Professor Larycia Hawkins, Ph.D., and Wheaton President Philip Ryken, Ph.D., stood in front of throngs of anxious press members with the hope of reconciliation on their minds and in their words.
What had started months prior as a hopeful act of solidarity with followers of Islam, which included a picture of Hawkins wearing a hajab and referencing the shared nature of the Islamic and Christian God, soon turned into contractual proceedings and theological misunderstandings that led to the beginning of the end for the tenured Hawkins at Wheaton College.
As the news spread, outrage did too, and as the details of the exchange, the Facebook post and the proceedings became blurrier and blurrier, the pointing fingers increased and shouting from all parties grew louder.
Many thought Wheaton was in the wrong for attempting to fire a tenured professor for acting in solidarity with an oppressed people. Many, still, thought that Wheaton’s Statement of Faith, which all employees are required to sign, was clear about its beliefs, and, being an evangelical university, had a caveat that couldn’t be ignored.
But that’s not the point.
Soon after the initial fervor had died down, Hawkins and Ryken stood side by side issuing a statement of mutuality in which both parties had agreed, confidentially, to part ways without an official termination.
Instead, the parties wished one another well, even going so far as to say that they “had found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation.”
And yet, in the midst of a shaking of hands, it is easy to sense the continued shaking of heads as people involved or in tune with the proceedings are still left unsatisfied, without answers and without a feeling of conclusiveness.
So, what’s next?
Being at an evangelical institution of higher learning, theology is hard to avoid. It is even harder to avoid thinking about, but as situations like the one at Wheaton reveal, theology plays an inevitable and formative role in our daily lives as students, learners and people of faith in one form or another.
However deeply entangled in policy or administration or evangelicalism the decision to part with Hawkins was, it reminds us of a very important idea that is often ignored, disregarded or left to those whom we judge to be “intellectual”: theology matters.
Theology is frequently disregarded as a subject left to those who think about God and religion on a higher spectrum than the rest of us, yet, in its very essence, theology has much to do with the daily life we lead.
Dennis Okholm, Ph.D., APU professor of theology, believes “All people are theologians. That is to say, everyone thinks about God.”
What rings particularly true in the wake of the Wheaton situation is that everyone thinks about God in his or her own way, and how people think impacts decisions they make and decisions they deem to be made in faith. In other words, theology not only references the collective Church, it also references the very essence of what it means to be human beings.
Whether we are students, teachers, friends, parents or anything else, we have a theological task set before us, or, as Okholm references, a vocation, a mission.
“My vocation as a theologian is motivated by the desire to encourage and equip those in the pulpits and pews to think carefully about the God who is definitely revealed in Jesus Christ,” Okholm said. “That…could be said to be my life objective – my mission statement.”
The theological task is not limited solely to professors. It affects all of us – everyone who is making decisions “in faith.”
Jenae Erickson, a junior allied health major, understands that theology is deeply intertwined with her personal faith.
“Every day, I try to learn more about Jesus and his ministry and his crucifixion…[and that] includes developing my own personal theology and beliefs about who the Jesus of faith and history is,” Erickson said.
Junior Christian ministries major Blakelee Evans holds onto theology in both the academic and practical sense.
“A theology that is lived out practically in everyday life encourages us to properly engage with culture…and most importantly with our neighbors,” Evans said.
Of course, theology does not guarantee that what happened at Wheaton won’t happen here or somewhere else, but what it does guarantee is that the APU community is thinking carefully and completely about what it means to be a person of faith: to offer our love, care, and support to our neighbors (whoever that may be), regardless of the cost.