If you have followed trends in academic and student life at Biola University over the past 25 years or so — I have spoken there about 10 times in that period — you know that this is a complex campus, with all kinds of divisions on theological, moral, political and cultural issues.
As a rule, campus administrators there are just as uncomfortable with strong conservative voices as they are with candid evangelical progressives. Thus, all kinds of Biola believers have learned to state radically different convictions in language that can be called “evangelical” to one degree or another. The goal is to keep painful fights out of publications read by parents, donors and even trustees.
It’s important to keep this in mind while reading the Los Angeles Times morality-tale sermon that ran the other day with this headline: “CRT, Trumpism and doubt roil Biola University. Is this the future of evangelical Christianity?” The headline failed to include the key issue in this story — clashes over the validity of 2,000 years of Christian doctrine on sexuality and marriage.
For additional insights on political and theological diversity found Christian campuses, it will help to read this classic 1995 essay at The Atlantic — “The Warring Visions of the Religious Right” — by the liberal Baptist scholar Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School (author of the ‘60s bestseller, “The Secular City”).
Oh, and speaking of liberal Baptist scholars, one of the defining voices in the new Los Angeles Times feature is David Gushee of Mercer University. It was totally valid to include his voice in this story, but it was interesting that he is quoted as a neutral academic expert on these matters, as opposed to being an articulate spokesman for activists on one side of the doctrinal war being covered in this story.
After all, it was Gushee who opened a classic 2016 essay for Religion News Service with these lines:
Middle ground is disappearing on the question of whether LGBT persons should be treated as full equals, without any discrimination in society — and on the related question of whether religious institutions should be allowed to continue discriminating due to their doctrinal beliefs.
It turns out that you are either for full and unequivocal social and legal equality for LGBT people, or you are against it, and your answer will at some point be revealed. This is true both for individuals and for institutions.
Neutrality is not an option. Neither is polite half-acceptance. Nor is avoiding the subject. Hide as you might, the issue will come and find you.
Thus, the Los Angeles Times has come to confront the leaders of Biola University. Here is the article’s thesis statement, with the first of the contributions from the neutral Gushee (and note the title of his 2020 book):
Biola has attempted to shelter its students and itself from the social and civil disturbances of recent years, but its efforts have been marginally successful. Like evangelical institutions across the country, the university is facing growing disillusionment among young Christians who believe their faith should be more progressive and socially minded.
They resent how politics has shadowed their relationship with God and believe that Christ’s lessons of humility, tolerance and love have been forgotten amid the Christian community’s embrace of the Big Lie, former President Trump and culture-war dog whistles such as LGBTQ restrictions and anti-mask and vaccination declarations.
“Evangelicals are losing their young in epidemic numbers,” said David Gushee, a nationally known pastor, ethicist and author of “After Evangelicalism: A Path to a New Christianity.” “Smart, young minds rarely color within the lines, and if they can’t ask questions and get decent answers, they will bail.”
Here’s another crucial bite of Gushee material about Biola’s attempts to walk a line between the doctrinal left and right:
Ethicist Gushee wonders if Biola can afford this stance. Christian universities, he said, are “being watched by heavy hitters in the evangelical world who will quickly call out any institution that they believe is straying.”
One more, from this neutral ethicist:
“Conservative Christian universities play a kind of trick here,” he said. “They say they are returning to their founding principles, but their responses are remarkably similar to whatever conservative Republican politics looks like at a given moment.”
“Right now,” he added, “that is culture wars-oriented, white reactionary politics, and if this reactionary politics shuts down urgent educational discussions, it is the students who lose.”
Members of the Biola administration are given some space to defend their campus. That’s good.
On the other side are more Biola alumni and current students who all seem to agree that a more doctrinally liberal Christianity is the way to go. One or two former Biola faculty members make appearances, even if readers — in one crucial case — are not given information that makes connections of this kind clear (hold that thought).
But the key here are the students who seek a new orthodoxy. The tone is captured in this passage from a first-person reflection written by the Times reporter who wrote the hard-news “Column One” feature. It helps to read this out loud (perhaps by candlelight), as a kind of dramatic testimony:
"Sitting in their circle, I imagined them, as well versed in the Bible as they are, holding another book whose pages are empty and being in no hurry to start writing. …As someone who has not been baptized and whose churchgoing is less than occasional, I look upon faith with bewilderment, and yet I am not immune to its message of hope. … The more I spoke with these students and read from their self-published anthology (varied writings from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the theologian Peter Rollins and others), the more I considered their courage, their willingness to look beyond, if not take down, the guardrails of faith beyond which lies the chaos of life, tragedy without reason, no heavenly intercession or reward. ..."
If readers manage to filter out the Donald Trump-era political language — while focusing on Biola theological tensions that have existed for decades — they will end up confronting the issues found in this long, pivotal, passage in the Times sermon.
What we have here is a familiar clash between evangelism-apologetics and an evolving “social Gospel” catechism that now contains some new causes. Read all of this carefully, noting that current professors — on both sides — needed to request anonymity:
For some Christians, the path ahead is simple: Pray, proselytize and prepare your hearts. For others, fixing and reforming the world can’t wait.
“The party line,” said one Biola professor who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity out of concern of reprisal, “is that Jesus died for your sins and to have a personal relationship with Jesus is to have eternal life. Anything else is a distraction. But we think the Gospel is also about bringing healing, restoration, justice and love to a broken world.”
The debate has taken on red and blue hues.
“In some parts of the university, there is a flowering of a more progressive, justice-oriented Christianity,” said a colleague who also asked not to be identified. “In other parts, there is pushback, a fear of a liberal Christianity that strays from Biola’s conservative roots.”
Dissent is hard to find at a university known for its culture of niceness. Yet fractures are conspicuous.
Not long after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the opinion editor for Biola’s student-run news site called on millennials and Gen Z to help guide Christians away from their support of the Trump presidency.
That editor, Evana Upshaw, cited Scripture to argue that, just as Moses encouraged the Israelites entering the promised land not to repeat the sins of earlier generations, young Christians need to chart a new course toward “hope and healing.”
“Our faith, now synonymous with unwavering support for Donald Trump, is causing many to question how Christians could sell out women, immigrants, Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and the poor for the sake of political power,” she wrote, concluding that “Gen Z sees the hypocrisy of Christians today. … It’s time to pass the torch.”
Back to the voices of former members of the Biola community.
Another neutral critic of Biola life is identified as Richard Flory, executive director of the University of Southern California Center for Religion and Civic Culture. That’s an important credential, of course. However, Times readers may have wanted to know that he has strong blood ties to Biola — including time as a professor. This matters, when he states that the conflict seen on this campus “helps us read what the future of evangelicalism in America might look like.”
Also, it would appear that this Richard Flory is the son of an important figure in a more doctrinally conservative era of Biola history — the late Bible professor Wayne Flory. This would add depth to the USC professor’s point of view, while also framing it — potentially — as part of his own journey in or away from mainstream evangelicalism. Here is a crucial passage in which Flory speaks out on those who are seeking an evolving faith stance at Biola:
They call themselves the St. Thomas Collective for the apostle who questioned the resurrection until the crucified Jesus stood before him. Christian in spirit, nondenominational in practice, they want to provide what they haven’t found at Biola: a nonjudgmental space for open inquiry.
The group started in 2016, initially meeting in a garage “to voice their questions and doubts and wild ideas.” They currently have up to 50 members at large.
“This is the community that Biola should be trying to hold onto,” USC’s Flory said. “Most young people don’t care about religion, but if you have young people trying to grapple with their faith — so they can make sense of it, given the world they experience — you should listen to them.”
There is much more that can be said about this piece. Readers may want to check out this Facebook critique by the conservative Catholic scholar Tony Esolen — who is especially interested that the Times wasn’t interested in presenting any clear information on what Biola actually teaches and what doctrines it defends.
Maybe they could have visited the Torrey Honors college at Biola and talked to some students? Here is a brief sample of Esolen’s thoughts:
I've visited Biola twice, and of course they knew I am a Roman Catholic. They treated me like a prince. I recall having conversations at a special lunch with some honors students, about Dante specifically and literature more generally, and at that lunch those young people asked me more sophisticated and interesting questions than I have gotten from FACULTY members at Princeton, the University of Virginia, and any other of the 50 or so colleges I have lectured at, in the US and Canada.
That’s another relevant point of view.
In conclusion, allow me to point to a very different 2008 look at Biola life and trends: “Biola evolves but stays the same.” That news piece is from the Los Angeles Times — in another era.
FIRST IMAGE: Campus photo drawn from Biola University homepage.