(Tim) Readers may be interested in the response of Covenant College faculty and students to the news that a large group of professors there support Senator Obama for president and believe he is a Christian.
It's hard to report on that response, though--but not because I don't know what it was. I'd like to know less than I do.
What I do know hasn't come from any free exchange of ideas or public debate. The heated discussion and criticism of my post took place on a campus forum well-guarded behind firewalls that protect those writing from being answered by anyone outside of the Covenant College community. It's a convenient byproduct of this policy that much of the mess happens away from prying eyes of donors who, seeing the fruit of the professors' professions, could decide not to fulfill their capital campaign pledges.
In this context, note that the same culture that fences off campus discussions from its constituent community also allows Covenant College professors to go on public record with their conviction that Senator Obama is a Christian and that they support his presidential bid while individually remaining anonymous. What happened to the good old days when men signed their theses...
following them up with a healthy diet of "Here I stand?" How will anyone write a good history of Covenant's glory days if the boldest moments of Christian conscience are hidden behind professors' anonymity?
As I've said to those members of the Covenant community that I've talked with on the phone recently, why don't Covenant profs who endorse Senator Obama's Christian commitment demonstrate their faith in the free exchange of ideas and the value of public debate by identifying themselves to their students, administration, and trustees, as well as the denomination that supports them?
Think of the wonderful example this would provide their students, seeing their profs courageously standing, by name, for the social justice of the Democratic Party nationally recognized for its glorying in the shame of sodomy and drowning in the blood of infants and children?
Let them stand for Senator Obama's Christian social conscience without apology, owning their own convictions as he does, without shame and by name.
