Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Grace College, leopards, faces, and life under Trump

Grace College, leopards, faces, and life under Trump

Last updated on: May 9, 2024 at 4:43 pm by Fred Clark

0 Comments

Grace College, leopards, faces, and life under Trump 2024-05-09T16:43:25-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“It feels like it’s only a matter of time before I or anyone else cross an invisible line we didn’t know was there, and are determined to not be ‘missionally aligned.'”

That’s an unnamed employee at Grace College, a white evangelical “Christian college” in Winona Lake, Indiana, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal or retaliation or Inquisition or whatever it was that just happened to Prof. Matthew Warner.

What does “missionally aligned” mean? No one knows. No one is able to know, because it could change at any moment. And when it changes, you must change — while pretending that nothing has changed — or else you, too, will be found out of alignment with the mission of The Party.

“Grace College professor ousted after online commentators flag ‘woke’ social media posts,” the headline at RNS says. The subhed explains why this story — these stories, plural — is/are so unnerving: “It’s the latest in a string professor terminations at Christian colleges seemingly tied to clashes over narrowing and often unspoken political and theological criteria.”

Kathryn Post puts the sudden, vaguely explained firing of Grace’s well-like communications professor into the context of several other similar recent stories:

As Christian colleges vie for a dwindling number of incoming students, many are struggling to navigate the chasm between the convictions of conservative stakeholders and those of their more theologically, politically and racially diverse faculty and student bodies. In many cases, precarious finances have led schools to prioritize the former. Last year, English professors at Taylor University and Palm Beach Atlantic University were dismissed after receiving alumni, donor and parental criticism for their teachings on racial justice, though both had been teaching on that topic for over a decade.

OK, but why I am talking about this like it’s a big national story?

Because this is a big national story, even if it may seem like a minor incident that only needs to be covered by niche publications like Religion News and maybe the Chronicle of Higher Ed.

Because this is how it works. And this is what the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” and all the other groups planning a second Trump administration are planning for all of America if the former guy pulls a Grover Cleveland and wins the election in November.

Maybe you’ve never heard of Grace College (or Taylor University, or Palm Beach Atlantic). Maybe you’re thinking, “So what? Conservative schools have conservative rules and faculty who can’t follow them should expect to get fired.”

But the thing about those rules, as Post reports, is that they are unspoken, unwritten, and ever-changing. You take a job teaching computer science at some white evangelical college and you think you know what the rules are, where the lines are. The school is white evangelical, so you have a general idea what that means — abortion-is-murder-ism, LGBT people are expected to embrace lifelong singleness and chastity, young-Earth creationism. Maybe you sign a doctrinal statement or a community standards statement that includes a few curiously elastic phrases, but you imagine you’ll generally be OK because, after all, you’re just teaching computer science. As long as nobody asks where the rare earth elements in the semiconductors come from, you should be able to navigate all of that without any obvious problems.

But then the rules change. There’s no official announcement of this, but suddenly everyone just kind of realizes that a new unwritten rule exists and a new invisible line has been drawn. Some trustee or big donor gets a bee in their bonnet about Obamacare and suddenly opposition to contraception is a new mandatory stance. Vaccination is now “controversial.” Climate change has become such a third rail that you’re not sure if you can safely talk about energy efficiency. A student asks you if you think that Black lives matter and rather than saying what any decent person would obviously and always say — “Of course!” — you worry it’s a trap. You realize you can’t be sure what the new rules are today and you have no way of knowing what new rules might arise tomorrow.

And the people creating and enforcing these wild, arbitrary new rules are exactly the people doing it in this RNS story about Grace College. Right-wing “activist Moms” on Facebook riled up by professional online activists working for sloppy right-wing groups like Turning Point USA.

Those awful characters think they have a handle on life under authoritarianism. They like the idea of Wilhoitian conservatism, under which there is an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect. They’re confident that they can live safely under such a regime because they are certain that they are, and always will be, secure in their position as members of that in-group.

They are sure, in other words, that the leopards will never eat their face.

Well, they are mostly sure of that. So just to be extra safe, they busy themselves directing the leopards’ attention to other peoples faces. They become informers, suck-ups, toadies, narcs. They collaborate, spy, investigate, fabricate, and accuse. They will scour the social media accounts of every teacher and professor and librarian looking for anything that can be twisted into evidence of heterodoxy in violation of the new rules, calling for any violators to be defunded and defenestrated.

Authoritarian Republicans are already formalizing the work of these vigilante collaborateurs. This is the enforcement mechanism built into Texas’ draconian anti-abortion laws. And it’s why groups like “Moms for Liberty” are being bankrolled and elevated by Republican officials.

The rules are vague, unwritten, and ever-changing. And the worst people you can imagine will be empowered to create them, to change them, and to enforce them.

If you want to know what a second Trump administration will look like, that’s the plan. That’s the plan as written and advertised. And if you’re thinking it might not be so bad for you because you’ve got money, or whiteness, or maleness, just remember that the best case scenario under such an administration is that you will be like a communications professor at Grace College, constantly monitored by right-wing activists and permitted to work only at the whim of deranged wealthy trustees.

Even if you imagine you’re “missionally aligned” with conservative authoritarians it’s only a matter of time before you cross an invisible line that you didn’t even know was there.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

May 8, 2024

The Long March of the Koalas revisited

Next Post

May 10, 2024 LBCF: Go to Hell

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Yes. Lemme 'splain.For a lot of kids (12+, chiefly), D&D is one of the first ..."

Jim Roberts

The possibility of possibility

"My favorite, being a New York City resident, is the way the wingnuts screeched "Liberals ..."

WeWantPie

The possibility of possibility

"Question for the DnDers hereOver on PITT Parents they had a lengthy paranoid rambling about ..."

Skybison

The possibility of possibility

"Possibility of possibilities... Can we have some of that over here in the UK, please?"

MG Remoaner

The possibility of possibility

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What year did Martin Luther post his 95 Theses?

Select your answer to see how you score.

1517 1492 1600 1401