By Abram Van Engen

Guest Writer

Reason guides good deliberation. I fear, however, that this article enters a debate that has gone beyond reason. I fear that the issue of Calvin's third faculty requirement has become more a personal matter than a matter of reasoned principles - and this applies to people on both sides. I wish to return to reason, to reexamine this requirement, the Reformed tradition, and the college that embraces both. I wish to reconsider because I am affected. As a student, I have an interest in Calvin's religious character. As a student, I am affected when faculty leave. As an affected student, I have composed a list of reasons why Calvin's third faculty requirement should be eliminated, or at the very least, greatly loosened.

Calvin has three hiring requirements for all faculty: 1) Affirm Reformed creeds and confessions; 2) Be an active member of a Reformed church; and 3) Send all kids to Christian school for grades K-12. The first two make Calvin a Reformed institution - theologically and actively. The last does not.

Nothing in Reformed creeds and confessions requires attendance at Christian schools. If this requirement were in those documents, the college would not need to state it separately; faculty already sign the creeds and confessions. No CRC clergy are required to send their children to Christian schools. No CRC member is so required. Calvin College alone requires the children of Reformed parents to attend Christian school. Calvin College alone believes this requirement integral to being Reformed. Reformed churches do not.

Some worry that losing this requirement begins the slide into secularism. That might be the case if this requirement helped make Calvin Reformed. It does not. Students are taught by and interact with faculty - not the faculty's children. All faculty, regardless of where they send their children to school, will still affirm Reformed doctrine, will still attend Reformed churches, and will still hold to the Reformed worldview. Calvin will still be Reformed in its essence and activity; it will still have ``the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the very matter that makes a college a college - what goes on between a teacher and a student.''1 Those who oppose this requirement do not in the least oppose Calvin's Reformed character. Neither do we oppose Christian schooling. Rather, we encourage and support Christian schooling without going so far as to require it - just as the Christian Reformed Church does. A chasm separates supporting from requiring - a chasm the CRC recognizes.

Another distinction must also be made between Christian education and Christian schooling. Some rightly argue that it is important for children to be imbued with a Christian worldview. Calvin turns that requirement into a requirement concerning Christian schools. This has an ironic effect: the school that trusts its faculty to give 4,000 students a Christian education does not trust the same faculty to educate their own children. If a faculty member's child went to public school, it can be reasonably (and respectfully) assumed that this parent will supplement such schooling with Christian education. If the school can't trust this, how can they trust the faculty to be alone in a classroom, educating us?

If Calvin believes Christian schooling is the only way to a Christian education, then Calvin should create a fourth requirement; it should require that all faculty members have gone to Christian schools. How can they give us a Christian education if they have not received one? All faculty at Calvin have received a Christian education. All are in the process of giving us a Christian education. Not all have attended Christian schools.

With these distinctions established, the larger issue of Reformed principles can be addressed. Some argue that faculty members cannot be truly Reformed if they do not support this requirement. Reformed principles do not agree. In the line of Abraham Kuyper - which Calvin embraces - the Reformed tradition has long supported the principle of sphere sovereignty: the family, the school, and the church are separate spheres, headed by separate authorities, all beneath the sovereignty of God. Each sphere comprises ``its own domain. And because each comprises its own domain, each has its own Sovereign within its bounds.''2 For the authority of the school to infringe on the authority of the family - as it does now - is to go against a Reformed tradition that is as old as this college. Kuyper recognized that ``all these spheres engage each other,'' but warned against ``the danger that one sphere in life may encroach on its neighbor''3 - the danger Calvin has fallen into.

Some claim, however, that faculty knowingly and willingly give up authority on this topic when they agree to teach at Calvin. They cannot debate a requirement they have agreed to. Yet every structure must have within itself the possibility of transformation. If not, people will agree to rules they can never evaluate. They agree, but cannot know whether what they agree to is right.

The principle of transforming structure is Reformed. It is so Reformed, in fact, that it comprises the third phrase of Calvin's mission statement: ``Reformed and always reforming.'' Agreement must come with evaluation. The issue can and should be debated.

Agreeing or disagreeing with the policy is one matter. Yet some argue that faculty members can't be truly Reformed if they don't send their children to Christian schools, regardless of whether they have to or not. Again, the Reformed tradition does not agree. The Reformed tradition has long embraced ministry and engagement. It has established doctrines of total depravity (which equally applies to Christian schooling) and common grace (which equally applies to public schooling). All the world must be redeemed. A far deeper and older tradition than Christian schooling - one that has always guided the Reformed Church - is engagement with the culture, discernment, the agency of renewal, and ministry. Moreover, this tradition is established in the creeds and confessions.

Such a fundamental principle is supported to the point of public schooling in the Reformed Church in America. Not only does the RCA encourage public schooling, it also falls within the bounds of ``Reformed'' that Calvin embraces. Therefore, to say Christian schooling is a Reformed principle is flat wrong. Christian schooling is not embraced by the Reformed tradition generally; it is enforced only by a cultural principle of the Christian Reformed Church. It is not even enforced by CRC doctrine; it is only enforced by CRC social and cultural pressure, and this only in certain CRC churches. In another words, this requirement finds its foundations not in the CRC, but only in a specific, cultural sect of the CRC. Ask Synod.

Calvin is much bigger than this sect. Calvin has opened its arms to the entire Reformed tradition, and it has always been based in the entire CRC structure - which is precisely why this requirement has created such tension. This requirement ties Calvin down to a narrow interpretation of Reformed tradition while the college attempts to grow.

If Calvin wishes to be a Reformed institution, it must make room for all Reformed principles - including those embraced by the RCA and Presbyterian churches. In other words, to call itself Reformed, Calvin must give up its Christian schooling requirement; otherwise it must call itself what it really is, a sect of the CRC; not entirely CRC, and certainly not Reformed. Calvin should stop trying to embrace the Reformed tradition while at the same time pushing it away, forcing it into a single, social conception.

Some argue, however, that faculty who teach in a Christian school should at the same time embrace Christian schooling for their children. This is the argument for consistency. Ignoring for a moment the distinction between ``should'' and ``have to,'' we can see that the argument itself is flawed. First, Calvin does not require a complete Christian education; it does not require that children of faculty go to Christian colleges or graduate schools, both of which are extremely formative times in a person's faith and intellect. If Calvin truly believed in this principle of consistency, it might at least offer a graduate school option, but it doesn't. Calvin only requires consistency to a point, which, in itself, is inconsistent.

The point at which it stops requiring consistency is worth noting. Calvin cannot require Christian schooling in college and graduate school because it infringes on the authority of the state. Children are not children after age 18, and parents cannot tell them where to go. Thus, Calvin's inconsistency on this issue reveals again the functioning principle of sphere sovereignty. The school cannot infringe on the authority of the state. It can get away with infringing on the authority of the family, but in doing so, it still violates the same Kuyperian principle.

Furthermore, the argument for consistency ignores the idea of God's call. God calls faculty to work here. That does not mean that God calls them to be champions of Christian schooling across the board. God has given them a task - to give a Christian education to those students who choose to receive it at Calvin - and they have taken it up. The school then gives them another task, essentially claiming that it is an extension of God's call. In the end, though, it is only the call of administrators, standing on no authority of church doctrine and violating Reformed tradition as they reach beyond their bounds.

Yet, says the school, one must consider Calvin's character 20 or 30 years in the future. No one can guarantee, they claim, that the elimination of this requirement - or even its loosening - will not begin the complete loss of Calvin's religious character. But they are wrong; we can guarantee it. This requirement's elimination is in keeping with Reformed principles. In fact, it allows the college to be fully Reformed. Touching it in no way diminishes Calvin's religious character or has any affect on other requirements. Instead, eliminating it embraces the Reformed tradition as a whole, not just a sect of CRC cultural heritage.

More importantly, however, we have seen this reasoning enacted. We have seen a time when this requirement was loosely enforced, and we have seen Calvin's religious character stand secure and unthreatened. Administrators point out that some faculty had drifted from the policy when President Byker arrived. They fail, however, to show in what way Calvin was less religious. They fail to explain the danger Calvin dallied in. The failure in this case is reasonable, for the danger did not exist. Calvin was as Reformed - or more Reformed - than it is now.

Furthermore, we have the example of other schools. Several very religious, very Reformed Christian colleges do not have this requirement, including Trinity Christian, King's University College, and The Institute for Christian Studies. All of these schools have maintained their identity without the requirement Calvin considers so essential. Furthermore, if Calvin truly viewed Christian schooling as an issue of consistency, then it cannot balk when it comes to these schools. Calvin must stand before each of these Reformed schools and pronounce them inconsistent. It must pronounce them inconsistent in whatever area Calvin believes it has obtained its consistency - isolating itself still further from Reformed sister schools.

Administrators worry for Calvin's future. I worry too. I worry that the path on which it has been placed will turn away qualified Reformed teachers. This has already begun. We are not only losing those who are already here; we are also losing, by this requirement alone, those who would enhance Calvin's religious and educational life. How many RCA candidates, for example, turn away from a policy that denigrates the Reformed tradition they have been raised in? Other candidates, however, (and many current faculty at Calvin) still endorse Christian schooling. They simply do not want it to be required by a foreign authority - an authority that steps beyond its Kuyperian bounds - and so they turn away.

The adverse effects of this requirement can be seen most directly in Calvin's diversity, both in gender and in race. The school has granted a few exemptions for race, but only after the need was indicated by a racial incident. Faculty of color do not want to wait for experiences of racial prejudice before they can ask for an exemption. Prospective faculty will not take that chance. Moreover, the claim that diversity can, in some cases, obtain a special exemption still represents a form of racial discrimination - judging people's situation by the color of their skin. No one wishes to be judged this way. No one should be judged this way. Without this requirement, no one would have to be. This requirement turns diversity away at the door. The college's diversity and its growth, its potential, has been hindered in the name of a religious requirement the Reformed tradition and even CRC doctrine does not require.

Administrators worry about Calvin's future, but they have not fully considered future effects. By not moderating their position now, they are building a fervor beneath them - an agitation that stirs with frustration to be heard. President Byker has effectively shut down opposition, but who will contain the tension once he departs? By moderating now, President Byker would release some of the pressure that threatens a reaction more severe than it otherwise would be.

This lesson has been demonstrated in history. When Samuel Bartlett became president of Dartmouth College in 1877, he imposed a rigorous conservatism that stirred up contention beneath him. Bartlett ``saw Dartmouth College at serious risk, from cultural hostility without and naivete within. A secure maintenance of control was essential to her survival...''4 This strictly enforced control, however, built up such pressured resistance that when the president resigned in 1892, the college swung ``into a new religious liaison.''5 By such strict attempts to enforce the conservative character of Dartmouth, ``Bartlett both closed and discredited a long period of Congregational dominance at Dartmouth.''6

In an analogous case, George Marsden recounts how fundamentalists in the Scopes Trial pushed away any and all opposition, thereby combining Liberal Protestantism with open agnosticism. No room was left for moderation. Liberal Protestants, who once ``had been the principal buffer against the spread of militant agnosticism in universities,''7 were forced into union with those they had previously buffered. At one time they stood between the fundamentalists and the agnostics, wanting to listen, to compromise, and to moderate, but eventually Liberal Protestants were pushed into alignment with the agnostics by a fundamentalism that would brook no disagreement. In the end, the reaction was severe: ``fundamentalists pushed the mainline Protestants towards unqualified tolerance''8 - a tolerance that until then had been tempered.

These cases represent examples from history to consider. Worrying about the future means listening now. Maintaining principles involves moderation.

This requirement, founded in a specific social and cultural sect of the CRC, narrows a college that otherwise strives to be broad. Calvin calls itself Reformed. Calvin hires members of RCA churches. Calvin speaks of engaging and renewing the world. All of this Calvin must do with a chain on its ankles, tying it to a specific form of CRC sectarianism. That is why we call for the elimination of this requirement. We care for Calvin as a Reformed college. We care for Calvin's future.

To all those who believe this requirement is so essential, I ask simply, let it go. Let it go. Let Calvin grow. Let Calvin be Reformed.

This article calls for one of two responses from those who support the current policy: either they must show the reasoning presented here to be false, or they must change. As it stands, reason dictates that the current policy in no way enhances Calvin's religious character, but rather violates fundamental Reformed principles. As it stands, this required policy endangers Calvin's education, diversity, and even its Reformed character. If Calvin wishes to welcome Reformed fellowship, then let it welcome Reformed fellowship.

Thus, reason calls for the elimination of Calvin's third faculty requirement. I call now for response - either in words or in deeds.

1 Calvin Seerveld, ``What Makes a College Christian?'' in In the Fields of Glory, ed. Craig Bartholomew (Piquant: Toronto, 2000). p. 121. [emphasis is his]

2 Abraham Kuyper, ``Sphere Sovereignty,'' in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James Bratt (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1998). p. 467.

3 Ibid, 468.

4 James Tunstead Burtchaell, The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from their Christian Churches (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1998), 25. The whole case is worth looking into: pp. 21-26.

5 Ibid, 26.

6 Ibid.

7 George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (Oxford University Press: New York, 1994), 328.

8 Ibid, 329.