Culture Making, Wheaton, and Vought
Reactions to Scot McKnight and Religion News Service
I have long followed the work of Scot McKnight — his books, his speaking, and his SubStack. And so I can hardly describe how humbled I feel that he has taken a deep dive on The Fearless Christian University on his SubStack. He has been going week by week, a chapter at a time. You can read his previous posts on Chapters One, Two, and Three.
Today, he took on Chapter Four, which I titled “On Not Fighting Culture Wars”. In many ways, this chapter is the pivotal chapter of the book. The earlier chapters build on the fear themes presented in chapter one. But chapter four suggests a shift the Christian Universities who wish to become Fearless should consider — namely moving from Culture Wars to Culture Creation.
As always, Scot does an excellent job of laying out my argument.
This chapter strings together some heavyweights when it comes to the culture war, and they are some of my favorite writers: Randall Balmer (who tied evangelicalism to the culture war over race at Bob Jones University), Christian Smith (who knotted evangelicalism to its identity as an embattled group that survives if there’s a battle), James Davison Hunter (who created the terms “culture war” so far as I know, and who pleaded with evangelicals to surrender the culture war model and adopt a “faithful presence” model), and then he turns to Makoto Fujimura (who proposes getting involved in culture and knocking down the boundary walls) and Walter Brueggemann’s (whose famous book on OT prophets proposed the alternative “prophetic imagination” to counter the dominant culture in a “contest of imaginations”). This thread by Hawthorne was lively, suggestive, provocative, and mostly compelling – for those of us who would like to see a less belletristic, culture war model and a more culture creation model (Hawthorne brings in Andy Crouch’s culture making model).
Scot introduced his reflection with reference to recent events at Wheaton College. After Russell Vought was confirmed as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Wheaton sent out a congratulatory note — one of those “local boy makes good” messages: “Wheaton College congratulates and prays for 1998 graduate Russell Vought regarding his senatorial confirmation to serve as the White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget!”
There was immediate pushback on the post and Wheaton decided to take it down, noting that their non-profit status meant that they shouldn’t be political. That prompted an immediate reaction from conservatives outraged that Wheaton was backing down from woke voices. This was followed by two alumni letters: one denouncing Wheaton for not calling out Vought and Project 2025 in light of Christian values and another decrying Wheaton for losing their way on doctrine, social issues, and basically everything.
While I was aware of the original Vought post and how it was taken down, the two letters were a surprise.1 I was contacted yesterday by Kathryn Post of Religion News Service to ask if I could do a quick interview before she hit her deadline. Being retired makes it easy to jump at the chance. You can read Kathryn’s story here. I show up at the end of the story.
John Hawthorne, a retired sociologist who studies religion, politics and higher education and is author of “The Fearless Christian University,” said Wheaton’s difficult week reminds him of the 2021 clash at Grove City College, another Christian school whose faculty, students and alumni debated in a series of open letters whether the school had succumbed to “mission drift” from its traditional values.
Such conflicts, Hawthorne told RNS, will be unavoidable for many Christian colleges, especially given the disparate responses to Trump’s executive actions and the vulnerability and volatility of the social media age.
“An institution that hasn’t thought about how to position itself with confidence is going to be reactionary all the time. … As this illustrates, there’s no way you can please all the constituents,” said Hawthorne. “It’s better for the university to be able to speak to (their) values than for various constituent groups to call them out, telling them what their values ought to be.”
I’ve always enjoyed talking to Kathryn and we probably chatted for a half hour. Toward the end of the call, she asked me what Fearlessness would have looked like in the Wheaton/Vought situation. I babbled for a bit but came up an institutional announcement something like this:
Wheaton College’s motto is “For Christ and His Kingdom”. We celebrate all alumni who achieve positions of prominence. In that light, we congratulate Russell Vought (1998) for his confirmation as Director of OMB. We pray that the values he learned here — compassion, discipleship, and faithful service toward the common good — will be evident in his daily tasks. As a non-political institution, we are avoiding any partisan views but simply call for all of our alumni to embody our motto wherever they find themselves.
This certainly wouldn’t have been enough to avoid any conflict. That is guaranteed in today’s diverse environment, played out over all kinds of information sources.2
But a Fearless Christian University would own their position rather than operating in fear of what some faction might say. It requires a boldness of mission and values.
One more thing: Scot had emailed me over the weekend asking if it were really possible for Christian Universities to exist without the kind of oppositional stance characterized by Culture Wars. My answer is that the Culture War identity is the easy route. Far harder is to articulate the mission of the university in terms of how student lives are transformed in ways that position them to be future leaders who are characterized by faith, critical thinking, compassion, and hope.
On today’s SubStack, Scot posted a poll that asked, “Can a university be evangelical without an embattled identity” (not unlike what he asked me over the weekend). I am pleased to report that as I write this, the affirmative is winning 87% to 13%!
Maybe there’s hope for the Fearless Christian University yet!
I perused the signatories of both letters and was surprised to find that there were not clear generational differences evident. This underscores the challenges of Christian Universities because the various segments of the constituency do not always play out in predictable ways.
In addition to social media firestorms, I’ve seen stories in The New Yorker, Christianity Today, and RNS. I’m sure there are others.