Why did the Wheaton podcast go semi-viral?

Looking back at years of doctrinal tensions at Baylor, your scribe's alma mater

Day after day, I open Substack notifications and there is new evidence that people are reading, and sharing, my February 21 podcast-post about the culture wars (using the James Davison Hunter definition) at Wheaton College.

At this point, it is the “most popular” Rational Sheep post ever, using the Substack metrics for that rank. The headline on that post is worth revisiting:

Crossroads -- Exploring the ongoing Wheaton College wars

These fights are about doctrine, culture and politics, but doctrine comes first

The news hook for the post was a public fight between Wheaton alumni about one of the college’s alumni being selected (again) for a strategic post on the Donald Trump team. This led to online manifestos from both sides.

Here is some material from my post that accompanied the podcast:

The key to the “For Wheaton” letter from conservative alumni was its focus on moral and cultural trends that have existed for several decades. This led to the document’s most aggressive demand — asking trustees to examine whether many faculty members and staffers had, in effect, signed the college’s doctrinal and moral covenants with their fingers crossed. …

Truth is, the Trump era has poured gasoline on fires that have existed in Christian higher education for decades.

In other words, Trump didn’t cause the divisions between trustees, faculty, alumni, parents, students and churches tied to Wheaton and many, many other colleges, universities and seminaries. The Trump era has created a news hook that, for journalists, made some of these conflicts newsworthy.

Based on my own experiences in Christian higher education — as a student and as a professor — I am convinced that there are theological tensions lurking behind the vast majority of campus debates that creep into headlines.

Thus, let me repeat that post’s thesis statement: “Truth is, the Trump era has poured gasoline on fires that have existed in Christian higher education for decades.”

However, I was not surprised when this comment showed up:

I have trouble understanding this confusion in light of the following “tmatt trio” material in the podcast-post:

I would suggest that journalists digging into conflicts at Wheaton and similar elite Christian campuses (hello Calvin University) focus on the three doctrinal questions at the heart of this 2014 GetReligion post: “Flashback to George Gallup, Jr., and very early roots of the tmatt trio.”

* Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this happen?

* Is salvation found through Jesus, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

* Is sex outside of marriage a sin?

With these doctrinal fault lines in mind, reporters will then be ready to parse the doctrinal statements and community covenants that define the borders of these voluntary, private, academic communities. There is no way to cover conflicts on these campuses without a quote or two from documents of this kind.

From my point of view, the “tmatt trio” questions — let me stress that they were developed in the 1980s — are about doctrine, not politics. However, I will concede that in recent decades the second and third questions have had political implications, especially the third.

I say this as someone who, for most of his adult life, was a pro-life Democrat. I am now a third-party voter who, in the most recent election, was #NeverTrump #NeverHarris.