This past Wednesday, April 2, I opened my email to find an announcement of this year’s graduation speaker. As a senior, questions of who would be the graduation speaker for my commencement had been floating around in my mind for a while. While I wasn’t too optimistic about how the Commencement Committee would choose to conclude my college experience, I didn’t expect to be this disappointed.

Carlos Erazo is a ’14 Calvin alum, a Christian social media personality and a pastor at LakePointe Church (a multilingual megachurch in Dallas, Texas). Although I’m skeptical of Christian content creators and megachurch pastors as a bloc, I did try to be open-minded as I opened his Instagram profile.

Erazo’s most recent reel (as of Wednesday April 2) is his analysis of the failure of the Snow White movie, an analysis which boils down to a critique of the “lies of modern feminism.” A few videos later he tells husbands that their only female friend should be their wife. Other posts reference “government indoctrination,” call homosexuality a temptation of Satan and suggest that seeking God is the cure for anxiety. Yes, I am highlighting Erazo’s videos which speak to current social and political issues. Much of Erazo’s other content is general evangelism and Christian life advice which I do not feel equipped to critique. I do not highlight the aforementioned videos to cherry-pick or construct a straw man; instead, I point out Erazo’s comments on our current social situation because they are the comments that concern me the most. 

I get that Erazo is doing a great job at reaching a global audience. I get that he is living out an evangelist’s calling. I get that Calvin is trying to showcase the diversity of its community. I acknowledge that I have never met Erazo in person and do not truly know his character. Frankly, my frustration is less with Erazo himself (though I do greatly disagree with his political opinions), but more with Calvin’s decision to choose Erazo as graduation speaker. 

Put bluntly, Erazo’s platform does not reflect the Calvin I know. My Calvin education taught me to question, to examine, to work towards understanding. My Calvin education has fostered a spirit of intellectual joy. My Calvin education is the reason I’m utterly frustrated and disappointed with the decision to choose Erazo to speak at my graduation.This choice of speaker, especially in today’s exceptionally fraught political climate, reflects badly on the institution as a whole. 

Erazo’s fear-mongering and inflammatory, unoriginal rhetoric (the same rhetoric that is promulgated by countless other right-leaning Christian influencers) contains no evidence of the deep care, nuance and attentiveness I have been taught during my time at Calvin. I see no evidence of Calvin’s intellectual tradition of critical thinking and honest wrestling with difficult issues in Erazo’s work.

Much of my frustration is also personal. Commencement speakers reflect the institution’s values. By affirming and uplifting Erazo’s platform in such a prominent way, Calvin is affirming and uplifting homophobia, hardline complementarianism and anti-feminism. By choosing Erazo, Calvin sends the message that this university is not a home for women who want to pursue careers or participate in church leadership. It sends the message that anyone in the queer community does not belong at Calvin. It sends the message that feminists — people who care about gender equality — should not study here… and by that logic, Calvin is saying that it does not welcome me.

Now, I’m not saying that I expect my personal beliefs to be agreed with in any space I enter. But I did feel blindsided by Calvin’s decision to so explicitly highlight a person whose public presence does not contain the intellectual rigor this university purports to uphold and who attacks beliefs held broadly by individuals across the university (women in church leadership, much? We have Pastor Mary for goodness’ sake!). 

This is not the first time I’ve been disillusioned with Calvin University, and it probably won’t be the last. On May 10, a day that should be a celebration of my classmates’ and my achievements as students and scholars here, I’ll sit in Van Noord Arena and listen to my last lecture at Calvin: a speech from someone whose platform does not reflect the Calvin I’ve come to know and love.