Not by Intention but by Inattention

There’s an old cliché that says “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”  I have never found this idea particularly insightful or accurate.  Sometimes people who fail to learn from past mistakes simply make new bad choices.  And the verb condemned suggests that what people experience is always bad. Surely that is not always true.   

But maybe what the old cliché really means to say is that our history—at least the significant events of our past—should be remembered because the act of remembering can be instructive.  And with that I whole-heartedly agree.  So does the Bible.  When the children of Israel come through the Red Sea, Joshua has each tribe take out a stone, twelve stones in all, and set them up as a memorial—a memory stimulator.  Jesus gave us the bread and wine and the ritual of The Lord’s Supper and told us to enact the ritual in remembrance of him—of his suffering and death.  There are many more calls to remembrance in both Old and New Testament and in the history of the Church throughout the ages.  The Protestant Reformation happened about 500 years ago and until quite recently my church continued to hold Reformation Day Services while the rest of the world was trick-or-treating.  To remember.

I was reminded of the importance of remembering recently when I picked up Rev. B. J. Haan’s book A Zeal for Christian Education, and re-read the two chapters that describe one of the most significant and contentious periods in Dordt’s history.  It is a bit of history that needs to be remembered by the institution called Dordt College and also by Dordt’s constituents.

In the early 1970’s, conflict developed over the influence of the Association for the Advancement of  Christian Scholarship (AACS) on Dordt College professors and their teaching.  The AACS was an organization located in Canada which, as Haan puts it, “shared our [Dordt’s] commitment to the Lordship of Christ over every part of life especially as it was articulated by Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd.  As leaders in the reformational movement, they were committed to promoting a radical Christian response in all areas of life.  This conviction led them to question and often challenge the status quo—in lifestyle, in politics, in academia, in society, and in the church.”  Thus they often upset traditional Christian Reformed believers.  In addition, some of them behaved arrogantly and made inflammatory pronouncements.

But, Haan emphasizes, the AACS espoused the biblical Reformed principles clearly articulated in Dordt’s statement of purpose—principles such as the kingdom of God, the Lordship of Christ over all creation, and the teaching of sphere sovereignty. Those opposed to the AACS did not, in the judgment of Haan and others, espouse those principles.  Eventually Haan comes to believe that much of the concern about AACS  was “nonsense.” The real problem, according to Haan, was that those opposed to it were coming from a “non-covenantal, non-kingdom, non-organic” approach to Christian education:  they disagreed with the principles taught by H. H. Meeter in his book The Basic Ideas of Calvinism.

Nevertheless, many lay people among Dordt’s constituents were deeply concerned about Dordt’s connection to the AACS.  Mass meetings occurred in different area communities and sometimes the atmosphere was highly charged; accusations were hurled and tempers often flared. (As I read the history, I am amazed at how passionate the supporters of the college were about the direction the college took and how firmly they believed they had a right to express that concern.)

The controversy divided many of the professors as well.  Some of Dordt’s faculty, especially those who hailed from Canada, were ardent supporters of the AACS and many of their students also became deeply committed to that perspective.  But other faculty members and students feared the AACS and opposed those at Dordt who supported it.  One professor, teaching in a classroom previously occupied by an AACS advocate, would pray that the Lord would remove the demons from the room before he began to teach. 

In the end, as we know, the AACS  perspective, what we call the Kuyperian viewpoint, prevailed and Dordt remains a college committed to a reformational perspective, to principles such as the kingdom of God, the Lordship of Christ over all creation, and the teaching of sphere sovereignty.  And it continues to be the task of its professors to apply such principles to their particular disciplines, that is, to help students understand what the Lordship of Christ means and requires in their particular academic areas of scholarship.

The Educational Task of Dordt College and Scripturally Oriented Higher Education, two of Dordt’s foundational documents, were forged in fire.  Had Haan and the other supporters of the Calvinist/Kuyperian view of education not prevailed, Dordt would be a different college today. 

Remember that.  The Dordt perspective was forged in a struggle and came out of the struggle stronger, more alive in the minds of many of the professors, more consciously adhered to than most statements of purpose are.  Sometimes I think that every so often Dordt’s Theatre Department ought to reenact some of the dramatic moments of that struggle so that students and faculty and constituents might be instructed by the act of remembrance.

And faculty and administration might also recommit themselves to the vision.  Now is a fine time for that to happen as new Dordt president Erik Hoekstra gets ready to lead the college.  In his remarks following the announcement of his selection as president, Hoekstra said, “Our mission. . . to work effectively for Christ-centered renewal in every aspect of contemporary life will never change.”  

It is inspiring to hear that commitment, but, of course, Christ-centered renewal does not happen automatically.  It occurs when professors and their students wrestle strenuously with how Christ-centered renewal can occur in their particular academic disciplines.  For surely it requires more than business courses with a dash of ethics sprinkled over them, theatre productions that avoid bad language or simply purvey moralistic messages, and a nursing program that turns out kind and compassionate nurses.  Professors must equip their students to examine, in the light of scripture, the structural elements of their disciplines and the direction they have taken.  Or, as the General Education Framework says, “to address the pressing concerns of today’s world, and treat those issues with the sustained thoroughness required to develop genuinely serviceable insight on them from a Christian perspective.” When that happens, then the vision of the college will become a living breathing thing.  Of course, some radical things may occur in the classroom and beyond.  The status quo may be challenged and, who knows, the constituents may even become upset.

In the last decade most of the old guard professors, those hired during the presidencies of Haan and Hulst, have retired.  In addition, many of Dordt’s staunch and knowledgeable Canadian Kuyperians have left the college to return to teach in their homeland.   All this has led to what might be called a Kuyperian brain drain.  New professors have replaced those who have left—many of them with little understanding of the biblical Reformed principles for which Haan and others fought.  It is absolutely crucial that Dordt’s recently hired professors understand the Dordt perspective and commit to its centrality in their classrooms.  Seeing that this happens ought to be a primary concern of the college.

And the institution must itself—apart from the classroom—examine how the Lordship of Christ must be made manifest in all the differing functions of the college—in the financial, marketing and recruiting sector, in the academic sector, in personnel management and relationships, in the student life sector.  If this kind of self-examination and analysis would occur, the Dordt perspective would be on firm ground.

What a tragedy it would be if the principles forged in the fire of controversy in the early seventies gradually slipped away, not by intention but by inattention, by neglect.  How sad if Dordt became simply another generic Christian college, the very thing Haan, Hulst and others struggled to avoid in that battle in the Seventies.