Meet Dr. Wilcox: An Interview with the New Religion Professor
Wabash Conservative Union: Please describe your youth for us.
Dr. Jeff Wilcox: I grew up a little all over the place. My father was first in the Navy until the time I was about 5 or 6 years old, and we were in Hawaii at the time he retired from the Navy…. He went into civilian aircraft controlling, and they typically don’t leave you at any particular airport for more than two or three years, so for much of my youth we moved all along the front range of the Rockies. We went from Hawaii to Denver, from Denver to Cheyenne, WY, and to Colorado Springs. And then my dad – I think I was in 7th or 8th grade – he medically retired from air traffic controlling and went into ministry, and to do that he had to spend a few years getting a divinity degree, so we moved back to Denver to go to school. We moved out to Michigan for a year for him to get his hands-on training in church administration and then went back to out Colorado where I finished high school and graduated from a small Christian school out there. Growing up I figured that from first grade to graduating high school I went to nine different schools, so moving around and settling was very much a part of my youth.
WCU: Where did you go for college?
JW: I went to college in MI. The year we moved out to Michigan for my dad to get his ministry training I made some great friends out there – met a nice young lady who eventually became my life. So after high school I spent one ill-advised semester at Bible college in Colorado; a semester that I all but utterly failed in. When that experiment ended, in the spring of ’82, I moved out to Michigan and actually didn’t go to college right away. I went into business with a friend of mine – landscaping in the summer and shoveling a lot of snow in the winter time. I got married. Jane and I were married for about 6-7 years until I decided that I was going to get a degree, and I figured that it might as well be something I was interested in. So I went back to school in Grand Rapids, MI, started at a small Christian school there and then transferred to Calvin College, and I ended up with a double major in theology and philosophy. I did my seminary work at Calvin Theological Seminary.
WCU: What made you decide to pursue graduate work?
JW: Well, because I had an undergraduate degree in philosophy and theology, which is unemployable, and I had a master’s degree, which is almost as unemployable, so the only option for me was a Ph.D. program, but obviously I was interested in the subject matter. It was more than just having nothing else to do. I became interested in particularly historical theology while I was doing my seminary work – particularly the American context [of historical theology]. I really wanted to figure out what it is that makes America this sort of unique place that it is, particularly in matters of religion. And so I applied to several institutions and got accepted at the Toronto School of Theology and Marquette University. Marquette seemed to be the right place to go….They had good scholars in that area [that interested me] at Marquette…. I don’t know if I had plans when I started out college of getting a graduate degree. Just go find a job, get a degree – this was in the old days when the economy was actually good and you could find a job. The interest just stuck with me, and I had a hard time letting it go.
WCU: Has your theology evolved over time?
JW: I think that it’d be hard for someone’s theology not to evolve over time when you’re confronted with the sheer mass of history and options, if you will, and theologies that you read and deal with in your studies. If you figure that you’re going to be going to grad school and college, you’re looking at twelve years or so of studying, so it’d be hard for anyone’s theology to remain pristine and untouched. If that were to happen, it’d sort of be a waste of time of going to school. So in many ways my theology has changed over time. Some ways are more obvious than other. I would suggest on that the basis of the Faith, I remain in essence where I was when I began, in my commitment to the creedal/confessional issues of the faith (such as God the Father, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Church). On all of these things I remain essentially within the confessional nature of the historic Church. But obviously on some the subtleties of the confessional issues, my theology has changed. It’s certainly more broadened than it once was.
WCU: Have any theologians in particular influenced your theology?
JW: Oh yeah, sure. When I first got into theology, the first time in college I read Jurgen Moltmann, I was just blown away. I was blown away by his passion – he’s a passionate theologian, if not always terribly consistent. And his theology comes out of his real life experience. He’s a theologian who served as a youth in World War II and ended the war in a POW camp, and it’s there in the POW camp where he met God. His work comes out of that experience, and this theology comes out of the question of “What is going to come out of these ruins?” “What does the Church have to say to Germany in the process?” That was part of Moltmann’s response, too. His Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, and subsequently God in Creation and so forth, these are all theologies that contain the passion that comes out of one’s personal experiences and the desire to speak to the Church in the wake of the horrible event that was WWII. Moltmann definitely. Barth to some degree, though, when I made that move from being an evangelical fundamentalist to wherever I am now, a lot of us tend to have a Barth moment, but I never really had a Barth moment but Barth was someone I read and appreciated. Because of my dissertation work, [Friedrich] Schleiermacher has been influential in my own sort of thinking as well. [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer as well. For all of these, their biographies and lives have a lot to do with how these particular theologians have influenced me.
WCU: How did you end being a conservative?
JW: I was a squishy conservative for much of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I didn’t want to be identified with those sort of evangelical conservatives to the degree that Jerry Falwell and James Dobsons were viewed as the icons and leaders of a certain kind of evangelical conservatism in America. I held many of the same views, in particular to matters of life and pro-life issues, gay marriage, sanctity of the family. I was not very outspoken or very willing to stake a claim, so I’d say that I was pretty soft. I reacted quite viscerally to 9/11, and in many ways 9/11 was somewhat of a watershed moment for me ideologically. I saw it as a moment where I had to make a choice as to where I was going to stand on certain issues. I remember thinking with a certain amount of disgust and horror at the reaction of some to 9/11 right off the bat [claiming] this need to look inward and look to where the fault lay within ourselves as the American nation. I found that to be so perversely obscene that, if that set the mark for where the Left was going down this path in reaction to 9/11, I didn’t want anything to do with it – not that I don’t think that there are things in America that need fixing…. This was an instance of pure, unadulterated evil that could not be seen in any other way. 9/11 really did have a solidifying event for me and forced me to take firm positions on things that I had held softly and seriously think about whether those things meant anything to me. And if they did, then I think that there was something about America – something fundamental about the American idea – that was essentially espoused in conservative social and political agenda – broadly speaking…. I simply don’t think that’s the way to go. So 9/11 was turned me into a thinking, maybe hardcore conservative.
WCU: What’s it like being a conservative academic?
JW: It depends on where I’m at. Where I have taught before, it’s been very clear that conservative views are a minority view. It’s not a respected point of view. It’s not important that it’s worth listening to. It’s not worth much airtime. It’s reacted to as opposed to thought or engagement. I would suggest that Wabash is a different type of place in that way. More than other places I’ve been and taught at, while conservative views may be a minority view within the faculty at large, I don’t get the impression that my views are immediately dismissed because they’re conservative. I have had faculty who I know don’t share my political identity treat me with respect and conservatives with respect, and expect themselves to be treated with respect, and that is returned. So in many ways Wabash is unique in that respect, in that it really does take seriously the idea of the college as a world of ideas and those ideas are there for us to discuss and not simply to dismiss because we disagree with them. And that’s even the case in the student body as well. I see a willingness to engage ideas that one doesn’t necessarily agree with within the student body context as well. I don’t feel any kind of pressure about holding my point of view, my views on culture, etc. because they’re conservative. To me as an institution it is pretty unique. It’s too bad that it has to be commended for that, but the fact of the matter is that there are too many institutions that are ideologically narrow and simply refuse to accept the existence of ideas that they don’t particularly agree with. Wabash is not that type of place. Wabash is a much more welcoming place to the world of ideas. It really embraces that discussion and that pushing and pulling and that tension. Here, I have enjoyed that.
WCU: How is Wabash different from other places you have taught at?
JW: There aren’t a lot of women here. That’s the most obvious. It’s difficult to draw conclusions from the all-male campus make up. Perhaps there is something about the all-male context here that makes the educational experience a different experience. The student body here has been much more engaged in the courses than in previous places where I have taught…. Here it’s been more lively, even in those courses that are set up to be more lecture-oriented. I don’t know if I can have a class without a student raising a question about the material. When I do present time for talking and engaging amongst themselves or with me, it’s eagerly taken. It’s a more lively academic place than other places I’ve been to. I’ve not experienced the Greek life at any other institutions where I’ve taught at. The faculty dinners have been interesting. The students’ desire to engage the professors – to know their professors not just as professors but as mentors and as individuals they can seek advice from, as individuals they like to fellowship with. At Wabash kids don’t come here just to get a degree, they seem to come here for an experience that includes education but it’s more than just accumulating grades. It’s engaging ideas, it’s engaging professors, it’s engaging their fellow students in other kinds of ways. It’s a very competitive campus. Most of the students are involved in sports or intramurals. It’s a very active campus socially and civilly. For a campus its size, to bring the speakers and performances that they do bring, such as the Galileo performance and Douglas Farrow’s lecture, that’s impressive. The level of student engagement in those sorts of things is impressive. Those speakers indicated to me that they have not had that experience before in many places. There’s something different about Wabash to make it a unique and worthwhile experience. All the kids I knew up in Michigan, when I told them about Wabash, their first reaction is that “It’s an all-boy’s school. I couldn’t go there.” I think they sold it short. I think if they gave it a chance and came down here they’d probably have thought differently, and that’s the story I hear time and again from students I’ve talked to. They were against it at the beginning, but a visit here was all it took, and they were committed to coming here. It’s a unique place; it’s a great place.
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