Editor’s note: One of the enduring issues of this school year for the Calvin community at large has been clarifying the university’s relationship with the Christian Reformed Church in North America, Calvin’s parent denomination. Recent decisions about the denominational stance on sexuality have led to renewed conversations about a balance between academic freedom and confessional commitments at Calvin. As this conversation continues, Chimes has partnered with the Political Dialogue and Action Club (PDAC) to coordinate a series of opinion pieces from professors on the issue. We plan on running these opinions in each of the remaining editions before the end of the year, and it’s our hope that they foster continued dialogue on the issue. 

– Ethan Meyers, Chimes Editor-in-Chief

Over the past several years, Calvin faculty have had to learn a new language that includes words like synod and gravamina and status confessionis. This is because, in 2022, the synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC)—the governing body of the denomination—adopted a report on human sexuality which stipulates that “homosexual sex” violates the definition of “unchastity” in the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the confessional standards for the university. To use evangelical nomenclature, this means sex was deemed “a salvation issue” and hence one on which disagreement was disallowed. This decision had significant repercussions in the denomination because a number of CRC congregations, through a process of theological and pastoral discernment, have concluded that same-sex marriage can be a faithful expression of following Jesus for gay and lesbian Christians. A number of these congregations are now in the process of leaving the CRC and are likely to join other Reformed denominations (such as the PCUSA, RCA, or UCC) that accept same-sex marriage as a covenantal expression of discipleship for gay and lesbian Christians.

All this talk of denominations and synods sounds churchy. So why does a university have to worry about all this? Well, because Calvin University is a university “of” the CRC. The faculty of Calvin University are required to sign a “Covenant for Faculty Members” that mirrors what pastors and elders in the Christian Reformed Church are required to sign. And that now means agreeing with Synod’s interpretation of human sexuality.

If, like me, you signed on to the Reformed confessions over 20 years ago, you thought you were signing up for one thing, only to learn, in 2022, that Synod had moved the goal posts. So, since 2022, the university’s administration and Board of Trustees have been trying to navigate, on the one hand, how to preserve the university as a place of courageous curiosity and academic freedom while, on the other hand, how to retain the distinctly Reformed accent that has distinguished Calvin in the wider orbit of higher education.

I don’t want to debate the merits of Synod’s stance on human sexuality. (Actually, technically, as a faculty member I can’t publicly debate the merits of their decision.) Instead, I want to treat Synod’s HSR decision as a symptom that demands a more fundamental question: Should Calvin University remain a denominational university? Should we spend our energy crafting policies for convictional exceptions to the denomination’s doctrine, or should we be thinking creatively and strategically about how to unhook the university from denominational control? And could that separation from one particular Reformed denomination, the CRC, actually free up Calvin to become a bold Reformed Christian university for the 21st century? Could it even improve our relationship to the CRC?

Synod’s decision in 2022 was no surprise. The writing was on the wall. The clergy of the denomination are increasingly trained at conservative and evangelical seminaries and bring those sensibilities to the CRC. The denomination’s ethos has changed considerably and drifted away from the ethos we aspire to at Calvin. I often admire the CRC’s 1986 statement, Our World Belongs to God, and then think of how impossible it is to imagine today’s CRC creating something so powerful and prophetic. It has been jarring to see my intellectual heroes Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga dismissed and derided by CRC pastors. How strange that we’re becoming a university where a celebrated Reformed philosopher like Wolterstorff, who affirms same-sex marriage, couldn’t be on the Calvin faculty.

So I mourn what the CRC has become; but I wasn’t surprised by Synod’s decision.

What has surprised me is the way the leadership of the university, and the Board of Trustees (BOT) in particular, has doubled down on the university’s relationship with the CRC. For a brief shining moment, I thought Synod’s narrowly dogmatic decision would be a breaking point where trustees of the university would realize they faced a choice: to either satisfy the demands of Synod or execute their fiduciary duty to sustain Calvin as a vibrant university committed to courageous learning, academic freedom, and faith-fueled inquiry into our generation’s hardest questions. Instead, the BOT has expressed their renewed commitment to “partner” with the denomination. That means the denomination’s interpretation of the Reformed confessions is also the university’s stance.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why the BOT has decided to tether the university’s future to what the denomination has become. I understand our heritage and history. I’m grateful for the CRC legacy that founded and nourished Calvin. But does the CRC today want the same thing?

Here’s the question that the BOT and administration need to ask: Is this denomination a partner that will nourish, strengthen, and expand the ambitious, adventurous, audacious mission we know as “the Calvin project?” All evidence suggests exactly the contrary. (If the BOT can marshal evidence otherwise, I’d love to see it.) If you want to know what Synod thinks of Calvin and its faculty, consider just this one data point: not a single scholar from the university was part of the study committee that eventually produced the Human Sexuality Report. That doesn’t sound like much of a “partnership.” It doesn’t even seem like mutual respect.

Why would a university with aspirations to global leadership bind itself to a shrinking church body that provides infinitesimal financial support and fewer and fewer incoming students? I see only downside in this “partnership.” What is gained by this relationship? I’d honestly love to hear an answer to that question.

In fact, there is a curious tension between the BOT’s decision to double-down on the university’s relationship to the CRC and Vision 2030, Calvin’s strategic articulation of its mission today. According to Vision 2030, Calvin will be “a Christian liberal arts university” that is “animated by a Reformed Christian faith.” Sign me up. But note the nuance here: we envision our future as a “trusted partner” with global influence distinguished by our “Reformed Christian faith.” I would suggest that the time has come for our BOT and administration to recognize that this ambitious “Reformed Christian” vision is hampered and hobbled by remaining a “Christian Reformed” denominational entity. We can either continue to be the capacious and adventurous Reformed university celebrated in the academy and around the world, or we can continue to be tethered to today’s version of the Christian Reformed Church.

Because if now, knowing what we already know, the BOT simply doubles-down on its “partnership” with (and subservience to) the synod of the CRC, what are they going to do when Synod 2030 decides that the confessions “already” teach that only men can be ordained? What are they going to do when, at Synod 2033, the remaining pastors and elders of the CRC decide that evolutionary readings of Genesis are inconsistent with a “high view” of Scripture? What would it take for Calvin’s BOT to judge that the synod of the CRC is not a valuable, nourishing partner for Calvin’s educational project? We are already at the point where the university needs to decide whether it is truly committed to the “Reformed Christian” vision that has animated Calvin’s distinct place in higher education, or whether it wants to settle for being “Christian Reformed.”

This doesn’t mean the university has to take a particular stance on the issue of Christian same-sex marriage. As a Reformed Christian university, Calvin could say, like Whitworth University, that these are the sorts of questions on which Reformed Christians disagree and therefore room should be made for such disagreements at a Reformed Christian university. This doesn’t compromise our Reformed Christian identity; it would only compromise our narrow “Christian Reformed” alliance to one denomination.

Administrators and trustees will tell you I’m lapsing into magical thinking here — that separation is impossible because of legal constraints. The “Articles of Incorporation” clearly state the university’s relationship to the Christian Reformed Church and that any change requires the approval of the Synod.

Well, why don’t we ask? Divorces happen all the time, including institutional divorces. They can even be amicable. Why doesn’t the BOT take this approach? Ending this “partnership” could make a new friendship possible.

And even if the university’s separation from the denomination might require legal action, that doesn’t make it impossible. (A former university trustee has publicly said that, in fact, the standards and language of our articles of incorporation run afoul of state guidance for college and universities.) While I would hope for an amicable separation, some fights are worth having. The Calvin project is worth the fight.