|
Mullinax is ready for a talk around campus with just about anyone. Photo by Rachel Connor.
Marc Mullinax: Dynamic On Campus, Quiet Life at Home
Story and Photo By Rachel Connor
It is 11 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and Professor Marc Mullinax is sporting his trademark bowtie and a scarf around his neck because it is cold outside. He has already cordially welcomed his guest and reclines, just slightly, back in his swivel chair, ready for questions.
On his office walls hang several different fabrics from India, a poster of Malcolm X and many papers with quotes from people like Richard Bach: “Argue for your limitations and they are yours.”
Many framed diplomas boast his years of study to receive a doctorate in theology. The shelves of several stocked bookcases reveal his intense love of reading, and atop his cluttered desk sits one of his favorite books, Awareness by Anthony DeMello.
“It is a book about waking up; I tell my students not to read it for more than 15 minutes at a time,” Mullinax explains. “It’s one of the most dangerous books I know.” Mullinax has become quite a fixture at MHC for the past eight years, and he continues to be a dynamic personality. He is an associate professor of religion and teaches several Liberal Arts in Action classes. He dispels limitations and excuses.
Mullinax’s love for travel has led him to over 30 countries, including a camping trip around the world in his senior year at Mars Hill College, where he wrote 1,000 words for every 100 days of his trip. He has taught in Korea and been a youth pastor for Korean children in New York. While in New York, he was a Catholic school teacher until “the school decided that my not being Catholic was a problem.” He also worked in law several years before coming to MHC at the turn of the millennium.
In the classroom, Mullinax says that he plays “the devil’s advocate”; his goal is to make his students realize that “if you have faith, you also have to think.” He demonstrates his point by pulling out two tennis balls – representing faith and reason – and holding one in each hand.
“I tell my students that ‘if the one ball drops, the conversation suffers.’” “His teaching style involves open-discussions and thought-provoking questions; he challenges you to look at different perspectives,” one student commented.
Mullinax said he blames society for “wanting us to act a certain way, practice religion a certain way, eat a certain way, dress a certain way, do sex a certain way.”
“The most dangerous question a person can ask about life is, ‘Is this it?’” he remarks. “And the answer has got to be, ‘No.’”
Views like these are why Mullinax said he is known as a controversial teacher; for him, ignorance is the opposite of bliss and “being good enough is the enemy of best.”
One student said that Mullinax challenges his LAA students to explore every avenue of different religions, even if Mullinax himself does not believe in them.
What gets him up in the morning? What makes him keep going? Mullinax’s response is clear and almost immediate, “The students.” Nothing is better than feeling that he can walk into the cafeteria and be accepted at almost any table, he said. Mullinax smiles and remarks, “There are a lot of really great people here – fantastic people – and they happen to be students.”
Many students only know him as “the controversial LAA teacher.” They might guess that he was considered “the nerd” throughout his youth, but he does not seem the stereotypical nerd.
They have not heard of his triumph over cancer just two years ago or his cycling career that earned him two 2nd place North Carolina championship titles. They probably do not attend the parties that he DJ’s nor have they heard of the spinning, also known as indoor cycling, classes he teaches at the YMCA in Asheville every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
When he goes home every night, he needs time to unwind and think about the day’s activities. Mullinax commented, “I need a dark room for about an hour, and then I am OK.”
He makes time in the evenings to call his girlfriend, who he says “is just delightful,” but when they get off the phone he is ready for bed because he gets up every morning between 4:30 and 6.
Mullinax is a prime example of one who lives each day to its full capacity. He does not waste his time laboring over past mistakes. Though he is not for regrets, he said his biggest failure is that “I should have written a book by now.”
“I also want to learn how to speak Spanish and how to love people better,” he adds.
He continually pushes himself to encounter new experiences, so that he may grasp a better understanding of this life.
Mullinax leads a quiet “life of the mind,” yet this self-proclaimed introvert lives to have conversations with any person will engage with him. He said his door is always open for a walk around campus to discuss life’s questions. He lives by the philosophy: “If the unexamined life is not worth living, then the examined life is worth dying for.”
| 
