From the Manor • What the President is Reading

Spring 2006

The vice presidents and I recently read the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Our reading as a group is primarily nonfiction. However, since Ms. Robinson was on the roster for the April 2006 Festival of Faith and Writing, Gilead was an excellent choice.

The story is one of loneliness, fears, faithfulness, love and grace in a small Iowa community in 1956. The narrator is a 75-year-old Calvinist pastor who remarried late in life, had a son and now faces death from heart disease. He gently and patiently writes his own story of family and faith as a legacy for his 7-year-old son. Some have called the book a modern parable, some a sermon or confession. Each of these descriptions fit.

Gilead is a quiet story of honest piety, even amid doubt — a generational narrative — as Pastor Ames honestly seeks to know God’s will and guidance as his temporal life slips away from him. We learn of God’s faithfulness even as we confront our own fears, mistakes and weaknesses. In this literary tapestry of life, we see the thread of God’s grace. We see the hope and assurance — our only comfort — that we “belong body and soul, in life and in death to our faithful savior, Jesus Christ,” as we have learned from Heidelberg Catechism, Answer 1.

Fall 2005

The relationship with the Board of Trustees and the work it does are vitally important to the college leadership and the college community. Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board, by the internationally renowned CEO and best-selling author Max De Pree, offers an excellent, comprehensive look at how the board of a nonprofit can best work. De Pree clearly and succinctly lays out the marks of an effective board in terms of structure, rules, work and relationships. He also offers excellent advice on the roles of board chairpersons, trustees and presidents. De Pree’s objectives and suggestions are directly applicable to the administration and faculty at Calvin. We can learn much from this book and will use it as the centerpiece for discussion at our board retreat in October 2006.

Spring 2005

The vice presidents and I recently read and discussed Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport by Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and former Calvin professor of philosophy. Richard Mouw was my professor at Calvin in the 1970s, and in the years since he has become my close friend. Since 1993, I have also served on the board of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Mouw’s brief, accessible book on Calvinism offers a clear overview of the basic distinctives of Calvinism. It clears up distorted views and lays out an important model of how to live as Reformed Christians. Mouw emphasizes that a Calvinist worldview is based on God’s sovereign rule over all things, and that we depend totally on his grace and mercy for our salvation. Mouw’s Calvinism places the emphasis on God’s call to live out the biblical worldview in every area of life and to see all aspects of life as directly under God’s rule. He highlights our call to be caretakers of creation and to make a difference through how we live each day at work, at home, in our communities, and in our churches.

Mouw shows us a warm face of Calvinism that can speak relevantly and compellingly today, and he models how to engage with gentleness and respect those who hold different perspectives.

Fall 2004

This spring the vice presidents and I read and discussed Philip Jenkins’ book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (OUP, 2002), which explores the rapid growth and rising importance of Christianity in the global South and East, and among the new immigrants in North America. The great majority of Christians now live in the non-Western world, where churches are growing and are full of vitality, while churches are declining in the North Atlantic nations. Among immigrant communities in the United States and Canada, the new Christianity is thriving and making church life ever more dynamic.

Jenkins talks of a new form of territorial Christianity, like the old Christian Europe, rising out of Africa and Latin America, and poses it as a growing source of conflict with Islam. We thought that this scenario was a bit overdrawn, given that the new forms of Christianity are making for more religious diversity, not church-state uniformity. The more likely conflict we identified was between the energetic, pentecostally oriented “Book of the Acts” Christian movements and the older churches of the increasingly post-Christian global North, which have become deeply accommodated to modern worldviews.

For additional reading on this topic, look for Provost Joel Carpenter’s new book, co-edited with Lamin Sanneh, The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West, and the World (OUP, forthcoming). The book focuses on the changing character of Christianity. In the introduction and conclusion, Sanneh uses the current Anglican debates to highlight the challenge that these changes present to Northern liberal, modernizing forms of the faith.

Spring 2004

Given recent campus discussions of racism, diversity and cross-cultural engagement, the president and vice presidents recently read The Anatomy of Racial Inequality by Glenn Loury (Harvard University Press) and used it as a springboard for discussion about racism in America and the implications for Calvin. Loury, professor of economics at Boston University, argues that though “race” is a social construct, a product of the particularly American situation, it is embedded in the social consciousness of American life and conveys an ingrained stigma that disadvantages African Americans and others, relative to the dominant white culture. The Calvin faculty and Board of Trustees recently adopted a plan, From Every Nation, to address issues of race and diversity and to foster a worldwide view of life at Calvin — underscoring Calvin’s commitment to be a hospitable place for students, staff and faculty from all racial, ethnic and nationality groups.

Fall 2003

The president and the vice presidents recently read and discussed The Fabric of Faithfulness by Steve Garber, Calvin’s dean of the chapel fellow. Garber has spent two years in the Calvin community teaching, studying, speaking, and writing. The president states, “The book prompted an excellent discussion on the role that a Calvin education plays in ‘weaving together belief and behavior during the university years.’ Garber highlights how important it is that college students discover a worldview which is sufficient for their questions and crises of the following 20 years; that they meet a teacher who incarnates that worldview; and that they make lifetime choices to live out their worldview in the company of a committed community that provides a network of stimulation and support” (paraphrased from pp. 37–38). The president and the vice presidents agreed that these themes resonate with experiences in their own lives and that we must continue, as an institution, to encourage and enable such experiences in the lives of Calvin students.

Spring 2003

The President's Cabinet is reading Leading Change by Harvard Business School Professor of Leadership, Emeritus John P. Kotter. "We are studying the essential stages in the process of organizational change in order to develop practical steps for implementing the goals set out in our strategic plan," said Calvin president Gaylen Byker. Last fall the Cabinet and the Board of Trustees discussed these goals in the context of Jim Collins' book Good to Great. "The insights from Leading Change are helping us chart the steps for improving Calvin College in creative ways and securing the resources required to accomplish this," he said.

Fall 2002

The Calvin College Board of Trustees is reading Good to Great, a national bestselling book by business writer Jim Collins, in preparation for its fall Board meetings. "I hope this book and subsequent discussions at the retreat will inspire the Board to think about the large issues that face the college, to examine more carefully their roles as trustees, and to examine the leadership, financial needs, enrollment trends and endowment as compared to other institutions of higher learning," President Byker said.