A Place Where I Found Courage and Peace

“One of the greatest parts about Wheaton is this: there is nothing out there that we cannot talk about in here.”

So said Dr. Matthew Milliner, beloved art professor, full of all the eccentricities and wisdom of a man who loves life and loves God, on the first day of my freshman orientation on a hot August afternoon in the year of 2020. I cannot tell you how deeply relieved I was to hear those words as a heavy, anxious weight began to lift from my chest. Finally, a place where I could dive into Christianity and ask the honest, good-faith questions I had been carrying through both church and public school, a college that remained steadfast in the swinging pendulums of ideologies and politics, an orthodox institution that could grapple with the contradictions and failings of an authentic struggle to follow the teachings of Christ day in and day out. Did I find such a place at Wheaton College? Though you may already guess at my answer, you must decide that for yourself.

2020 was a year that many would like to forget. Not only was it one full of isolation, but the political and social state of our country had also reached a level of turmoil that my eighteen-year-old self had never before experienced. Silence was violence. But speaking up was performative. George Floyd was murdered at the hands of the police, violence and protests broke out across the country, and a pandemic became so heavily politicized that to find any sort of common consensus became near impossible. The world was defined in black and white, conservative and liberal, rioter and racist.

Even as I write, the reader is possibly attempting to pick apart my words, wondering where I have hidden the clues to my true political leanings, to find the trigger that will mark me as the bigoted conservative or woke warrior you may already presume me to be. I suspect this to be the case only because–even unwillingly–I would be doing the same to you. I wonder if it is a mark of the times, or perhaps a piece of our human nature that looks to do so. It is admittedly much easier to live in a world of pure categories, without contradictions and complications. For all their strengths and flaws, categories are unarguably simpler, and distrust of the other is usually our default.

So please, for a change of pace, consider the actual content of what I have to say rather than the political ideology you think it comes from.

With all the tumult of 2020, you can surely understand why I was so relieved to be attending a college that promised to allow me questions as I sought to untangle my faith from human failings and political controversy. Sometimes we spoke on things that were difficult to hear, or even created a tense moment in the classroom. Sometimes I was uncomfortable. That is okay. Can you guess what else has made me extremely uncomfortable at times? The Bible, reading it all on my own. In high school I was deeply confused and besieged by the dissonance created by the messages of the world, the angry voices of Christians, and the disconnect I saw between the Church of Scripture, and the one of America. I was lonely, I was exhausted, and I was vulnerable when I arrived on Wheaton’s doorstep. My life could have gone very differently after that point, and who knows what paths I would have tread under those circumstances. 

Instead, the story I have to share is one filled with a delightful discovery of God’s truth, my own failings, and a fantastic crowd of Christian faculty and students who all stretched me to put others before myself. I could ask the questions surrounding issues like racism and sexuality that can seem so tight with tension or simply taboo anywhere else, receiving honest wisdom from professors, resources to explore differing perspectives, and Biblically-founded answers that I myself could understand and defend. When I did sometimes feel uncertain within the classroom (as everyone will be at one point or another, if they are seriously studying Scripture with other people striving to do the same) I could always seek a longer conversation with professors who were more than happy to oblige me. There are countless anecdotal examples I could provide to illustrate such a reality, but I will limit myself to only a few here.

In his Black Political Thought class and throughout campus, Dr. Alex Haskins is well known for his coined rule that we must consider all thinkers both “charitably and critically,” especially when studying those whose names and quotes are often thrown about with little knowledge of their context. People such as Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, MLK, Shelby Steele, Alice Walker, and Thomas Sowell were all brought into conversation so that we might better understand their influence, scholarship, and history. Dr. Haskins did not allow anyone to get away with easy answers. His goal in the classroom was understanding and wisdom, and so he did not let his students default to platitudes or answers with little substance. He knew how to ask well-placed questions to call us back toward the search for truth if we became dismissive of thinkers or our classmates, teaching us how to disagree well with other Christians. There I learned of the true weight of racism upon our Black brothers and sisters, the grief at countless Christians standing aside or taking part in such crimes themselves, and the numerous ways people have sought to reconcile these realities. Dr. Haskins allowed these heavy matters to be learned in their complexity rather than in the ambiguity or simplistic categorization to which these conversations often fall prey.

In the Bible and Theology department, my close friend and ‘24 Biblical Studies major found that both Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics with Dr. Keith Johnson allowed her to engage with theologies and conversations concerning modern Christianity in which she would have otherwise been lost. Her faith “is richer for having been encouraged to think critically about doctrines that [she] had taken for granted,” she wrote to me. Dr. Johnson consistently presented a wide range of Christian traditions without particular partiality, empowering students to examine and defend their own beliefs both in and outside of the classroom. My brother, a Christian Formation and Ministry major ‘26, seconds this experience and has found his other professors to be fair and committed to their students as they challenged him to seriously explore his faith so that he might better explain and stand firm in it. 

My roommate of four years, a brilliant woman from both a small, rural town in middle Tennessee and a conservative with a classical Christian education, took Philosophy of Law and Political Philosophy with Dr. Nathan Cartagena. Though she was prepared to disagree with his worldview due to his engagement with critical race theory, she found herself more particularly struck by his ecumenical vision for the body of Christ, his immense, Biblically-founded love for his fellow Christians, and the grief he holds for the pain we wreak upon ourselves when we oppress others. When she had questions, she went to him to discuss her experience of southern culture and what they agreed and disagreed on. He was happy to do so. She did not leave his classroom with fundamentally different principles, but rather was challenged by what they held so poignantly in common: God’s promise to uplift the downtrodden, and His command to love those that the world will not.

In the English department I found professors whose commitment to students, truth, and beauty forever softened my jaded cynicism towards a world I often wanted to rage against. The simple act of opening class with prayer on my first day was a revelation, strange as that might sound to some readers. It told me that what we were about to do was the sort of thing one might talk to God about, that God cared about what happened in that classroom. In Christianity and Fantasy, Dr. Jim Beitler gave us pictures of what true evil looks like when it arrives at our door in Lord of the Rings, and then let us discover, in turn, true goodness, courage, and humble heroism within its record of Middle Earth. Another class on Achebe and Adichie allowed us to plumb the depths of Christianity with our professor as she led us in grappling with questions of what faith might look like in the context of fundamentalism, missions, and the Nigerian church. In a different course, our studies of British Literature brought with them not only British literature, but also inspired readings of Dante and new eyes to classics like Beowulf and Homer that we thought we left behind in high school, illuminating among other things how radically the Judeo-Christian worldview differs from that of the Epics. And in our American Literature class, we sought to understand what it means to truly be from a place and write of it through the words of Cather’s My Antonia, Zitkala Sa’s American Indian Stories, and Alcott’s Little Women. 

Outside of the classroom, I found the same kind of commitment to these ideals. Dr. John Dickson hosts “Questioning Christianity,” a series of lectures open to the community that grapple with the questions that so many carry, Christian and non-believer alike. In these lectures people like Dr. Dickson and Rachel McLaughlin take on these queries with courage and love for the Lord, bringing a holistic approach to Church history and working through the fundamental weaknesses and heresies present in various ideologies. Each lecture candidly searches for truth by cutting through so much of the noise that surrounds these issues while also honoring their complexity by being unapologetically centered around the beauty of Christ and God’s good Word as the way of truth, life, and redemption for all peoples.

Only a month or so ago, we hosted a dialogue between Dr. Dan Juster, a Messianic Jew, and our own Dr. Alex Massad, an Arab American Christian who teaches on the Old Testament and world religions. They discussed theology and politics, they disagreed, they answered tough, pointed questions from students in the listening crowd, and then they parted ways with respect for those history might tell them to hate. Where else in American academia could such a thing take place? We have seen countless other campuses torn apart over the conflict in the Middle East because they could not handle deep disagreements between people and still believe them both to be worth listening to.

In high school I was so often lost in the fear and barbed spite of public Christianity, unable to answer difficult questions that my friends asked me or refute the labels others placed on my name. I only found a diminished version of Jesus in the ideologies of the far-right and far-left, trying to convince me that I had to endorse injustice to stay safe, or nod my head along to cultural trends in order to be decent. Soon I, too, was full of fear for my world, for myself, and for my faith. For all its faults, Wheaton College taught me this: Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid to stand firm in the faith, do not be afraid to ask questions, do not be afraid to say what is true, do not be afraid to listen to others. Do not be afraid to be wrong: God will not fail even if you do. The past eight years have been a time of turmoil and upheaval for our society and particularly for the evangelical world; the last four years have been downright disastrous; the last four weeks, for those of us who love Wheaton, exhausting. Here, in this place, is where I found courage and peace.

As my own days at Wheaton came to an end, this is how I sought to thank the place that gave me those gifts: “If the world is in crisis, then now is not the time to batten down the hatches and hide in our political parties or closed communities—the world needs people who are willing to grapple with difficult, sometimes contradictory realities that actually constitute more of the truth than any single side of the story ever could. The world needs people who can look at a person and truly see a person: a bearer of the image of God. Do we remember what that truly means? The bearers of this sacred image are real, complex, multi-faceted, and undefinable by one term or category or opinion. For better or for worse, they are more than just your first opinion of them, they are more than their mistakes and successes—they are a soul.” This could have been the core of almost any class I took at Wheaton. What a wonderful thing to learn at college.

Wheaton faces backlash from both sides of the political spectrum because it has repeatedly refused to bend the knee to one political ideology over another even as it remains true to an orthodox theology. I remember a rather funny moment during the beginning of my freshman year when I had two separate friends complain to me of opposite problems in a single day: one felt Wheaton was too conservative, the other thought it too liberal. Maybe, I thought at the time, this college is doing something rather fantastic here in this little town in Midwest America. For truly, is it not a central point of the liberal arts education to explore and struggle with the many sides of real life issues, strange and complex as they are, and be formed by the process? Especially if we are to follow Christ in doing so?

The Bible constantly warns us against our own self-righteous pride, and the Gospels tell us that Jesus flipped tables once but asked and answered questions nearly every day to challenge people and make them think. True to our human nature, Christians have been arguing about everything under the sun since God put it in the sky. It seems to me that to shut down such debate and dialogue would be to choose ignorance born of an echo chamber, a detriment to the Church at large and an accusation Christians themselves often level at liberal academia. But as always, it is easier to justify a double standard when it is our will we truly wish to establish rather than that of God’s.

The words Dr. Milliner spoke to us on that first day at Wheaton have since proven true: Wheaton College is not afraid. We will stumble and have already, of that there can be no doubt. Sometimes our courage fails in the moment. Sometimes we take bad counsel and, sometimes, we give it out in turn. We are silent. We are performative. We do not always get it right. We are, after all, not God–but we do strive to follow Him. We are not afraid to read things that challenge us, nor listen to people who disagree.

Upon graduation students of Wheaton College will be confronted by the things of this world. That is inevitable and will not be changed by whether our professors bring them up in the classroom or not. Personally, however, I would rather face such ideas head on in a place where I am surrounded by faithful friends and fellow Christians, even if doing so sometimes goes awry. Here is where I first truly realized that God had an intrinsic place in my education, and that everything, from my essays to class discussions, could and should be infused with my faith. It is Jesus’s example of humble, challenging questions that I choose over broader academia’s tendency to demand we jump to pick a side and look down on the little people below as we bask in the temporary security of a cultural ideology.

I come forward to tell this story now because, to my deep grief, there are many who would prefer we not grapple with questions to this extent on such things as truth, justice, democracy, and history here at Wheaton College. Although I cannot know everyone’s experience, and while I do know of many mistakes and failings on its part, let me be clear now: The Wheaton College I know imperfectly and authentically seeks to uphold the sanctity of life; to reconcile with those we hurt and those who hurt us; to preserve the institution of marriage; to welcome the stranger, and so on. Again and again I saw professors and staff in the classroom who were committed to living out their belief that Jesus really is one and only Savior and Redeemer, the Bible really is the infallible Word of God, and that the Glory of the Lord is to be proclaimed in all things. As former professor Dr. Alan Jacobs points out in his blog piece “Here We Go Again,” written in response to alumnus Daniel Davis’s furious condemnation of Wheaton, “everyone employed by Wheaton signs a robust and classically orthodox statement of Christian faith. But then, perhaps the Christian God isn’t the God Davis feels that Wheaton has betrayed. It’s hard to say.” Wheaton has never been shy about what it believes, and has not significantly changed that Statement of Faith since it was written in 1924, weathering both vitriol and vilification for it from all sides. 

That said, a signature does not promise perfection. I have seen the mistakes Wheaton has made in its past while trying to uphold this shared commitment. I was here, watching the administration during crises that Wheaton has handled with clumsy, hurtful hands. I’ve seen students gossip and throw stereotypes upon people they would rather not associate with, and I have often been among the judgmental. Professors, human as they are, do not always have the right answer or the right reaction, and are sometimes simply wrong. There are times when Wheaton has failed and faltered in its mission to serve its students, and such fair criticism should always be welcome. 

In the pursuit of fair criticism, however, I cannot find condemnation, threats, and a call to arms to be an appropriate response at any level. If any of us are quick to render judgement upon Wheaton’s identity as an Christian institution and bemoan its liberal or conservative failings, we should also contend with Jesus’s own command in Matthew 7:3-5. If some are willing to use a fluctuating Republican party platform as the measure of what marks a people as faithful and true, then perhaps it is not Wheaton that has changed but instead this particular strain of critics who have left core Biblical principles by the wayside. 

A final note for my fellow alumni who are happy to drag their alma mater through the mud, as they claim it has done with them. I am the daughter of a Wheaton College professor, maybe one you even know well. I have grown up amongst the faculty and staff of Wheaton. I have had the chance to both admire and challenge President Philip Ryken. I would ask that, before you write your next retort, before you let loose into that comment section from behind your screen, before you decide to join the chorus of complaints, remember the faces and hands that helped guide you to where you are today.

I see the names signed on your articles and facebook comments, the ones signed beneath an open letter demanding new leadership and audits of every single faculty and staff member. They are names of my classmates, my friends, and my neighbors. I see names of people who were cherished by their departments, invited to speak at their own graduations, given platforms, and provided with opportunities to succeed in a multitude of ways in the pursuit of Christ and His Kingdom. It has seemed to me, over these past weeks, that you are more enraged by Wheaton’s reluctance to follow your politics than by its commitment to principles grounded in the Bible. I cannot think of another explanation for why so many alumni would descend with wrath upon other Christians on the behalf of a political administration, and yet would fail to call that same administration to answer for its blatant disregard of both honesty and compassion.

You may disagree with the vision of Wheaton I have testified to here; perhaps you are angry, would rather dismiss it all with a scoff and a label, mock it to others, or ignore my words altogether; maybe you will accuse me of coddling the conservative or bowing to the left. That is alright, I do not mind, though I wish things were not that way between us. But do not paint your attendance at Wheaton College as a persecution of a political or theological sort, do not claim that you were unloved and unsupported and wholly unlistened to.

Even if you are not willing to put it into words, you and I both know that there are far too many faculty and staff with Christ’s love and service in their hearts for that to be true. Before you throw the names of such people upon the pyre because they disagree with you, I would suggest calling them, meeting them, talking to them. I wonder if your worst fears really are true, or if perhaps you will find political ideologies to not be so infallible as the secular world would have us believe. In my experience, professors love to hear from former students across the spectrum of politics and culture and will faithfully engage with the questions you are carrying. But take heed: they may have some questions of their own for you now, too. At least I can confidently predict that they will pose them with a great deal more charity than you have shown them.