Ugh! "W" speaking at commencement at MY college!

My heart hit the floor when I heard this.

http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2004_0...ommencement.htm

Calvin has always been a Christian college where free thought and criticism of Religion is not only tolerated, but nurtured and encouraged. (Only through challenging one's faith can it grow stronger).

The Religious Right has tended to shun Calvin because of it's liberal culture. What other Christian College has a mandatory Religion 101 class that starts out "Everything you believe about the Bible, and your faith is about to be disputed. In fact, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 dispute each other. Care to read more?"

At one point during the semester, one freshman in my class, literally looking like she might burst into tears, said, "Professor, you have shown that everything in the Bible, the scripture that I have based my faith upon for my whole life, is flawed, full of errors, and some of it could just be made up. How do I know what to believe?"

The professor:
Don't let anybody tell you what to believe. Don't "base your faith" on anything someone else has written or what somebody else tells you. Think for yourself, question the rightness and wrongness of every action. The greatest sins are committed by those who claim to know precisely what God wants, and they usually point to the Bible to back them up. For each of you in your lives, base your faith on nothing, base your faith on just that... faith itself. If the foundation for your faith is the Bible, you are on shaky ground. If you have blind faith, open your eyes, open your heart. After your faith has strengthened, turn to the scripture for guidance, insight and inspiration, but know that it was written, revised and translated by sinners.

The student:
But wasn't the Bible "Inspired by God?"

The Professor:
No! Not WAS, but IS Inspired by God, present tense. Meaning, here it is, ready now, for your reference, analysis, scrutiny, and personal inspiration. In fact, learning about the Bible's mistakes, errors and embellishments as well as learning about its authors offers us insight into our own lives as Christians.



Conservative parents would call the chair of the Religion department to complain, only to have the professor defended and supported. Frequently, these parents would pull their children out by the end of the first semester and send them off to Wesleyan or some other ultra-conservative Christian college.

Calvin College has a long tradition of challenging anything "The Church" delivers as doctrine to be accepted blindly. In fact, John Calvin, after whom the College is named, was a major reformer who himself did not accept the "moral majority" of his time.

It is therefore with a heavy heart that I hear the news of George W. Bush's plans to speak at Calvin's Commencement this year. The man has only blind faith in the Bible and the arrogance to believe that he not only knows God's will, but is the culmination of it as President. I had always felt like the "Religious Right Wing Nut Jobs" were Them, and those of us in The Christian Reformed Church (with which Calvin is tightly affiliated) were not part of That. Not so anymore. I feel betrayed by my alma mater.

If Calvin is embracing and lavishing one of the scariest Presidents we have ever had, where are us "normal" Christians supposed to go to get away, to disassociate? Does this represent a culture change for Calvin? A swing to the Right? For The Christain Reformed Church in general?

My world just got a little darker.

Some of us alumni are mounting a protest, albeit small. We are taking out a full page ad in the Grand Rapids Press criticizing W's appearance.

Here is the text that will likely appear in the ad:

>Dear President Bush:
>
>We are students, alumni and friends of Calvin
>College who are deeply troubled that you will be the
>commencement speaker at Calvin on May 21st. In our
>view, the policies and actions of your
>administration, both domestically and
>internationally over the past four years, violate
>many deeply held principles of Calvin College.
>
>Calvin is a rigorous intellectual institution, and a
>truly Christian one. Since its inception in 1876,
>Calvin has educated its students to use their minds
>and hearts to transform the world into a "beloved
>community" where no one is an outcast and all of
>God's children are cared for. Calvin teaches its
>students to work for peace and justice, and to be
>good stewards of God's creation.
>
>By their deeds ye shall know them, says the Bible.
>Your deeds, Mr. President--neglecting the needy to
>coddle the rich, desecrating the environment, and
>misleading the country into war--do not exemplify
>the faith we live by.
>
>Moreover, many of your supporters are using religion
>as a weapon to divide our nation and advance a
>narrow partisan agenda. We are deeply disappointed
>in your failure to renounce their inflammatory
>rhetoric.
>
>We urge you not to use Calvin College as a platform
>to advance policies that violate the school's
>religious principles. Furthermore, we urge you to
>repudiate the false claims of supporters who say
>that those who oppose your policies are the enemies
>of religion.
>

Here is the contact info for any of you who may be interested in helping out the protest:

>Hi Calvin friends,
>Thanks to all of you, names and donations are coming
>in!
>
>We now have close to 150 signatures to our letter
>protesting Bush being the commencement speaker at
>Calvin. This is a great start, but in order for the
>letter to have impact, we need lots more. Many of
>you have done a great job distributing the letter to
>family and friends. Please keep up your good work
>and think of additional folks who might sign. We're
>especially interested in getting student signatures.
>We've gotten at least one faculty name and are
>hoping for more. The deadline for names is Tuesday,
>May 17th. Please forward this email to all your
>Calvin friends! Please tell folks not to wait until
>the last minute!
>
>We've raised over $3,250 in contributions to pay for
>the full-page ad in the Grand Rapids Press on Friday
>May 20th. The ad costs $9598.71, so we have about
>$6,350 left to raise. We're confident we can do it.
>Since the ad is considered a political one, it will
>include the line, "This ad was paid for by alumni
>and friends of Calvin College." If faculty and
>students send us checks, we'll add them to the
>contributors' list.
>
>We found out this week that some Calvin faculty are
>drafting a letter to President Bush that expresses
>their concerns. We've contacted them and invited
>them to sign our letter as well their own.
>
>And last, here's how to send donations and sign onto
>the letter.
>
>DONATIONS: Here's where to send your check: Sally
>Steenland, PO Box 53096, Washington, DC 20009. Make
>your check out to me (Sally Steenland). And please know that whatever
>amount you give will be greatly appreciated.
>

Wish us luck with our protest. Perhaps it will make the national news.

Nate

 

Re: Ugh! "W" speaking at commencement at MY colleg

Thank you, bookrats. I hope so too. Most of the professors are excellent, and inject religion only where appropriate. My chem professors, for example, explained why chemicals don't go down the drain: Because we are stewards of the environment; our knowledge of chemistry is God's gift; our dominion over the earth doesn't give us the right to pollute and consume it at will.

Biology 101 was very interesting. Evolution is taught like this:
The earth is very old, perhaps millions of years. The process that brings us life as we know it in nature today is a thing of beauty. If you are a Believer, then you may see that evolution itself is God's process, and it is that much more beautiful, and more of God will be revealed to you through scientific discovery; what we call General Revelation. If you are not, then it is just process. Either way, in this course, we will answer all the questions of the HOW of evolution via the best science available. If you want to know WHY evolution occurs, or WHY any of us are here, alive on earth today, the Religion and Philosophy departments are in the next building. But I warn you, you may get more questions than answers.

I worry that my daughter who may go to Calvin one day may get Bio 101 like this:
The earth is about 4000 years old. It was created in 7 days. Evolution is bunk, blasphemy from the mouths of heathens. The earth is yours to consume and dispose of as long as you pray enough on Sunday.

It's quite a scary thought. I recently learned that the dark ages and the plague never had to happen; the church had convinced people that bathing and washing were unholy because you had to expose parts of your body to do so. Ignorance has never helped anybody.

Nate

 

Re: Ugh! "W" speaking at commencement at MY colleg

Thanks everyone for the support!

Nate

 

Re: Ugh! "W" speaking at commencement at MY colleg

I really wish I could make it back to Michigan this year for commencement. It will certainly be interesting; like I said, it may make the national news.

Nate