Peter Vorkink
Appointed in 1972, Chair of the Department of Religion Peter Vorkink has worked at the Academy for over 40 years, most often teaching philosophy courses. Coming from an “unchurched family,” Vorkink had virtually no knowledge of religion until he took his first religion class in college to fulfill a graduation requirement. He entered college as a pre-med student, wanting to become a doctor.
“I was scared of philosophy,” Vorkink said. Despite his preconceptions, the first religion course he took aroused his interest in the subject. He enjoyed it so much that he ended up switching his major to religion.
In the summer of his junior year in college, Vorkink was recommended by a friend to join a Civil Rights movement in St. Augustine, Florida, organized by Martin Luther King Jr., in an effort to help local African-Americans combat racial inequality. Given the nature of his work in the South, he was faced with life-threatening danger everyday. Yet, he described the experience as something that “changed his life.”
“I felt challenged by the attempt to translate what I had been studying in my major—the ideas of compassion, justice, forgiveness—into concrete reality, into the reality of people’s lives,” he said. “Martin Luther King was a role model for how one could live out one’s beliefs in the real world and make a difference.”
After his return from Florida, Vorkink started working as the deacon of the chapel in his college. He received a bachelor’s degree in religion and went on to attend Divinity School in New York City and graduate school in Cambridge. Eventually, Vorkink decided to break out of the repetitive “student routine” and devote himself to making changes in the real world through the application of religious studies.
Having originally decided to teach religion at a college, Vorkink was introduced to the independent secondary school system in a church book club in Andover. After multiple interviews, he was offered a position as assistant school minister and instructor in religion at PEA. Vorkink had originally planned to teach at the Academy just for a year or two while finishing his dissertation, but he ended up teaching at Exeter for another forty years. “I found the opportunity to work with young people in so many different capacities very exciting,” Vorkink said.
His passion for working with young people, thorough religious knowledge, and determination to initiate positive change in the community has made Vorkink a prominent figure in various activities on campus.
Coming as the assistant school minister, he later founded the girls’ varsity ice hockey team and became their first coach. He has served as a dorm faculty for seventeen years in Peabody Hall, Soule Hall and Knight House.
Vorkink appreciates the opportunity to work with Exonians in multiple areas, which gives him immense inspiration. “It was the variety of opportunities to work with young people in those different capacities which encouraged me to make this my career and not work at the college or graduate school level, where the relationship could have been much more one dimensional,” he said. “If you’re interested in teaching and working with young people, there is no finer place to be than the Academy. As the faculty joke, working in Exeter is a ‘terminal appointment.’”
After turning over his dorm responsibilities to new teachers, he took on the job of organizing graduation each year. To this day, he has been in charge of graduation for more than three decades.
“Partly because as a priest, I am interested in ceremony, and secondly, someone has to do that job, and few other people have ever volunteered to do it,” Vorkink said. “I love all those other aspects of working at the Academy, and I find each day to be energizing in the many different things one can do here.”
After teaching in the same classroom for 45 years, Vorkink’s classroom appears to be a little gallery of “exhibits” from his travels around the world. “Our son once calculated that we had travelled to more than 100 countries, and that’s probably accurate, and seeing the rest of the world is one of the best possible educations for a teacher, especially if you travel to places not in the first world,” Vorkink said.
The purpose of putting these photos and objects in the classroom is not just for decoration, but more importantly, for the education of his students. “Most of the objects are religious in nature and that leads to some interesting exchanges before class starts about their correct and incorrect guesses,” he said. “It is not only to entertain the students, but to encourage them to think about the larger world outside of the Exeter bubble. Seeing how others live, and what other cultures are like is probably the single most enriching experience for a teacher. Book learning can only go so far.”
During his years of teaching at Exeter, Vorkink has taken three sabbaticals; one to England, where he served on the staff of Canterbury Cathedral, the home church for an American Episcopal priest, and two to Japan, one in Yokohama and another in Sapporo. The years abroad provided Vorkink with insights into different cultures, enriching his understanding of religion, as well as allowing him “to have a healthy and constructive perspective on our own country, especially when you see it from the point of view of an outsider.”
Vorkink’s stays in Japan left him with an especially deep impression. “They were significant because it was a first world experience in a totally different culture from that of the west,” Vorkink said. “We traveled the country from top to bottom, and there’s probably not a temple or Shinto shrine we did not visit.”
Teaching has always been Vorkink’s primary contribution to the Academy. His classes are popular amongst students and continue to excite students from a myriad of backgrounds. Many students have described his classes as not only helpful to improving their reading, writing, analyzation and discussion skills, but also to help them become a better self.
“His classes push you to the limit, while not giving busy work, but instead prompting us to maximize the Harkness discussions we have and to extend our reasoning to its limits,” senior Nikita Angarski said. “His teaching is based on us, he leaves us alone when we have a really good discussion, so we can truly learn from one another, and his is the only class in which an entire block was just us students talking.”
Bella Edo ‘17 echoed Angarski’s sentiment, saying, “He creates an environment where you not only feel comfortable to fail and not know the answers, but you’re excited for it. In all three of the classes I took with him he made me think about who I am, who I’m becoming, and who I want to be and I will cherish everything I learned from and because of him.”
Vorkink also guides students to grow and thrive outside of academics. His wisdom and genuinity are appreciated by many of his former and present students. “He truly believes in and cares about every single one of his students and feeling that kind of support really made me believe in myself,” said Edo. “His banter was refreshing because he treats his students as people and emerging adults.”
Similar to Edo, senior Andre Chan also took three terms of classes with Vorkink. Recalling the times spent with Vorkink, Chan was still heartened by how much he cares about the well-being each individual student. “I was perhaps (in)famous for lingering into his well-decorated classroom way before class starts, and we would talk about anything from the documents of his travels on the wall, or the music of Wagner, or how much vegetables I’m eating,” Chan said. “I wouldn’t be thinking about majoring in philosophy without this friend and mentor.”
Senior Alexis Gorfine shared a similar experience, saying, “I have gone to him for random issues I have, and he has been very willing to talk with me and help me figure out my life.”
Many of the materials read in Vorkink’s philosophy class are challenging, and even contain texts normally assigned to college students. As the instructor of one of the few secondary schools that offer religion and philosophy courses in the country, Vorkink considers it important to teach philosophy and religion to this relatively young age group.
“There’s something special about that ‘betwixt and between age’ of people the age of the student body at the Academy. They’re not yet fully formed adults, yet they are no longer their parents’ child,” Vorkink said. “The openness to new ideas and new thinking makes them a very exciting age group to work with when it comes to philosophical and religious issues.”
Several years ago, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the topic of “why it is important to teach religion and philosophy to people such as those we have around our Harkness tables.” He explained that the reason why it is crucial for high school students to discuss philosophy is that “this is a special age group who are open to the topic of coming ‘to know thyself,’ a self more open at this age than any other age.”
Thus, he believes that “it is a special task for teachers in our department to help each student in their charge know themselves better both philosophically and religiously.” It is with this belief that Vorkink continues to inspire students both in and out of the classroom, igniting their curiosity for philosophy, religion and learning in general.
With decades of experience teaching at the Academy, Vorkink has some life advice to share with Exonians: “Life is not lived linearly, in a straight line; take risks, embrace the unexpected, take chances and fail often then fail better,” he said. “Go see the world, especially to experience the cultures of places less fortunate than us.”
Vorkink’s role as a teacher, mentor and friend to the students has inspired generations of Exonians, and he remains an invaluable presence at the Academy.