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May 2003 | | |||
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Letter from Calvin professor Quentin Schultze Thanks for caring enough about Christian higher education to initiate a series of articles on Christian colleges and universities. Unfortunately, your first piece, on Calvin College, is embarrassingly poor reporting. This summer I will be an instructor at the World Journalism Institute. I might use your article as an example of “Christian” yellow journalism. I've been a professor at Calvin College since 1982. I know the institution very well. The Calvin you portrayed is not the college I have known for the past two decades. Are we academically excellent? Yes—thanks for getting that correct. Are we slipping our Biblical moorings? Not a chance. A couple of personal quotes from students on campus hardly make your case. How could you carry a story based on such weak evidence? Your report made broad claims about the historical direction of the college based on a kind of McCarthyesque “guilt by association.” For example, a Web link on a class Web site does not endorse the content of the material found at the link; your reporter would have to review the course syllabus, interview the professor and even sit in on the class to discover if the off-campus material is being accepted or critiqued. I wonder what your reporter would have thought if she visited our 600,000-volume library. No doubt there are many books there that she would not have liked either. Also, personal quotes from a student do not necessarily reflect what “the college” believes—only what one student told your journalist, for whatever reason. Our students come to Calvin from a wide variety of church backgrounds, and not surprisingly they do not always agree about how to live faithfully. Instead of forcing students into a narrow-minded “Christian political correctness,” we encourage them to dig deeply into the Scriptures, into the history of the church, and into the Reformed tradition, so that they might come to a wise and discerning faith. We encourage them to wisdom and righteousness, and admonish them when they go astray. Regarding campus concerts, our on-campus discussions with performers are not a “patina,” as your reporter claimed. We have worked for years to create a context where visiting musicians and other performers are willing to engage in serious, worldview-related discussion with students and staff—rather than allowing groups (including “Christian” performers) to breeze through campus, grab their honoraria, and head for the next venue. We are strongly committed to engaging contemporary culture directly and discerningly. I can’t believe that your reporter would refer glibly to this kind of sustained cultural engagement as a patina. Even more disheartening, your reporter says that during “Ribbon Week” our “heterosexual students wear ribbons to show their support for those who desire to sleep with people of the same sex.” Wow, what an unbelievably biased statement disconnected from reality! Where is the campus-wide evidence for this absurd interpretation of Ribbon Week? The fact is that the Christian Reformed Church, which “owns and operates” Calvin College, has encouraged the entire denomination to love gays and lesbians even while not accepting the sinful practices of some of them. Obedient to its founding denomination, the college has tried to respond faithfully to the call to be a loving community rather than to allow itself to become an inhospitable place that rejects particular members not because of their sins but because of stereotypes and knee-jerk reactions. I am astonished by your reporter’s disingenuous prose on this matter. In fact, I think you got the story of Calvin College backwards: we now are more firmly rooted in God's Word and in the Reformed tradition. We have replaced the insularity of Dutch tribalism, for all of its benefits at one time, with a vibrant Kuyperianism/Calvinism that nurtures a faithful engagement with culture, science, technology and the arts in every venue of college life, from classrooms to offices, chapel and student activities. Certainly Calvin College is not a perfect institution in a fallen world. So do hold us accountable to God as needed. But please do so responsibly, avoiding the kind of yellow journalism that infected your premiere article on Christian colleges. In the meantime, please permit me to hold you accountable for poor reporting that sounds false alarms rather than digs honestly into the heart of the subject. Sincerely, | ||||
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