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Andy Gill

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Why I’ll Be Angry if Wheaton College Does Not Fire Larycia Hawkins

Why I’ll Be Angry if Wheaton College Does Not Fire Larycia Hawkins

Last updated on: February 10, 2016 at 5:07 am by Andy Gill

Why I’ll Be Angry if Wheaton College Does Not Fire Larycia Hawkins 2016-02-09T10:48:22-05:00 Andy Gill

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“It’s worth remembeing that the wedge that splits the wood is what ultimately takes the brunt of the blows from the hammer.” – Jeff Yang

If Larycia Hawkins is not fired I’ll be pissed. Pissed because it’ll just seem like this was all one big marketing ploy to keep Wheaton on the map; a scheme to boost their already declining numbers. Evangelicalism is a sinking ship it’s a train wreck that seems to happen over and over and over and over again.

If you’re not sure who or what I’m talking about, Dr. Larycia Hawkins, a professor of political science at Wheaton College, was recently placed on “administrative leave” due to a recent post on Facebook in which she showed solidarity, wearing a hijab and suggesting that Christians and Muslims worship “the same God,” with the greater Muslim community. Needless to say, someone was upset by this, and therefore reported her Facebook post to Wheaton’s administration. Wheaton flagged her comments as being inconsistent with the colleges faith statement, as a result the fate of her professorship at Wheaton hangs in the balance until February 11th.

In the words of Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, “Founded by abolitionists, Wheaton College now poised to fire first tenured African-American woman on faculty.”[1]

The question many are wanting Larycia to answer is, “Why would you even want to stay at Wheaton, especially the Faculty Council at Wheaton College, in which consists of 211 of your colleagues, unanimously voted you out?

Because, you are re-hirable, you’ll probably even get a book deal, and we no longer need to “inventively grapple with the decline of European domination, the rise of American hegemony,”[2] because it’s already here, but we’ve yet to take hold of it.

Rejection is tough, we can’t deny this, but neither can we afford to waste energy on attempting to prove ourselves to people who have outright rejected and denied our humanity.

I think that what many of us are finding is the same thing Jesus found right before he was crucified: The people you knew aren’t who you thought they’d be when shit got real.

We’re all connecting with Larycia Hawkins because all of us are relating to her story of rejection. The 40% of youth made homeless by their conservative parents; the woman oppressed by an androcentric culture and patriarchal theology; the oppression of the black-American outright denied by their white “Christian” counterpart; the average person wounded by a theological malpractice and/or sociopathic grace; the list goes on.

Biblically speaking, whatever that means, is suffering for the cause not what it is to be a prophet or mouthpiece of Gods? Was not Luther excommunicated by the Catholic Church? Peter Enns anathematized by Westminster? Every single threat (i.e. person) to any given institution dragged outside its temple gates?

Let me rhetorically ask you this: What’s the biblical narrative mean if Christ isn’t crucified in the end?

Even more so, what’s the biblical narrative mean if Christ didn’t rise from the grave? There is no heaven without enduring the weight of crucifixion. Endure the weight of the cross by dragging it to the feet of your oppressor and tempting them to nail you to it; power is in your hands. These institutions biggest mistakes all of them are repeatedly making is in thinking that they can afford these continuous bigoted mishaps.

If you’re going to be a part of the Christian faith then you’re going to be going against the majority of society. In revolutions we cannot expect institutions to freely abide without any resistance. I mean, this is justice; justice doesn’t pay the bills.

The seed of the church is watered by the blood of the martyr. In this case I don’t think you’d even have to suffer more than you probably already have. I think exiting and moving to another one of the 10,000 other institutions available would be a viable, safer and even intersectional option.

If Larycia Hawkins is reading this, please don’t stay, even if they give you the option. It’s easier and more familiar to stay put, but the story is always better when you leave and decide to rebuild. Millennials, we need you to lead us in the process of rebuilding a Church that has a God big enough to accept Muslims, nonwhite professors, women preachers, LGBTQ, and/or anyone and everyone that has been exiled or anathematized from the Church that was once “writ large.”

The U.S. millennial generation needs an awakening, an enlightenment in which reminds them they’re currently the most diverse generation in American history, and will officially outnumber the boomer generation in votes. The time for justice to be had was before we ever existed, but we have a moment today and tomorrow and our upcoming election to change the trajectory of our nation.

We are the directors of future change; we are the pastors, preachers, politicians, teachers, writers, bloggers, computer progammers, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit leaders. Many of us, I fear have been so coddled by our parents we’ve come to believe that what we’re entitled to will be handed to us. This is untrue.

To alter our countries broken track record and annihilate this systemically oppressive hierarchy in which deems people like Larycia Hawkins worthless.

We need to realize her worth, but also understand that the large portion of the 211 professors who unanimously voted her out, do not see her worth. She’s one of the few tenured black professors in this institutions history. Wheaton founded in 1860, that’s over 150 years of professors, in which have be vastly white. Like Tupac I also see no changes.

The WashingtonPost cited that “Hawkins is one of Wheaton’s five black tenured professors, who make up two percent of the faculty, and its only full-time black woman professor.”[3]

Don’t sleep and think that shit wasn’t done on purpose; stay woke.

[If you liked this post head over and check out my Facebook page and give it a “like” to follow along with future posts]

[1] JONATHAN WILSON HARTGROVE

[2] https://newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall-our-most-exciting-black-scholar-ghost

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/01/05/wheaton-is-planning-to-fire-professor-who-said-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god/

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