Also inside, John Plaiss ’14 gives a devotional reflection, Dr. Steve Webb suggests some good books, and Andrew Forrester ’11 recalls Wabash’s trouncing of the undefeated DePauw team at this year’s Monon Bell Classic.

Related posts:

1. New Phoenix: Dr. Placher’s Mark
2. Fall Phoenix Issues Now Online
3. Robert George on Natural Law

Just look at Mary the Mother of Jesus. Gabriel announces to her that she “has found favor with the Lord” (Lk. 1:30). So much favor, in fact, that she will “bear a Son,” and he will be called Jesus. Mary is doubtful. She knows well the consequences of accepting this child. But because of her faith in God she pulls through. “Behold,” Mary says, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done according to your word” (Lk. 1:38). Then the angel leaves. The angel never threatens Mary with damnation. Rather, Gabriel puts much emphasis on Mary’s sanctity. “Hail, favored one” is his greeting (Lk. 1:28). The threat of damnation never even crosses Mary’s mind. She chooses to serve the Lord out of love. We know this favor is done out of love because Mary rejoices. “I am the handmaid of the Lord,” she says. Mary is practically boasting that “all generations will call me blessed.” The love relationship between God and Mary is something that is not limited to the two. God’s love spills over all bounds. This is how God wants us to serve him. He wants us to react to the love that He is constantly showing us, just like Mary did. God does not want us to be preoccupied with Hell. He wants us to look at the bigger picture. Hell is hot, but the love of the Father trumps that.

Hasan of Basra was a scholar of Islam who was noted for being very practical in his teachings on religion. Eric Schroeder’s book Muhammad’s People quotes Hasan as saying: “…how excellent is a man whose patience is for God’s sake not for being delivered from Hell; and his asceticism for God’s sake, not for getting into Heaven.” Schroeder also quotes Hasan as saying, “Oh God! if I worship Thee for fear of Hell, send me to Hell.”

The Bible describes to us a world of pain and torment unimaginable to the human mind. And while the woe of hell should not escape us, it should not be the sole focus of our faith either. The focal point of all faith is love. Love implies forgiveness. Because God is a loving God, encompassing and fulfilling all traits that are good, we should rejoice in that fact and not fret for fear of the land in which God is totally severed. If we truly believe this message of love, peace, and forgiveness, fear of hell is something that is unnecessary because through love we trust in God’s message of salvation and unity with Him. If we worship God out of fear of Hell, we miss God’s message entirely. No longer is God defined by His grace, infinite mercy, and wisdom, but he becomes a God of estrangement and separation.

This is why Hasan of Basra says that if he worships God out of fear of Hell he should go there, because the one who worships God out of fear of Hell does not know God. He only knows his own fear. The man who worships God for fear of Hell uses God as means to achieve an end, and this violates God to the very core. God is the end of all things, the Omega of time and humanity. To use God to escape Hell is selfish, and so to spare ourselves from the vice of selfishness we must take the advice of Hasan of Basra. We must be patient with God through love, for in love man can make his union with God. God and fear are irreconcilable. Our asceticism must be for God. If our asceticism is for getting out of hell then we are idolaters. We worship the prize of Heaven, not God. Dismay of hell is not the way to get to God. The one who worships God out of fear is already in a Hell of his or her own.

So, how does this apply to us Wabash men? This knowledge, what’s it supposed to do for us? The answer itself lies in our liberal education. Our education challenges us to transcend all intellectual boundaries. It is common for man to obey God within the confines of fear, but he who has been liberally educated has been taught to reject those confines and see the bigger picture. So, when we see a billboard stating, “Hell is hot; Jesus is real,” we must utilize our education to see past that limit and see Heaven.

Related posts:

1. A Twisted Truth: How politics and fear-mongering have skewed the Global Warming argument

To begin, Dr. George makes a differentiation between two types of human action. The first of these types—what I will call instrumental action (my term, not Dr. George’s)—is an action that serves as a means to an end. The second type—what I will call autonomous action—is an action that serves as an end to itself. In order to determine which sort of action we are dealing with, Dr. George suggests asking the question, “Why am I doing X?” If the answer is “I am doing X in order to Y,” then X is an instrumental action. An example of this would be turning on the heater in my car. I am turning on the heater so that the temperature in the car will be warmer.

On the other hand, if the answer to the question is “I am doing X for its own sake; do you not see the point?” then X is an autonomous action. In other words, an autonomous action has its own intelligible purpose. The example that Dr. George gives is visiting a friend in a hospital knowing that he probably won’t be able to recognize that you are there. If someone asks me why I am visiting my friend in the hospital, I can intelligibly say, “He’s my friend and he’s in the hospital!” I don’t need any further purpose. This is different than an instrumental action. If someone asks why I turned the heater on in my car, I cannot say, “The heater needs to be turned on.” That doesn’t really make sense. My turning on the heater only makes sense if it is done in order to do something else, namely to heat up the car.

Dr. George makes sure to point out that even autonomous actions can be instrumental, though. For example, I can visit my friend in the hospital in order to make an impression on someone else that I am a great guy. In this case, my visiting my friend is an instrumental action. Nevertheless, this action has the potential to be autonomous in the way that turning on a car heater does not.

Probably the most-cited example of these autonomous actions, as Dr. George points out, is Aristotle’s idea of true friendship. There is an intelligible point to having and being a friend. Certainly, there are instrumental benefits to friendship, but these instrumental benefits are not the essence of the friendship.

At this point, Dr. George makes sure to point out that we have not entered into the question of morality yet. We have merely discussed the distinction between actions that are intelligible and non-intelligible in themselves (namely, autonomous and instrumental actions, respectively). It is from this foundation that we can begin to discuss morality.

Now, let us extend the idea of autonomous actions.  An autonomous action has an irreducible purpose. Likewise, there are human goods that are irreducible. Examples of these irreducible goods include physical fitness, friendship, knowledge, appreciation for skillful performances, and—assuming one does not take a reductive, materialistic view of human nature—spiritual wellbeing. These are irreducible for the same reason that autonomous actions are irreducible.

“Why do you want to be physically fit?”

“Because I want to be physically fit.”

Of course, another possible response would be that I want to be physically fit to impress the ladies, but, again, physical fitness can—at least potentially—be an end to itself.

Notice that something interesting happened here. Dr. George has rejected the idea that there is a single thing that we call Good. He has said that there are several irreducible goods—with an s. These goods do not share any special thing that makes them good. Dr. George says, “What they have in common is this, and only this: as irreducible aspects of human wellbeing and fulfillment, they provide in each case a more than merely instrumental reason for acting.” He says that this multiplicity of goods points to the notion that “our nature, though determinate [i.e. absolute and not relative], is complex.”

Now that we have established that there are goods, we can look at the moral demands that this existence of goods places upon us. Dr. George says that the first principle of morality is that “one ought always to [make choices]… in a way that is compatible with a will toward integral human fulfillment.” What does that mean? Dr. George says that we can make decisions “to flourish or fail to flourish” in each of the areas of human good. We can exercise or we can let our health fail. We can think critically or we can be stupid. We can forge friendships or we can keep to our lonely selves. It is up to us to pick the choice that fulfills the good. For this reason, Dr. George rejects strict individualism because it overlooks the intrinsic irreducible good of friendship. A strict individualist fails to flourish in friendship. Likewise, Dr. George rejects collectivism. This is where the issue of human rights comes into play. Collectivism works on the idea that humans are a means to the end of the collective. This is, presumably, fine if one rejects the idea that humans are ends to themselves. This is where Dr. George disagrees. He views humans as irreducible goods in themselves.

Thus, human rights spring from the intrinsic irreducible value of humans as their own ends. Thus, going back to our previous discussion, human beings are irreducible goods. This places another moral demand on us: the demand of respecting human dignity and human rights. Humans have rights that we must respect because they are irreducible goods, and we are demanded to make decisions so as to flourish in all areas of irreducible goods.

We have now arrived at the framework for the existence of a theory of morality and of human rights that is totally independent of belief in a deity. This, to Dr. George, is good because it gives common ground for people who do not agree on the existence of God to discuss issues of morality without appealing to theological beliefs. He cites one of his colleagues at Princeton, Dr. Jeff Stout, who agrees with him on the existence of natural law and human dignity while being atheist.

However, while this common ground is quite an achievement, a shared belief in the existence of natural law by no means corresponds to agreement on the content of natural law. “Belief in natural law gets you in the debating club,” Dr. George says, “it doesn’t solve all your problems!”

Having put forward a summary of Dr. George’s talk and given an overview of his brand of natural law theory, let us now take a few moments to reflect on the implications of these ideas from a Christian perspective. One question that would be natural to ask at this point would be: where would God fit into this picture? Dr. George did say that through intellectual ethical reflection, some are able to find proof of a deity in the order of it all. However, in another important way, Dr. George seems to have crowded God out of the picture. Recall that he explicitly denies the existence of a single Good in favor of a multiplicity of goods. Taken at face value, this is dangerous. For example, in saying that intellectual wellbeing is an irreducible good, Dr. George has seemingly left no room for us to say that intellectual cultivation is good because it helps us to find God. Also, if man’s purpose is primarily to serve God, how does this fit into the economy of irreducible goods?

One also would be prudent to ask why this natural law theory matters at all. If, in the end, we were unable to gain any concrete moral insights and were simply granted access to the “debate club,” what purpose does this knowledge serve? In our various Christian traditions, we have at least the framing for a concrete morality. Our moral frameworks are founded unabashedly on theology and the Bible, and we thus avoid having to do the convoluted intellectual back flips and contortions that Dr. George does in order to make his theory atheist-friendly.

All of these objections to Dr. George’s work are important to keep in mind. It would be a sad day for Christianity when everyone started thinking exclusively in terms of man-made, deity-independent terms of morality. God and his Church ought to be the Christian’s guide. But it is important, nonetheless, to not write off Dr. George’s work. A Christian himself, Dr. George is presumably not out to usurp the Church’s position in moral instruction. Natural law can be an important political tool for Christians wanting to have an influence on secular government. Also, as Dr. George points out, the order that is found in natural law theory can be a tool for evangelizing others or deepening our own faith. Also, if we accept that intellectual wellbeing and truth-seeking are good, working through Dr. George’s philosophy provides us with a way to nurture that part of ourselves. Natural law cannot replace religious morality, but it certainly can be a supplement.

Related posts:

1. Reflecting on Natural Law – Last Phoenix of the Fall Semester
2. Robert George on Natural Law
3. Robert George Coming to Wabash in September

Professor George is at the forefront of the Pro-Life movement in the United States, and is a co-author of the Manhattan Declaration, a petition signed by many Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians defending the causes of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.  He was formerly a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and was a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.  He is the author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, In Defense of Natural Law, and The Clash of Orthodoxies.

Related posts:

1. Robert George on Natural Law
2. Jimmy LaSalvia of GOProud at Wabash College September 21
3. Reflecting on Natural Law – Last Phoenix of the Fall Semester

ROCK President Bryan Wickens addresses the audience of the 2008 ROCK Concert about how we can protect our families and communities from the harmful effects of the sex industry. The 2008 ROCK Concert featured musical talents Mark Schulz, Big Daddy Weave and Building 429.

Bryan Wickens came to Wabash College like most other students. He wasn’t sure what to expect and he had no clue what he was going to do after graduation. Wickens’ path through Wabash and into law school sounds very familiar to many of us. His position as a partner in one of the Midwest’s largest law firms matches the career goals of many aspiring Wabash graduates. It was the typical Wabash success story.

Until he gave it up.

To be more accurate, he traded it in for something better. What seemed like a crazy decision to people around him has turned out to be more than many could ever ask for. As president of Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana (ROCK), Wickens is doing what he loves while making a difference for future generations. However, the compelling part of his story is not just about what he gave up, but how he came about that decision and what steps led up to his current position.

Wickens was the first person in his immediate family to attend college. He went in without a solid plan but eventually settled on pursuing law. Although he claims that law school didn’t seem to be the first thing on his mind, his mother has always disagreed. “She always used to tell me that from the earliest age on, I would sit and read the Constitution, pull out books and read about it, and say I wanted to be a lawyer some day.” Not many kids do that anyway, but for a native of Ellettsville, Indiana, an average small Hoosier town, it must have seemed especially odd. Living in Ellettsville, Wickens said, he knew very little about law when he decided to venture into the world of litigation. “When I made that decision, I didn’t know a lawyer. In fact, my family used to think that if we knew a lawyer, that was a bad thing.”

Bad thing or not, after finishing his Wabash career as a Political Science major, brother of Phi Kappa Psi, Sphinx Club member, and basketball player, he continued on to law school. When an uncle mentioned that he should come to the University of Nebraska to continue his studies, it didn’t sound too exciting but he decided to visit anyway. He quickly fell in love with the school and excelled there- something he still credits to the education he received while at Wabash.

After he had been working in Nebraska for a while, a friend from Louisville told him about a job at a firm in Louisville, Kentucky. He visited the firm and absolutely loved the area, so he took the job. Not long after that Wickens changed firms and became a partner in the New Albany office of Frost, Brown, and Todd- one of the largest law firms in the nation, with offices from Atlanta to Chicago. He traveled across the country with them, doing commercial litigation on cases ranging from unfair competition, trademark issues, and even Astro-Turf. To many Wallies this would seem like the perfect job.

However, it wasn’t as good as it seemed to be. Through it all he felt he was submerging his real passions in life underneath the success he was having as a lawyer. “From the outside looking in, I had it all: my beautiful wife Whitney, a young daughter, and a solid career. Many would say ‘This guy is doing it exactly right. He’s young, working for a large firm, and making more money than he ever thought he would.’ But all of those things just weren’t enough.”

Like many Little Giant’s who have preceded and followed him, Wickens began to take notice of what was really happening in the world around him. “I started more and more looking around and seeing what was going on in our country, moving further and further from our founding principles and what our founders warned us about- that liberty and freedom must be buttressed by morality and decency for those things to survive and sustain.” It was at this time that his true passions were bubbling to the surface. “When I saw the moral decay and attacks on our values I tried to figure out what role, if any, I was supposed to take in this. I began to ask ‘What can I do with my skills and abilities to make a difference?’”

That’s when he jumped into action. While in law school Wickens had connected with a well-known Constitutional Law professor who was a strong Christian. So he called up Professor Richard Duncan to get his advice on what he could do. Professor Duncan reminded Wickens of the bigger picture. “He told me that when the time is right, if I was serious, and if I really felt as an individual and from a faith perspective that this is what I was supposed to be doing, then I should check out training with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).” The Alliance Defense Fund is an army of Christian attorneys who receive training in defending issues of Christian faith, values, and morals, so that they can go back to their communities and defend them. Although he did not know much about it at the time, he decided to take a look into it.

Wickens immediately was interested, but said he initially came up with every reason not to go to the training. His wife Whitney, however, noticed his passion was becoming more and more evident and told him that if he felt as though God was calling him to do it, he needed to follow through. Wickens said lightheartedly, “I always say that I certainly didn’t want to disobey what God was telling me to do, but I didn’t want to disobey my wife, either. So I went for the ADF training.”

In this very selective, week-long training, Wickens felt his passions unite with a strong connection of faith and law. “You get scholarly Constitutional Law training, but you start off with devotions and prayer each day with fifty other attorneys who are there for the same reason and feel that God has called them to this point in their lives.” He came back from this conference more confident that he was doing what he was being called to do.

“I came back and I was on fire. I had a vision and I was passionate about it. I wish I could say that I started doing all kinds of cases, but the next year was probably one of the most frustrating times in my life. Although I came back on fire, nothing seemed to be happening.”

He recounted to me his struggle of not knowing what to do: “It wasn’t fun then, but what I can tell you now is that I learned so much about how things are not on our time. I learned patience and humility all throughout.” He was trying to follow what God was calling him to do, but he was still holding on to what was comfortable, and it didn’t work. But as God does in many situations, he reaches us when we are most broken and humble before him.

“At about that year and a half point, I just reached a point of true surrender where I just said, ‘You know what? It’s not working my way and if I need to stay in the firm and be a light there, fine. If it’s something else, that’s fine too.’ But I really just gave it up in true surrender. And in a short amount of time, I felt this weight lifted off of me and this organization called ROCK reached out to me.’”

Although he knew nothing about ROCK at the time, it was just what he had been searching for. It had started in March 2004 as a grassroots response to a series of articles written about the amount of sex industries in the Louisville metropolitan area. Through those articles, people in the community learned that it was ranked in the top five in the nation with regards to the amount of sexually oriented businesses.

The decay in all different facets of society especially concerned Wickens, although he saw it as a symptom of a bigger problem that he had been passionate about for years. “People ask me what my worst fear is. Am I afraid of the ACLU? The sex industry? Organized crime? They expect that to be my answer, but no. My greatest fear is apathy. This moral decline and attack on our values did not happen overnight. It happened incrementally over many years because people didn’t show up, get involved, and get off the sidelines.”

When Wickens accepted the job on the ROCK board of directors, he had no idea where it could lead him. He thought maybe he would continue to work in the firm and work with ROCK on the side. But God had different plans. “It wasn’t long after I started on the board that the organization was growing so much that we needed to take it to the next level and hire the first full-time president. They gave out the job description at the meeting and I looked down at it and it was everything I felt I had been called to do to utilize my skills and abilities in that area. But I looked at the salary and thought ‘My wife will think I’m absolutely nuts.’”

So Wickens kept quiet about it, struggling to seek out what God wanted him to do. But just as before, God continued to tell him that it was a part of a bigger plan, so he took it to his wife—right after they had just had their second child. “She said ‘I know it’s everything you have been called to, but how can we do it? How can we leave the security of the firm?’ So we prayed about it and decided that if the door opens, it opens, but if it doesn’t, that’s fine. We both thought at the time it would be easier that way.”

When the door was eventually opened for Wickens, he faithfully made the tough decision to trade in his successful career in law for a position as president of a risky, up-start grassroots position on the belief that it was everything he had been searching for. “God was working in so many different ways, He just made it possible. It was still scary as can be, but we took that step of faith in September of 2005 and have been blessed beyond anything I could have ever imagined.”

Although it wasn’t an easy decision to make, he knew it was the right one, even though some people might have called him crazy. Some asked how he could do that to his family, but Wickens would look at them and say, “No, I’m doing this for my family. I look at my daughters and I want to use my skills and abilities to make things better for their future.”

Since taking that leap of faith, Wickens has seen ROCK achieve unimaginable success. The number of sex industries in the area has decreased from 200 to 67, and in the last year alone ROCK saw a 700% increase in the number of people signed up to be a part of the organization. They have done community organization rallies, placed billboards along I-65, and worked hard to ensure family friendly legislation in the region’s communities. But even with the accomplishments made so far by the organization, Wickens stays humble. “It’s not about ‘Look at what we did.’ The message is clear: we can change things. We can stand up for our values as a community.”

Wickens stresses that ROCK’s work is not like that of other more radical Christian values groups that sometimes appear on TV. “We have become effective by working alongside and with people, not against them. We really try to do things differently. That’s why you’ll never see ROCK street-side protesting; never will you see hateful statements. We handle things in a very respectful and professional manner. I believe that’s the right way to do things.”

As ROCK has grown and expanded, it has given Wickens and others in the organization a platform to not only make communities more family friendly, but it has given them a chance to offer a helping hand to people who are struggling with the side effects of the sex industry. “We want to make sure we are reaching out with the other hand to help people who are caught up in the industry. It’s never about us vs. them. It’s about real people and real lives and I never want to lose sight of that.”

It’s easy to see now how giving up what seemed like a dream job has led to something even better. But we must remember that this isn’t the end of his story. At this point, Wickens knows what he’s supposed to be doing now in defending our values, but doesn’t know what that will bring during the rest of his life. “I don’t have a clue what the future holds, but if the last two years are any indicator, it’s going to be phenomenal.”

Related posts:

1. Bryan Stevenson: His Fight and His Message
2. Two Ships Passing in the Night: A Call for Compassionate Conservatism
3. The Flaw in Conservatism: A Call to Service

The abortion debate has become polarized along faith lines, and the Pro-Life argument tends to take two general forms. Some argue that abortion is wrong because the child has a soul and is thus human; others argue that it is wrong because it encourages a warped view of the purpose of sex. If we examine the basis of these two arguments, we should not be surprised that Pro-Choice advocates spurn them. Both of these assertions imply that God exists and He condemns abortion. By allowing these implications into the debate, the Pro-Life movement narrows its audience. As a matter of fact, it narrows the audience to the point that we start to talk only to ourselves. If the majority of Americans and politicians truly agreed that God exists and that He condemns abortion, we would not have a debate. But, considering the circumstances, we need to rethink our argumentation style.

Practical arguments would do well in convincing people to not support specific legislation to propagate abortion. For example, in the case of the Freedom of Choice Act, we often emphasize that the act ought to be opposed purely on the grounds that women should not have the right to choose abortion. Instead, we should explain how the legislation infringes upon the rights of doctors and medical workers to refuse to participate in an action that they deem morally dubious. By appealing to this right of freedom of expression that most Americans cherish regardless of their political views, we can be more inclusive in who heeds our arguments.

We also ought to employ scientific arguments, as well. In 2002, George Mason University published a study that found a positive correlation between the legalization of abortion and the number of patients with gonorrhea and syphilis, presumably because partners became more sexually active after abortion was legalized. While here is not the place to argue the validity of this study’s conclusions or their relevancy, this particular example illustrates the types of research that the Pro-Life movement can complete in order to press its points. In our scientifically minded world, statistics and practical arguments carry more weight than theological arguments, and the Pro-Life cause ought to make more use of them.

The Pro-Life movement also needs to refine its message from a negative to a positive one. In this respect, we ought to remember that we disagree with abortion itself, and not those who seek abortions. Unfortunately, many in the Pro-Life movement have resorted to ad hominem attacks against abortion supporters. Evidence of this fact can be found on nearly any blog or news discussion forum that examines this issue and on chain emails and personal conversations. This tactic is harmful to the cause as a whole, since there is no surer way to deafen the ears of those we most need to convince than to attack their character.

But even those Pro-Life advocates who avoid ad hominem attacks need to focus less on the negative aspects of abortion and more on the positive aspects of bearing the child. Before the Super Bowl, one faith-based group, CatholicVote.org, produced a commercial that is an exemplary illustration of this approach. Though both CNN and NBC both refused to put this commercial on the air, it is available on the CatholicVote.org website. The commercial attempts to refute several popular Pro-Choice arguments while playing uplifting music and telling a story of triumph. It shows an ultrasound picture of a fetus while telling the story of someone the public knows well. “This child’s future is a broken home…despite the hardships he will endure, this child will become the 1st African American president.” This is an excellent template of a positive, uplifting campaign against abortion for the Pro-Life movement to follow moving forward.

Finally, to be taken truly seriously, the Pro-Life movement needs to be slow to speak. Too often, the entire cause loses credibility when a Pro-Life advocate misquotes a fact or statistic. A prime example of this occurred in January, when, according to the Cath­olic-based Eternal World Television Network (EWTN), a popular chain email claimed that President Obama would enact FOCA as an executive order on his first day in office. This never happened, and would indeed not have been legal. This scare tactic deprives the Pro-Life movement of its credibility. As a matter of fact, Pro-Life advocates who have been so focused on FOCA these last couple months ought to realize that the act has not yet even been proposed in the current Congress. If the Pro-Life movement improves its fact-checking performance, we will gain some much-needed credibility.

In this time of great uncertainty about the future prospects for the sanctity of life, the Pro-Life movement needs to gain a level head. By appeal­ing to our opponents using arguments that are not theologically based, by sending a more positive message, and by thinking before we act, our advo­cacy of the Pro-Life cause will cease to fall on deaf ears.

Related posts:

1. The Selfish Nature of Abortion
2. Abortion a Civil Rights Issue?
3. The Revolving Door: Many Question Admission Department’s Strategy

Sinner, by Christian novelist Ted Dekker, follows the story of a sinister evil hell-bent on destruction, a na¬tion on the brink of collapse, and the few that can stop it. Sinner questions the limits of free speech, government intervention, and how far one town will go to proclaim that Jesus Christ is “the Way”.
For those unfamiliar with Ted Dekker, he brings to the literary world the emerging genre of the “supernatu¬ral thriller”. Like his famous counter¬part Frank Peretti, Dekker seamlessly and beautifully intertwines faith and suspense as well as questioning the very nature of good and evil, leaving the reader to ponder the deep spiritual undertones that only become apparent as the book’s last pages are turned.

Let me warn you: This book is hard to put down. One or two sittings is ideal. You might easily find yourself caught up in the whirlwind of the vari-ous sub-plots, and suddenly question¬ing how a government can prosecute an entire town of three thousand.

Another warning—with Dekker, not even the main character is safe from death. In some of his books he has killed the main character—more than once. But in this one the main characters live; it’s just the very fabric of the United States that dies.

The reasoning behind the Na¬tional Tolerance Act’s ban on religious speech is very straightforward. Since violence and hate cannot be controlled by mere physical or political force, one must simply restrict the ability (or rather, legality) for certain types of speech—namely re¬ligious. Think about it: shouting always prefaces punches. If there is no shout¬ing, then there is no punching. Peace is maintained and all is well—at least for those who thrive on political correct¬ness.

Under the guise of tolerance, dissent is eliminated while our nation, from a religious standpoint, becomes the very thing it sought to fight against. Under the “National Tolerance Act”, if I told you about Christianity or that I am a Christian, I implicitly single you out by proclaiming that Jesus is the only way to heaven. It would be considered “a personal attack of heinous nature upon that person’s intrinsic value as a citizen as well as upon the moral character of that person” (238), simply because it questions equality. In this book, ‘tolerance’ as our American so¬ciety knows it, is played out to its full intrinsic nature: silencing debate for the sake of equality.

But to stray for just a moment, we need not look to fiction for possible re-straint of the First Amendment. Look at the antiquated Fairness Doctrine. A modern day version would function under the absurd view that radio is the main news outlet. Claiming that public airwaves need more diversity, a modern day doctrine would attempt to provide that diversity by requiring a liberal view be heard along with a conservative view. But look under the mask: this is unreasonable. If a station cannot afford to provide this diversity, they would be effectively silenced. Think of it in terms of television. We all know that entertainment is decided by the people, so imagine the back¬lash if the show ‘Joey’ was forced to stay on the air because ‘E.R.’ was more successful. The Doctrine would force people to tolerate unentertaining shows that on their own they would not watch. There would be no changing the channel: Homog¬enous entertainment would reign supreme! Such is tolerance in the non-fiction world. But now back to Sinner.

Oh, there’s one last thing to warn you about: It’s the third in a series. Sort of. Sinner is a mere three hundred and seventy-four page pit stop in a grand circular storyline that spans over six books thus far. Having read all of them except for one or two, I can attest that somehow circular storylines are possible. And entertainingly mind-blowing! If you don’t believe me, then pick up a book for yourself!

If you’ve never read Christian fiction before, seriously consider giving Sin¬ner a chance. Before reading Dekker, I too thought that the genre was nothing but hyper creepy peppy evangelical blibber blabber on a paper canvas. But oh, how wrong I was! If you’re willing to get beyond the veil of ignorance that surrounds anything ‘Christian’, what you will find is an emerging genre that is anything but. So trust me: you will not be disappointed!

Related posts:

1. Conservative Watchmen? Lessons on society in Alan Moore’s Work
2. Reflections on a Common Error: A Reminder to Freshmen & Seniors Alike
3. Co-ed Never: Reflections on the Core of Wabash Traditions

The Center is the product of many conversations I have had with students and faculty over the years, and as I’ve talked to people about it, I have had tremendous interest and support. In the next year, we will be putting together a board, planning our mission, and filing the necessary papers to begin fund raising. Expect me to come calling! This is going to be a fantastic opportunity for any Christian students or alumni to have an impact on the future of our beloved College.

I sent a proposal for the Center to President Pat White, Dean Gary Phillips, and Dean Joe Emmick on February 8, 2007. Although I did not receive any reply to my proposal, let me make it very clear that I absolutely support the administration and totally understand their silence. To be brutally honest, it would be very hard, if not impossible, for the administration to establish anything like a Christian Studies Center through official College channels. The faculty has become increasingly secular over the years, and many faculty, as amply demonstrated in the recent quality of life survey, are suspicious if not downright hostile to expressions of faith at Wabash. That is why this new Center will have no official relationship to the College. It will be completely independent of the College, yet its mission will be completely dedicated to the College.

The Christian Studies Center will serve the College, including students, staff, faculty, and alumni, by creating and supporting programs to promote Christian excellence at Wabash. We want to support Wabash Christians in both their intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Indeed, we believe that Christians anywhere and everywhere cannot separate the intellectual from the spiritual. To grow spiritually, you need to be challenged intellectually, but intellectual challenges work best when they are theologically informed and spiritually nourishing. The Wabash Christian Studies Center will unite hearts and minds in the pursuit of Christian excellence.

If you want to be on an email list that will provide updates for the Center, please email me with that request at webbs (at) wabash.edu. If you would like to take an active role in helping with the Center, let me know that in your email. Here is what we need:

Student leaders. This Center will be for the students, primarily, so we need their participation and their contributions. We will organize a student board that will contribute ideas for the Center. This board will also begin some modest fund raising activities among current students, as a way of demonstrating student support and excitement about this project.

Alumni fund raisers. Our goal is ambitious, just as our vision is broad and inclusive. We are in this for the long run. We envision buying a house near campus as a place for some student leaders to live and for some of our programs and meetings to take place. We envision having a staff, perhaps part-time at first, with experience in the ministry as well as professional training in theology. This will take several years, but I am absolutely confident that these goals will be reached. Let’s start working now!

Faculty leaders. We will need to explore similar programs at other schools, and thus an exploratory committee will be one of the first items of business. A project like this needs faculty leadership, so faculty who would like to be members of the team to get this project launched, just let me know.

Crawfordsville Christians. We envision working with Crawfordsville churches to achieve our goals. People with connections to local churches are encouraged to become a part of this project. We want this Center to be a place that makes connections between local churches and Wabash students.

Endowment support. The hardest part of this project will be the initial fund raising efforts. To get that ball rolling, some start up costs will need to be met. Support from established endowments will be very important in meeting some of these relatively modest costs. People with connections and experience in this will be greatly valued!

Are you interested? If so, read on. Historical background. Many people think that Wabash has always been a secular school. This is not true. Wabash College even had a Chaplain for several decades in the first half of the twentieth century, and before that, the Presidents of the College regularly taught courses in moral theology. The story of how we lost that Chaplaincy is interesting, but instead of telling it here, let me just point you to an article I’ve written. It can be found at StephenHWebb.com. On that site, click on the essays tab, then click on “A Ghostly Department.” This essay is a revision of ch. 6, “The Mystery of the Disappearing Chaplain,” from my book, Taking Religion to School (Brazos Press, 2000). That chapter includes a broader history of the Wabash religion department.

For those who want a very brief version of the story about how we lost our Chaplaincy, let me say that after World War II, the College decided to join the duties of the Chaplain with the newly created religion department. Thus, religion professors were explicitly assigned the duties of the Chaplain. For example, the first group of religion professors at Wabash, Fred West, Hans Frei, Thomas Altizer, and Eric Dean, all held the title, one right after the other, of Director of Religious Activities. This was in addition to their faculty rank. During the long course of Eric Dean’s service to the college, he took the duties of directing religious activities very seriously. He was, in effect, the Wabash College Chaplain, and those duties were an official part of his position. Eventually, the title of Director of Religious Activities was dropped from Eric’s official title. I have found no documents as to when this occurred. The title was dropped, but not the implicit expectation that the religion department should direct and support religious activities at Wabash. When I first joined the department, in 1987-88, for example, the idea that the department as a whole functioned as the unofficial chaplaincy for the college was taken for granted.

Now, for a variety of reasons, it is hard, if not impossible, to expect any department or any professor to take on extra duties not related to teaching and publication in their field. I have over the years written several articles for The Bachelor and The Wabash Commentary spelling out the need for a Chaplain at Wabash. I have now become convinced that this idea is both bad and impossible. It is a bad idea because college chaplains must answer to the faculty and the administration, and thus there is tremendous pressure for them to be all things to all people. It is an impossible idea because the faculty at Wabash would never accept a Chaplain. There would be endless debates and outcries over the favoring of Christianity. Even in our own department, when this idea was discussed briefly several years ago, someone insisted that a Wabash Chaplain would have to be committed to addressing environmental and gender issues, as if a Chaplain would not have enough to do addressing theological issue. I don’t think anyone wants to debate the desirability of having a chaplain on campus.

What a Christian Center Can Do. Fortunately, there is an alternative to a chaplain! There is a movement on America’s college campuses that is dynamic, vibrant, and coming soon to Wabash. On many college campuses, Christian alumni, students, and faculty have cooperated to establish what are sometimes called Christian Study Centers. The purpose of these centers is to enhance the education students receive in the classroom. These Centers are set up with the cooperation of the college administrators, but they are also independent from the college. There are different models to choose from, and obviously we would want to do this in a way that meets the needs and respects the traditions of Wabash. I have already examined similar programs at Charlottesville, VA, Gainesville, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Christian Centers are also already established or being established at many Ivy League universities, including Brown, Cornell, and Princeton. At Princeton University, the Witherspoon Institute has been established to promote the study of the natural law and traditional moral values. Each of these centers has its own special characteristics and mission. What they have in common is the belief that many students are hungry for educational opportunities that unite traditional values, orthodox doctrine, and spiritual nourishment, and that the best way to integrate the spiritual and the intellectual is to do so in a way that avoids typical college politics.

Most of these Centers combine the intellectual and the spiritual with a strong emphasis on lectures and scholarly sessions. They employ theologians with Ph.D.s as well as people trained in ministry. All are charitable 501 c(3) organizations. By being independent of but serving the college community, staff, faculty and students, these centers do not become mired in unproductive debates about the separation of church and state or the evils of having Christianity represented on campus.

What the Center Will Do. This center will serve Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant students equally. Indeed, I think it would be great to have someone on staff who has a Ph.D. in Catholic studies. The Catholic students at Wabash are the most neglected and underserved of any student group. Sociologists now argue that evangelical and conservative Protestants are hungry to know about Catholic traditions, and the political alliance between devout Catholics and conservative Protestants is turning into a theological revolution. We do very little on this campus to reach out to Catholics or conservative, traditional, orthodox Protestants.

I once took a group of 14 students for an alternative Spring Break trip. We worked on a church affiliated camp that builds houses for the poor in Appalachia. It was transformational for all of us. I asked the then dean Mauri Ditzler to continue funding this program, but he declined. I could have done it on my own, but it is hard to do such things when you are so busy and you receive no institutional help. An alternative spring break trip is just the kind of thing the Center would organize.

We have a growing number of students going on to seminary studies and getting internships at churches. Many students also want to connect their spiritual vocations with overseas charitable work and service to the poor. Butler University has a Volunteer Center that helps connect students to charitable programs. Many of those programs, of course, are faith based, so any emphasis on volunteering always comes around to the role of religion on campus. Wabash College could never provide students with this kind of support, because that would offend secular and liberal faculty, but the Wabash Christian Studies Center will be a meeting place for students who want to think about the vocation of helping others.

I help out sometimes with the Wabash Christian Men organization. WCM is strong and vital, with 40 or 50 students attending their Wednesday evening meetings. They get very little help or encouragement from the College. Indeed, there is a religious revival going on around the country, not just Wabash, with young people seeking a firmer foundation for their faith and parents looking for colleges that support and sustain the religious and moral convictions of their children.

The admissions people send me lots of high schools students each year who are interested, along with their parents, in these kinds of questions. I cannot tell you how often parents ask me about the religious life at Wabash. What can I tell them? I try to put the best spin possible on what it is like at Wabash for a devout Christian, because I want these students to come here. Nonetheless, sometimes I wonder if I am not misleading them. Sometimes I suspect that, when the College uses me or faculty like David Kubiak as spokesmen, it is not being absolutely honest and open with perspective students about what commitments the college does or does not have to religious students. They like potential students to meet us, but they do not tell potential students that there are actually very, very few devout Christians on the faculty who are willing to help students of faith integrate their intellectual and spiritual lives.

Role of Alumni. Wabash is gearing up for another capital campaign and mission statement, but there is little or no talk about meeting the needs of Christian students. There is a renewed interest in religion in almost every scholarly field you can name, but the Wabash faculty, as a whole, remains very secular. Surveys show that a significant and increasing numbers of college students want more Christian history, ethics, and theology in their studies, but they are not getting that at Wabash. We act like we are a state school worried about the first amendment, rather than a school founded in the Christian tradition.

I do not think this Center will compete with the other fund-raising projects for the College. Some alumni who have not supported Wabash in years will now be brought back into active engagement with the College. Some alumni who give to the College will give a little extra to include this Center in their plans. In any case, this is a Center that will be a direct benefit for the College. I’m not asking anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do. The time, money, and energy I am giving to this Center is my gift to the College. This will be my life’s project, and I am staking my career on it. There is much work to be done. There is a great future ahead of us. The Spirit is moving. Please keep this Center in your prayers, and ask God what you can do to make Wabash a place where devout Christians can flourish—a place where the highest standards of intellectual and spiritual excellence can be promoted and achieved. Email me. Please join me. And let’s get to work.

Related posts:

1. Anticipating the Christian Studies Center: Students React to Webb Proposal
2. Wabash Conservative Union to Host E. Christian Kopff
3. A Gender Studies Requirement?