Bob Bruttell ’01 has taught History of Social Ethics in University of Detroit Mercy’s Religious Studies department for 22 years as an adjunct faculty member. His classroom, he says, is a place for discussion of important issues on how people today can live together as human beings.
It is a topic that has interested him for a long time and one he feels needs to be discussed in meaningful ways.
A substantial gift to the University from Bruttell and his wife, Judy, will create the Robert A. and Judith A. Bruttell Religion & Social Ethics Expendable Program Fund, a gift that he hopes keeps those conversations going long into the future.
The funds will be used for an annual event series run by the Religious Studies department that will include lectures, workshops, panel discussion and opportunities for students to immerse themselves in the study of social ethics at conferences, field trips, seminars and tours of important sites.
It is an idea that has been brewing for a long time, long before Bruttell came to know University of Detroit Mercy as a graduate student.
“My career was 47 years owning and managing construction companies,” he said. But in the late ’80s he said he had a classic “midlife experience.”
“I felt I could go on successfully running construction companies, but that’s not all of me,” he said. A former seminary student, Bruttell felt a yearning to study theology. Detroit Mercy did not offer a theology degree, but they did offer a master’s degree in Religious Studies, so he enrolled.
What he found was a place alive with the types of discussions he wanted to have, many of them led by Professor George Pickering. The two became good friends.
Together they formed the Center for Religion and Community Values, a co-curricular program that brought in speakers, hosted ethical discussions and put out a yearly newsletter about these issues.
After Bruttell earned his master’s degree, Pickering asked whether he would like to teach at the University. Twenty-two years later, Bruttell still enjoys teaching.
The Center faded away many years ago, but Bruttell never forgot it. This gift is a way of reviving that lively learning environment.
“I have an interest in social ethics and what people make of religious values and how we can live together as a society,” Bruttell said. “We tell people they should be all that they can be, but the problem with that is that if you are only focused on yourself, you are not paying attention to what your role is in the bigger picture. You need a commitment to social values.”
He continued: “I care deeply about the world my grandchildren will grow up in. I care a lot about what the world will look like after I’m gone. So, I thought that if I was going to do something to make a difference, this University is the place I believe could make some impact on social ethics and the community.”
The center is also an extension of the work he does with the InterFaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit, an organization that came together in the aftermath of 9/11 to nurture interfaith connection, conciliation and education. Bruttell has worked with the organization since its beginning, serving on its leadership team.
And this work is also close to the heart of Judy, his wife of 42 years. A ceramic and graphic artist (he used to be her art fair roadie), she works with younger students at Christ the King Catholic School in Detroit, teaching art and helping the school find funding.
“She is really concerned about younger students,” Bruttell said. “Together we want to impact the world young people will come into, the ethical world in which they will thrive.”
Bruttell hopes this center will help shape the conversation concerning ethics.
“I think we are at a critical crossroads that, for me, feels like the one we were at in the 1960s,” he said. “Then, we were fighting a war that hardly anyone would say was the right thing to be doing, we were struggling with Jim Crow laws and segregation. In many ways separating from one another is the default. What we need to do is to regain a sense that what is best in living together is listening to all voices. I hope to be the person who catalyzes this discussion the way George Pickering did for me. That’s what I want other students to get — conversations about thinking and applying social values. It’s critical to learning how to live together.”
