.”
Sammons was selected over finalists from Maine, Georgia and North Carolina.
“I am grateful to the search-committee members for their insightful perspectives throughout this process,” Brown says. “I also appreciate the valuable feedback from the campus community and our campus partners who participated in the on-campus interviews.”