It's not just that president Donald R. Eastman III will don a kilt and be piped into First Presbyterian Church or that dozens of academics in full regalia will accompany him.

For the occasion, Eastman has invited the Rev. Joanna Adams, a respected pastor, champion of the homeless and proponent of interfaith dialogue, to speak.

Eastman issued the invitation because he had heard Adams preach during his occasional visits to the Atlanta church where she was senior pastor.

He was impressed.

"Her sermons were the most meaningful public utterances I have heard in the past two decades," the new college president said this week.

"Sometimes he would drop me a note in response to a sermon I'd preached. And we just kind of became intellectual friends," Adams said during a telephone interview from her home in Chicago.

"So I was quite honored when he asked me to be a part of this new beginning for him and for Eckerd College."

Those present at today's ceremony to install Eastman as head of the liberal arts college can expect to be both inspired and challenged.

Adams' topic will be "Setting Out on the Journey of Faith." She will talk about Abraham and Sarah following God's instructions to leave their home "and not knowing where it was going to lead." She will point to Ruth and Naomi. She will liken the journey undertaken by Eckerd College, founded in 1958 as Florida Presbyterian College, to that of these biblical heroes.

"I think it's a school that has bravely set forth on a course that is a good one and now it is beginning a new chapter in its adventure," she said.

Adams, former senior pastor of the more than 2,000-member Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, recently embarked on an adventure of her own. After almost 40 years, she left Atlanta for Chicago to accept the position of co-pastor of that city's Fourth Presbyterian Church. The moving van left Atlanta a week ago, she said. On Wednesday, she had to contend with a Chicago temperature of 28 degrees.

"Talking about Abraham and Sarah setting out. ... You just have to have a spirit of adventure in life and trust God enough to take the first step," she said.

"If something good is going to happen in the future, you'll never know if you don't step out in faith."

From her new home, Adams shared some of her passions.

"In a world in which so many things have happened because of our hatred and distrust of people who are different from ourselves," interfaith dialogue is important, she said.

Christians and Jews should not feel threatened by the growth of America's Muslim community, Adams added.

"I don't see the increasing religious diversity in America as a threat but as a new opportunity for us to build bridges of understanding, to learn from one another," she said.

"I think the enemy of all religion is what I would identify as extreme fundamentalism. Hatred, violence in the name of God to destroy whoever one deems to be the unfaithful, that's the end of civilization. That's the end of peace. After Sept. 11, instead of being angry at all Muslims, I was in touch with my Muslim friend, who is an imam, and he and a rabbi and I put together an interfaith service so that together we could demonstrate that oneness of the human family."

Homelessness is another concern of the Atlanta native, who was the founding vice president and president of a day shelter for homeless children there and founding chairperson of the Atlanta Area Task Force on Homelessness.

"It is one of the great paradoxes of our time that we live in one of the most prosperous countries the world has ever known and yet we have so many millions who are hungry and homeless," Adams said.

In the 20 years since she has been fighting homelessness, the problem has become intractable, she said.

"Does that mean that we should stop trying? Does that mean that we should stop caring? No, it means that we should care more deeply," she said.

"One of my great worries right now is that there was an incredible, magnanimous outpouring of concern for those who were victims or survivors of Sept. 11, and yet the giving to charities and the involvement in volunteer activities for the kinds of suffering and ongoing social problems in America have diminished dramatically in recent months. The self-absorption, the fear are not good for our national soul."

Adams and her husband, Alfred Bernard Adams III, a partner in the law firm of Holland & Knight, have two children and one grandchild. She has a master of divinity degree from Columbia Theological Seminary and a bachelor's degree from Emory University. Her sermons, like the one delivered today at Eastman's installation, are biblically grounded, she said.

"I really do believe it's the role of the pastor, the minister, to be the proclaimer of God's word for today, because it's God's word, not our own," she said.

"The biblical story tells us that the world is given to us as a gift, that God is its creator, not human beings. Preaching, then, is to replace the very limited vision of the world that we create, and I think you do that sermon after sermon, story after story."

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