When Paul McNulty talks about his upcoming move to Charleston, South Carolina, it’s easy to get excited for him. This month he will conclude his 11-year tenure as president of Grove City College, and he and his wife plan to settle into a new life in the same city as one of his three daughters and her family. He looks forward to joining her in worship at Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA), and being involved in the lives of his grandchildren.
McNulty came to Grove City College after a legal career that included serving as chief counsel during the Clinton impeachment, chief prosecutor for the September 11 investigations, and chief operating officer for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also been a PCA ruling elder for 30 years, serving first at McLean Presbyterian Church, then New Hope PCA in Fairfax, Virginia, which he helped to plant. He attends Hillcrest Presbyterian Church in Volant, Pennsylvania.
Grove City College, while founded by Presbyterians and often led by Presbyterians, has at times experienced the theological drift seen in mainline denominations. When McNulty came to campus as a freshman in 1976, the college administration had recently begun hiring faculty to help the school align more closely with its intellectual and theological roots. ByFaith featured McNulty in a 2022 article on PCA members who also lead colleges.
McNulty spoke with byFaith’s Megan Fowler, who is a Grove City College graduate, about the changes he has seen at an institution that both shaped him and was in turn shaped by his leadership. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Grove City as an institution has undergone a pretty dramatic change in its values in the last 50 years. And you figured into that in some interesting ways. Could you go over how the culture, and values, ethos of this institution have changed?
[In the 1970s] Grove City was experiencing change in the eyes of [board president] J. Howard Pew in a way that he thought was not consistent with the school’s longstanding history. And the more you read about Isaac Ketler, the more you know that, yes, there really was a lot of intentionality around being a distinctively Christian college. So [Pew] brought [Charles] MacKenzie on as president. Pew died that summer, and MacKenzie showed up in the fall. Now the person who hired him was gone, and his mission was to bring the college back, which is what Pew told him to do. Charles MacKenzie labored for 20 years, bringing in new faculty and reaffirming Grove City’s Christian and conservative identity, but particularly its Christian mission.
I showed up in the fall of ‘76. MacKenzie had about four or five years of bringing in some new faces, and some of those new faces were the key mentors for me as a freshman student. Growing up as a Roman Catholic in a working class community in Pittsburgh, I had no idea what a Christian worldview was. I had really barely read the Bible. I became a Christian in the early years of high school, but really hadn’t made any progress in Christian formation at that point. At Grove City, I was exposed to Andrew Hoffecker and some of these real stalwarts on campus that were new hires. And they had an enormous impact on my life. And so MacKenzie took that work all the way through to the 1990s and has the big Supreme Court fight in the middle of all that.
After college, I was busy pursuing my calling as a lawyer, but very much of the mind that I had to do that as a Christian and thinking Christianly about public policy. And I became a PCA ruling elder at age 26, and for 28 years, I was also a nonstop ruling elder in the PCA. All that was happening in my life and was very much the result of the influences that occurred in the late 70s.
In 2004, I joined the Grove City College board of trustees, and I had 10 years to see where Grove City is. And when the college then did its search in 2013, 2014 for a new president, even though I was very much engaged with my legal practice in Washington, I immediately thought of that Christian identity, that work that MacKenzie had done, and that opportunity to come back to my alma mater and clarify, emphasize that we are an authentically Christian college.
That’s the narrative that had started in a really distinctive way in the early 70s and what has been very much on my mind. And of course, a sweet part of this is MacKenzie was still alive when I came. He was very much aware of what was on my mind and heart. It was on his mind and heart too. We had an opportunity to connect nicely together about that.
When we talked to the college in 2022, you said that you want to help students and help the college be a place of peacemaking. Is that something that you still see a need for, creating that identity for Grove City College as a place of peacemaking?
Yeah, for sure. I do have a lot of concern about that, not so much because I see a lack of appreciation for peace in our community. It’s just the opposite. I see our students today as interested in understanding how to live faithfully in this world, which involves a large dose of peace. I see that interest as stronger than maybe I’ve seen it in my 11 years because the political environment is so difficult and, frankly, unappealing to them. And so they’re wondering how to navigate their relationships with others and how to think in faithful Christian ways about things in the midst of so much conflict with limited role models for how to do that. In some ways, the challenge has gotten bigger since we talked [in 2022]. And election cycles don’t seem to help that.
It’s been a joy, by the way, having Mike Pence on campus because he really tries to demonstrate an alternative way in his language and his Scripture-first approach to answering questions and his extraordinary effort to try to put forward a picture of what it looks like to be a Christian in public life. And the students have responded to it enthusiastically. It’s a little bit of an indication of their desire to see something that is nobler and more inspiring in the political realm.
I think that this is going to be an ongoing challenge for a school like Grove City, to be conservative in the historic and traditional sense, but to always put Christ first and understand how that impacts our thinking. It’s gonna be harder and harder to do that well.
Our challenge is different from Covenant College’s, for example. With a denominational school, a lot is spelled out in the church’s standards and controls. But there’s some latitude for the Christian mind within that set institutional structure. I see this with Geneva as well. But Grove City is non-denominational and represents a fairly wide variety of Christian doctrines, so it needs to continually find its common language. That’s been our challenge for a long time.
When you think about your 11 years here, what have been some of the things you have loved the most about being president, either moments you remember or just parts of the job you really enjoyed?
When I think about the experience, there have been four pillars in what we’ve been trying to do. The first and foremost is the Christian identity and to strengthen that, to clarify that, to affirm that it applies to everything we do, that it’s just the nature of the soul of the campus. The second thing has been building relationships with the students. Thirdly, building academic strength, and that involves bringing on people like Carl Trueman or beefing up our biblical and religious studies department, adding master’s programs and a nursing program, and renovating Rockwell Hall. And then fourthly, the general student experience, and I put a lot of emphasis on things like athletics and dining and trying to make it an enjoyable community life.
When I think about what I’ve enjoyed the most, I would say that the second category of relationships is something I did not spend much time thinking about before I took the job and didn’t have a lot of expectations in that area. But it’s been incredibly rewarding, and what I’ll miss the most is just the opportunity to have an impact on students’ lives on a day-to-day basis. I started off as a father, and now I’m kind of the grandfather figure. What a blessing that is. It’s just amazing.
On the student experience, our focus has been on new programs and creating great memories.The football story has been maybe the single most encouraging and rewarding experience just because of the incredible transformation that has taken place in that area. In 2017, we were 0 and 33 when we won that first game. Six years later, we finished the season 10 and 0. But more basically and more importantly, the story of becoming a faith-first culture and the Christian formation in the hearts of those young men is just amazing.
A moment that I’ll always remember is when we clinched the 10-0 season, we clinched the PAC title, and we were on the field. It was the second-to-last last game because we knew at that point we had clinched the title. And they gave me the game ball, and it’s the only time they’ve ever given a game ball to anybody. And holding that ball and to be with those guys and thinking about the journey we had been on. And how it happened, by putting Christ first in the program, that’s what made me just so excited.
Brenda and I have really enjoyed the campus life. We try to go to everything we can. And that’s been such a wonderful experience to see the excellence of their gifts being pulled together for success. It’s what makes an environment like this extremely special. It’s just that way of going about calling that’s very much a part of the Grove City culture to lean in and use gifts for the good of the larger community.
What do you and Brenda envision for your retirement?
There’s a PCA church in downtown Charleston called Redeemer that our daughter and son-in-law and two grandkids go to. We’re really excited about the opportunity to connect with that church. I want to do some writing. I’ve got some projects in mind, and I would love to be able to see those materialize. I’ll continue to work with the college’s Institute for Faith and Freedom and our new Center for Faith and Public life. But I think it’s healthy for me to have a season where I’m waiting a bit and trusting in God’s provision for how he can use me. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to know how he wants to use me, but it’s a little bit of a new step for me to pause for a moment and to wonder, Is it in this congregation? Is it in some other service that I haven’t had time to provide? That’s what I’m excited about as to how that might unfold.
This is a tricky stage in my life. I’ve always been very mission-oriented and very busy, and now people come to me and say, “Hey, congratulations on your retirement.” And I think, Oh, I’m not retiring. I still have a lot of energy. But yes, I am looking for flexibility, and Brenda and I do want to be able to take advantage of this season of life when we are in good health and able to be a more significant influence in the lives of our seven grandchildren.