Sunday, July 21, 2013

Meanwhile ... at Calvin College

Katelyn Beaty, "Calvin College's New President Talks Budget Pressures, Diversity, and the Biggest Theological Issue Today" (Christianity Today, May 28, 2013)... First of all, forgive me, but this is one of my several quasi-alma maters, though I spent only two years at Calvin in the 1970s. It's interesting to me that they've finally chosen a non-Dutch president, on a campus which sports bumper stickers declaring "You ain't much if you ain't Dutch," and the like. When I was a student there, I don't know if there was another non-Dutchman on campus. In fact, I cobbled together a "Dutch" name for myself by stringing together all the typical personal nominal prefixes and suffixes I could round up, calling myself "Henk KonynDeVanderDykeSmaDorff." But they had a strong philosophy program, eight philosophers, including Alvin Plantinga, twice president of the American Philosophical Association, and philosophy was one of my big draws there.

It's also interesting that although quite a number of the faculty (and obviously students) have gone soft on LGBT issues, as I know from other sources, this article shows the president as still somewhat towing the official and historic Christian Reformed Church position on the issue. It's probably only a matter of time . . . The language of theological identity is already growing spongy.

[Hat tip to JM]

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