Values Clash
Calvin College's board has denied the request of an African American professor to worship at a Baptist church. If Denise Isom continues to attend her primarily African American congregation, Messiah Missionary Baptist, she will be taken off tenure track and given a one-year term to end after the 2008-2009 school year.
Faculty members at Calvin are required to be members of a Christian Reformed Church (CRC) or a church in "ecclesiastical fellowship" with the denomination. Isom, an assistant professor of education, was aware of the rule when she joined Calvin in 2003, but believed she could apply for an exception. Calvin, which has a student body that is 94 percent white, has previously granted exceptions, usually to faculty members whose spouses are ordained in another denomination.
Isom spent several years visiting some of the more than 100 CRC congregations in the Grand Rapids area. While several CRC churches are beginning to reach out to the African American community, none are "there" yet, Isom wrote in her request. "I need a place of worship that is already consistent with my culture and able to grapple with issues of race in ways which make it a respite, a re-charging and growing place for me, as opposed to another location where I must 'work' and where I am 'other.'"
Calvin's board decided that upholding the school's denominational requirement was necessary for Calvin to remain a Reformed institution. "Nearly all Christian colleges and universities that distanced themselves from their founding denominations and theological traditions eventually also drifted away from being Christian in any meaningful way," Bastian Knoppers, chair of the Calvin College board of trustees, wrote in a statement.
Shirley Hoogstra, vice president ...
This article is currently available to CT subscribers only.
To continue reading:
or
Star Trek Into Darkness
(on articles open to the public, you must at least register for a free account).
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Newsletters
Google
Comments
Displaying 1–3 of 8 comments
See all comments
Anna
Parents pay to send their kids to this college for a reason, it perpetuates the beliefs of the parents and kids. If a requirement of the college for hiring is that the teachers should be of the belief of the paying parents, than the lady shouldn't even had applied. Since she doesn't like the people in the churches she supposedly visited, does she like the kids she's teaching since they must obviously be like the people in the churches. There are major differences between Reformed and Baptist , that's why the Baptists separated from the Reformed churches during the Reformation and became a further deviation from Lutherism. She admits "she thought she could change it once she got in". Also, spouses of teachers are not the teachers so that could be why the other requests were given. When did it become horrific for religious colleges to enforce their beliefs in this "free" country. Whether white or black a Baptist college not a Reformed college is better for her beliefs.
Mere Christian
The world is full of "Christian Colleges" that have punted their denominational affiliation for the sake of the "diversity" chimera. I'm sure that Denise Isom can find happiness and fulfillment at one of them. The snobbish diversocrats, so well represented in these comments, who have ruined so many other denominational schools will surely make her welcome.
JP
Let's just stop and consider the professor's words: "I need a place of worship that is already consistent with my culture and able to grapple with issues of race in ways which make it a respite, a re-charging and growing place for me, as opposed to another location where I must 'work' and where I am 'other.'" Does anything really need to be added to that?