By Samantha George

Lafayette College is mourning the loss of one of its own, Earl Pope. The former Helen H. P. Manson Professor Emeritus of Bible died in Florida on October 18 at age 91.

Pope joined the Lafayette staff in 1960 and taught a wide range of classes, including Christian Scriptures, Contemporary Religious Movements and The Religious Situation in the Soviet Union.

According to Dana Professor of Religion Eric Ziolkowski, Pope “was known for his genuine warmth and civility.” Pope served on the hiring committee for Ziolkowski as well as Berman Professor of Jewish Studies Robert Cohn.

“He had the uncanny ability to make me feel perfectly at ease during my job interview with him … After my campus visit, he was the one to drive me back to [Lehigh Vallery International Airport] … We talked non-stop all the way, and he really made me want to teach at Lafayette,” Ziolkowski said.

According to Cohn, “He was himself full of stories about his adventures traveling and meeting people in Romania and elsewhere in eastern Europe and central Asia … He had important connections both in the church and with government officials – this during the Cold War, when very few westerners had these sorts of contacts.”

Williams Professor of Languages & Literatures Rado Pribic and Pope took students to Romania and the USSR during interim sessions. According to Pribic, Pope “took a group of Lafayette students in Bucharest [Romania] to an audience with the Romanian Orthodox patriarch, [which is] almost as difficult to get as an audience with the Pope.”

While teaching at Lafayette, Pope also held various other titles. According to Ziolkowski, Pope was an advisor for a variety of independent study seminars, including Feminism in the Church Fathers, The Social Gospel and Liberation Theory.

Pope was also a Presbyterian minister, having served at Covenant Churches in New York and Rhode Island before coming to Lafayette.

According to Ziolkowski, Pope retired in 1990 due to a requirement that professors stop teaching at age 70. “At the time, he made no secret of the fact that he would have loved to have continued teaching at Lafayette beyond that point,” Ziolkowski said.

This requirement was changed the next year. Pope, however, was already teaching at the University of Bucharest and the Black Sea University, both of which are located in Romania.

“Dr. Pope was a true gentlemen – always friendly, gracious,” Pribic said.

“He impressed me .. .as a kind, open and highly intelligent person with wide-ranging interests in and enthusiasm for the study of religion,” Cohn said.