Crossroads -- Christian profs fired because of "politics"?

Newsweek was very vague when covering a tricky subject, while The Dispatch offered useful background material

Let’s say that you know a teacher at a Catholic school that, when accepting this job, this person signed a contract in which he agreed to defend the doctrines detailed in the Catholic Catechism or, at the very least, not to oppose them in public.

After several years of work, this teacher decided that gender is a social construct and that she was a woman trapped in a man’s body and began to transition into life as a woman. The school then declined to renew the teacher’s contract.

Was this teacher “canceled”? That question was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, which focused — for the most part — on a Newsweek piece that ran with this headline: “Conservative Campuses Are Facing Cancel Culture Problems.”

It’s a long story and, frankly, what Newsweek offered was fatally vague.

The following Newsweek quotation is long, but essential to understanding the doctrinal and legal issues discussed in the podcast. Now, this passage is linked to Protestant case studies. We will come back to why that is so important for reporters who are attempting to cover this complex topic.

Matt Warner started at Grace College in Indiana as a communications professor in the fall of 2023. Six weeks into his employment, local activists came across his social media posts spanning 10 years, Warner said on a video call with Newsweek. Warner said some people "found [the posts] objectionable to their personal politics." He claimed they then started a "smear campaign" and "tried to get him fired."

Grace College told Newsweek via email on July 26: "Dr. Matt Warner fulfilled his agreement for the year. Grace College wishes Dr. Warner well in his future endeavors. As with all personnel matters, we are unable to provide further comment."

"There's 24 of us who in the last two years or so have been removed from evangelical institutions, mostly from colleges, mostly from colleges in the CCCU [Council for Christian Colleges & Universities] …,” Warner said.

Warner claimed that people like himself can be forced out of their institutions for a multitude of reasons, which are almost always outside the bounds of the institutions' written policies: "Whether that's opposition to [former President] Donald Trump, whether that's not having strong convictions on LGBTQ+ issues...whether it's support of Black Lives Matter...or even being a member of the wrong denomination," he said.

"In 2022, what was acceptable, or in 2012, what was acceptable, suddenly in 2024 is unacceptable and is grounds for termination," Warner added.

In other words, this is all about Trump — again.

Except, that is simply not true, in many or all cases. These kinds of conflicts, or variations on some of these themes, have unfolded on Christian college campuses for several decades. (It helps to know that I taught in CCCU schools and programs for almost a quarter of a century.)

Note the list of “offenses” cited in the Newsweek passage. The big question: Are these “Political,” “doctrinal” or both?

* Opposition to Trump is not a doctrinal issue. Period.

* “Not having strong convictions on LGBTQ+ issues”? What does that mean? Does this imply that a professor opposes centuries of Christian doctrine that sex outside of Christian marriage is sin?

* Support of Black Lives Matters”? Is that a reference to the church BLM movement or the political BLM movement, since they were not the same? Racism is clearly a doctrinal issue, but with some political implications these days. Readers need to know the details about this claim.

* Being a “member of the wrong denomination”? Once again, there are denominational schools that require faculty to remain active in the host denomination’s churches. That’s a matter of doctrine.

But here is the key. Note that Warner claimed that most of these faculty were “forced out of their institutions for a multitude of reasons, which are almost always outside the bounds of the institutions' written policies.” (I added the bold text.)

I have no doubt that this is true in some cases — because of the word “written.”

But Newsweek, to be blunt, never offered readers a chance to read the “doctrinal covenants,” or documents with similar titles, linked to the case studies cited in this feature.

In other words, readers have zero way of knowing if teachers are telling the truth or not, in terms of whether they violated the terms of their signed contracts. In many cases, these “covenants” are posted online.

Here’s the hard truth: If school administrators do not want to share copies of these basic documents (an act that does not violate the privacy rights of those let go) then that probably means that the documents do not contain crucial details about the doctrines that are being defended. Lots of Protestants (Baptists, for example) suffer from what I have heard called “Rome-aphobia” — which means they are afraid of (or opposed to) producing doctrinal documents that could be considered creeds or (see the case study at the top of this post) catechisms.

Did faculty sign covenants? Readers need to know.

There are many, many more details in the podcast. But let me end with a solid quote from a John Inazu article at The Dispatch, which ran with this headline: “Not Everything Is Cancel Culture.” It directly addressed the same Newsweek feature.

Again, this is long. But it contains meaty commentary for readers and, yes, journalists who want to do accurate coverage of these kinds of religion-liberty cases:

Every institution draws boundaries. Many religious organizations require their leaders to adhere to certain faith commitments. Honor societies require members to maintain certain grades and credentials. Professional orchestras reject talentless musicians, and professional sports teams pass on unathletic contenders. None of those exclusions is the least bit objectionable — nobody is canceled simply because they do not fit within an institution’s boundaries. …

Some of those boundaries are designed to keep an institution aligned with its core mission or founding documents. Some of them are meant to keep relevant constituencies united around mission. In other words, boundaries are not only inevitable; often, they are good. 

But greater clarity around the nature and justification of those boundaries would help Christian educational institutions, and the rest of us, better parse the difference between lamentable cancel culture and laudable coherence.

OK, Newsweek — produce the details! What was in the covenants — if they existed — that defined the doctrinal standards of the schools involved in your case studies?

In other words, in terms of basics, this journalism “assignment” needed to be marked “incomplete” and sent back for additional work.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.