Three St. Andrews graduates were sitting in a bar.

This isn’t a joke.

We had just gone to a 50th wedding anniversary in a Presbyterian church hall for a wonderful couple who had nothing to do with St. Andrews. We had come from New York, from Nashville, from D.C. to celebrate them. Afterward, we found ourselves in that bar in Louisville, Kentucky.

We had graduated from St. Andrews more than 50 years earlier, in the late 1960s and early 70s. And we all had been successful in our careers, all called in different ways, we decided, because of our experiences at St. Andrews.

St. Andrews hadn’t been the first-choice college for any of us. One was offered a full scholarship that made the difference, one’s mother was adamant about his attending St. Andrews, and the third had seminary on his mind. All three of us were going to a Presbyterian college from church backgrounds and despite the anti-war fervor, the civil rights turmoil, and the drinking and drug use of the era, we all came out of St. Andrews with our minds fixed on justice.

What was it that St. Andrews gave us that gave us that path?

First, we all said unanimously, it was C and C, Christianity and Culture, that fabulous four-year course that moved through fertility myths, Jewish prophets, the Bible as history, political and religious upheavals, art that mimicked society, philosophical and political analysis up to Herman Kahn, futurism and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

The multicultural experience so unlike our siloed high schools, the openness to discuss the why as well as the how and when, the deepened understanding of our world in the present informed by the past religious, historical, political and social mores over thousands of years.

Early on, the Epic of Gilgamish presented us stories we thought had originated in the Hebrew Bible. Who knew the Bible had earlier influences from what we had been taught were pagan religions? Such new knowledge shook us, but there was more to come.

Then carefully laid out over those four years, we encountered the likes of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Marx. and Engels. Challenging us in the C and C syllabus were these words, one example of new ways of thinking that drove some of us forward, to make contributions as we exploded out of St. Andrews: “A new heaven and a new earth created anew by God in the Judeo-Christian tradition became a new earth produced by materialistic historical process. Man’s task is to recognize the inevitable tide of history and to find his freedom within the deterministic nature of the process.”

And the terrific professors.

Alexander, Bayes, Prust, Bushoven, Harvin, Joyner and others. Stories and anecdotes tumbled out into the conversations. Ideas we still carry with us more than 50 years later. One of us remembered Maimonides, known for his messages about faith, who said, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” And who had just visited his birthplace in Spain. Those teachers nourished our minds and our spirits, permanently.

All three remembered dorm life and those activities of the non-curricular life. Political work, writing and producing the Lance, now available digitized and the source of one’s research for a book that includes life in St. Andrews, attending anti-war demonstrations on campus and in the streets around Ft. Bragg, the road trip to Washington we all took to participate in the Moratorium March to End the War in Vietnam in Washington. D.C., and the impact of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on the entire campus.

We remembered, along with the Lance, the alternative, underground newspaper PreDawn, where students expressed a more edgy, radical voice in opposition to the Vietnam War and racial discrimination both at the college and throughout U.S. society, fostering debate throughout campus.

We remembered, and mourned again, a friend and loved one, gone for 40 years, but still present through our memories. He would have loved that conversation. He was the one who quietly went to meet with a military recruiter who came to campus and blocked the entrance door to the office with his wheelchair, tying him up for hours discussing why the Army couldn’t accept a recruit who used a wheelchair.

One remembered attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He participated in the East Harlem Urban Year, living in el barrio and becoming involved with jail visitation. His initial summer he took classes at Union and worked with Dr. Daniel Day Williams, the foremost process theologian in the United States. Once the fall curriculum began, he was in Dr. Williams’ course on Contemporary Conceptions of God.

For two weeks, he sat in class and absorbed the teaching and discussion. Then Dr. Williams asked him to join him in his office after class. Never a good sign when the professor wants to speak with you after class! After taking a seat, the question came from the good professor: “Why aren’t you participating in this class?” The student responded: “Dan, I am in a classroom full of students from some of the finest colleges and universities in the country, not to mention the guy from Oxford, nor the guy from the Jewish Theological Seminary down the street. I attended a small liberal arts college in N.C. which was almost literally in a cotton patch. What could I contribute?” Daniel Day Williams looked at the young man and said the following: “You know as much, if not more, than anyone else in the room. You know more Martin Heidegger than I do. I want you to participate in this class. The students and I need to hear from you.”

We had all spent time trying to figure out how to incorporate spiritual direction in our lives. One completed seminary and turned to a career leading prison reform efforts, opposing mass incarceration and the death penalty and ministering to prisoners and their families. One went to seminary but left, drawn to China to examine his faith in Maoism and finding it lacking, then on to lead intercultural communication and international education with students in China, Hawa’i, Austria and Japan. He has written several books on Asia and the Pacific. The third had to choose between journalism school and law and chose law; she has had a long career in government and private practice fighting against racial and disability discrimination.

So all of us justice-driven by our St. Andrews ’experiences, all still incorporating what we learned there into our lived experience, and all, grateful. We may not know what we had when we were there, but we know it now.

— Joe Ingle has spent more than 50 years working for prison reform and abolition of the death penalty following his graduation from seminary. His books include “Slouching Toward Tyranny: Mass Incarceration, Death Sentences and Racism” and his forthcoming “Too Close to the Flame”. He has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

— Ed Porter just published, through the St. Andrews press, his new memoir, “From Calvin to Mao and Beyond,” chronicling how his generation evolved through struggles against racism, the Vietnam War, and myriad forms of oppression, both at home and internationally. He is professor emeritus at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University.

— Sara Lee Pratt retired from her position as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2015 and now is a practicing civil rights lawyer working in Washington, D.C. She focuses on challenges to institutional barriers that limit access to housing, lending and insurance and to ending policies and practices that discriminate based on race, national origin and disability.