Soulforce’s Equality Ride is coming to Wheaton College, April 20-21. I didn’t even know what Soulforce was until this morning. The goal of the Soulforce Equality Ride is to change the policies and practices of the institutions they plan to visit, which includes fourteen Christian colleges that are member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

Soulforce states its purpose to be: “Freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance.” A visit to the Web site of Soulforce http://www.soulforce.org/ reveals that the organization has built its Equality Ride agenda around the philosophy and practices of the 1960s Civil Rights movement. In their own words: “At military and religious colleges around the nation, bans on gays, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender enrollment forces students into closets of fear and self-hate. These bans devalue the life of GLBT people and they slam the door on academic freedom. The Equality Ride empowers young adults to challenge those college bans.”

So why visit Wheaton College? Well, Wheaton has a Community Covenant that includes a scripturally-based position on sexual morality. This statement includes a clear and biblical statement on homosexual practice.

What I applaud in this planned visit for April 20-21 is the response Dr. Stanton L. Jones, provost of Wheaton and the author of Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate (InterVarsity Press), one of the finest treatments on the subject that I know, offered to students and faculty in a letter to the college community. Said Jones, We must make it our priority to “obey God’s commandments.” He added that “He (God) commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves” and concluded that “we will extend to our visitors courtesy and hospitality as an extension of our commitment to live as Jesus lived.”

Because Wheaton is a college community, with clear educational goals shaped by Christian belief and practice, Stan Jones added this counsel:

We would be failing you, our students, if we did not view this visit as an opportunity for each of us to grow in our understanding of the many complex issues surrounding the morality of homosexual conduct. We hope this visit will be an educational opportunity for our entire community that will bear fruit for the Church, the Church you will soon be called to lead. We will seek to ensure that the Equality Ride visit is a learning opportunity for students in keeping with our mission as a Christian liberal arts institution.

I love my school and do not wish to be a cheerleader for everything Wheaton but this is an outstanding response in my judgment, one that I fear the Soulforce Equality Riders might not meet at every stop. But Stan Jones doesn’t stop with these words. He also advises the college community that such a controversy must not:

. . .  Cause us to lose sight that there are faithful brothers and sisters among us who experience same-sex attraction or grapple with other sexual identity issues and who embrace living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, affirming with integrity Wheaton’s common understanding of that faith as expressed in our Community Covenant. These brothers and sisters deserve our unwavering love and support as we help each other grow to be more like Christ.

Wheaton College is a place, concludes Stan Jones, “where visitors who disagree with our commitments can be welcomed to discuss these and other vexing issues with integrity, truthfulness, and love.” To this end Wheaton plans to offer opportunities for dialogue between the Equality Ride visitors and Wheaton’s students, staff, faculty and administration. The college has even contacted Soulforce to arrange for such dialogue to take place in a manner that is agreeable to them and Wheaton. A chapel, led by the president of Wheaton, various educational materials, and other discussions will precede their visit in April. Jones’s letter ended with a call to prayer for Wheaton College. As an adjunct faculty member in evangelism I have already begun to pray and would most certainly plan to meet Soulforce personally if I were not scheduled to be away from campus on that day.

I commend this type of response to the Church at large, especially to mission organizations, colleges and other Christian organizations who will face this issue time and again in the coming years. I have to say, if you will forgive me the smile of approval that I have as I write these words, that I am very proud of Wheaton College for this thoughtful response. I pray that it may it become a model for many others. 

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Comments

  1. Craig R. Higgins February 2, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    That letter is a model for the evangelical church, John. Thanks for sharing it with us blog readers. As Francis Schaeffer always said, demonstrating love or holiness is relatively easy, but living out both at the same time is very, very difficult–and exactly what we are called to do.

  2. Rev. Rick Carder February 7, 2006 at 8:16 am

    Your comments about Soulforce coming to Wheaton College does reveal the challenge Christian communities face in our society. Our response is critical but so is the attitude of our response. I agree that this is an opportunity. However, is this an open-ended conversation about human sexuality and choice or should our response be one of clear conviction about what the Bible says about human sexuality? Upon reading a recent edition of Wheaton College’s newspaper I was a bit alarmed by the direction of how the paper will report the Soulforce story. The editorial section of the paper stated a policy that will neither promote the event or be the the college’s promoter. They stated their 2nd amendment rights as a reporter. Why is the college student body seeing the printed paper as an opportunity to reach the community, school and Wheaton area, and be positive witness of moral values of the Chrisitian ethic?

  3. juju February 7, 2006 at 4:26 pm

    John,
    All the interest in dialog is not reassuring. Francis Schaeffer was passionate about letting down the drawbridge to the other side for purposes of talk. What he forgot is that the drawbridge allows traffic in both directions. There is enough confusion right now with the emergent church leaders uncertain sound regarding the authority of God’s Word without adding further to it. Take a few 19-year-olds who have never been instructed in sound doctrine in their lives (raised on VeggieTales) and put them in the hands of the apologists for gay rights and this is not a good mix. By all means send teams out to evangelize and speak what God has already spoken on the subject. But the term dialog implies that the other side has something to learn about truth. Either we have the full counsel of God in our hands or we don’t. Call me a fundamentalist if you will, but we either have answers or we don’t. The church is presently dialoging its way right off a cliff theologically speaking. True love warns those who are in error. I see no emphasis on this whatsoever on Wheaton College’s part. You are not helping with your new, postmodern approach to nearly everything and it’s my prayer that you will see how deadly the confusion is getting. There are a few of us as students who are seeing what’s going on and it isn’t pretty.

  4. Slice of Laodicea February 7, 2006 at 4:45 pm

    John Armstrong: Wheaton Will Welcome Gay Dialog

    Former conservative author John Armstrong is cheering Wheaton College’s pledge to dialog and learn from Soulforce, the gay bus tour headed to various Christian colleges across the country. While sharing the Gospel in true Christian love with these soul…

  5. A. B. Caneday February 7, 2006 at 6:56 pm

    Another great post.
    Equality Ride plans some stops at Christian colleges in our area, too.
    I like the new format of your blog.

  6. Andy Derksen February 8, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    I agree with this post by Ingrid Schlueter (February 7, 2006 @ 05:28 PM):
    “Former conservative author John Armstrong is cheering Wheaton College’s pledge to dialogue with and learn from Soulforce, the gay protest bus tour headed to various Christian colleges across the country. While sharing the Gospel in true Christian love with these souls in bondage is exactly the right approach, that doesn’t appear to be part of Wheaton College’s stated agenda. Wheaton leadership views this event as a “learning experience” for Christian students.
    “Vague terms like “dialogue” are disturbing in light of the fact that so few young people today are equipped and discipled and ready to handle the onslaught of error these homosexual activists will bring with them. It is now terribly out of vogue to openly share with anyone the bad news of God’s Law before proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel. We are to emphasize love and unity and somewhere down the line they’ll figure out that God loves them and has a great plan for their lives. Note how Stan Jones of Wheaton College uses the same terminology as Brian McLaren about homosexuality in announcing Wheaton’s welcome to Soulforce.
    ” ‘We would be failing you, our students, if we did not view this visit as an opportunity for each of us to grow in our understanding of the many complex issues surrounding the morality of homosexual conduct. We hope this visit will be an educational opportunity for our entire community that will bear fruit for the Church, the Church you will soon be called to lead. We will seek to ensure that the Equality Ride visit is a learning opportunity for students in keeping with our mission as a Christian liberal arts institution.’ ”
    “The issue are “complex”, he says, and that’s why Wheaton and John Armstrong think this is such a great “learning experience” for the students. The issues are actually not complex at all. As I spent time with a former lesbian, saved by the power of Christ, she shared with me that the issue was quite simple. She was hurt as a child and chose to rebel against all men in her life which only hurt her further. She was saved by looking to Christ in faith and she was delivered from the bondage she was in. She showed me her engagement ring and talked of her upcoming wedding to a Christian man. No, these issues are not complex. There is a glorious simplicity to the message of the Gospel. Whatever our past hurts and scars and sin, Christ is mighty to save. If we love these people, we won’t seek common ground so we can dialogue about our various beliefs. It’s the sharing of the Word that God will bless. Anything else is ultimately not going to help these souls. As for this being a “learning experience”, wouldn’t those who embrace the Gospel and the hope found in God’s Word want this to be a learning experience for the homosexuals coming to the campus to protest? There is no reference to that whatsoever in the wording that John Armstrong so loudly cheers. God help those who are furthering the church’s drift into postmodern confusion, particularly when it involves the young minds of college students.
    http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com/archives/emergent_church/index.php

  7. for_inclusion February 11, 2006 at 9:27 am

    I happen to be a tenured faculty member at one of the CCCU institutions that Equality Ride will be visiting. I also attend a welcoming and affirming church. I do not at all consider dialogue with this group as evidence of some sort of “postmodern confusion.”

  8. think a little more April 18, 2006 at 10:06 pm

    check out overflowmag.com
    this is where the real conversations are happening

  9. Brian April 23, 2006 at 6:06 pm

    Hi John,
    I’ve never met you, but we have similar friends in Art Azudia and David Sunday. I am in the Exegesis grad program at Wheaton. Thanks for this thoughtful response. I once heard a great preacher say while preaching out of John 17 and Christians being in the world, “We need to stop treating unbelievers as the enemy, because in reality they are victims of the enemy, as we once were.” Clearly this is the case when dealing with homosexual implications. We should not turn a blind eye to how the church has verbally persecuted these people for so long. We need to engage the conversation like we would with anyone else plagued by their own fallenness.
    See you around Wheaton some time…

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