I am a couple weeks late to the story, but I’m going to write about it anyway. Perhaps you have already heard of the Grove City College controversy and the resulting report issued by the Board of Trustees. This story caught my attention today for reasons I will share later on. I stopped my normal routine of homework to pause and research the story a little bit more. This included a podcast, a few articles, and the original petitions and reports. I will link to these as appropriate in this post. I encourage you to read these for yourself, especially the original documents.
The Facts
Let’s start with the facts. Grove City College is a Christian institution for higher education. They have long been hailed as a solid, conservative Christian college and many have chosen to send their children there for that reason. In the last two years, some events took place that raised concerns for many people.
A November 2021 petition by a group of parents and alumni was what really brought the controversy to light. In it, the petitioners list several ways that they are concerned the school is “going woke” and promoting Critical Race Theory. They list Jemar Tisby’s October 2020 Chapel message, a 2021 chapel session based off of a pre-recorded TED talk by Bryan Stevenson, a problematic session in RA training, and a particular class that uses Kendi’s book How to be an anti-racist as one of the main texts, with apparently no opposite or critical view presented. They call on the Board of Trustees to make an investigation into these events and remedy it if the claims are found to be substantial.
In February 2022, an ad hoc Special Committee was designated by the GCC Board of Trustees to investigate the claims. They released their findings in a report on April 13, 2022. In this report, they affirm that GCC remains Christ-centered and conservative. They state their mission (to “equip students to pursue their unique callings through a Christ-centered, academically excellent, and affordable learning and living experience”) and values, and then proceed to list ways that CRT runs contrary to those values. They affirm the importance of academic freedom, and then they address the issues raised by the petition, as well as subsequent letters and articles (full disclosure: I did not read any of these subsequent letters and articles).
The report takes each of the claims raised in the petition and addresses them by listing remedial action that will be taken. For sake of time, I will only address the three that stood out the most to me. Concerning the class using Kendi’s book, the report admits that the class was “ideologically one-sided.” It says that they will cease offering that particular class. The report admits that there should have been more oversight in the RA training. Had there been, the problematic session would not have been approved. They promise that there will be stricter oversight in the future. Finally, the report says, “inviting Mr. Tisby to speak in chapel was a mistake.” Here they promise stricter oversight of future chapel speakers.
The report ends with the question: Is GCC “woke”? “The answer is emphatically no,” the report says. The final paragraphs of the report are especially key, in my opinion, and I will share more about that in a moment.
Varied Responses
I want to take a moment to examine some of the responses that I came across in my research before I share my own conclusions. As you can imagine, there were a variety of responses on both sides – from those who felt the ad hoc committee went too far to those who felt they did not go far enough.
Let’s start with the response of Jemar Tisby. Tisby is a Christian writer and historian. He is probably most famous for his book The Color of Compromise. In an article by The Christian Post, Tisby is quoted as “chiding” the Board of Trustees for calling his chapel message a mistake. The report claims that the Mr. Tisby who came to speak in 2020 was “not the same” as the Mr. Tisby who was asked to speak (and then delayed) in 2019. Christianity Today quotes Tisby saying that his views did not change, but rather the socio-political climate changed, making his views more emotionally charged. Tisby is quoted by The Christian Post as saying, “The entire report reeks of fear and a reactionary posture inimical to the educational mission of a college or university.” Having read the report myself, I see the reactionary posture that Tisby speaks of. A perfect example is the class that was claimed to be promoting CRT – rather than introduce a book or discussion time that pushed back against Kendi, let’s just cut the class altogether.
Another response that caught my attention was that of Megan Bashum, a reporter for the Daily Wire. She tweeted that the report was easy to read and wasn’t full of academic lingo. She commended a concise definition of CRT. I agree with Bashum that the report was refreshingly easy to read. However, after reading the report for myself, I have to agree with a comment in the Christianity Today article that footnote four in the report (“Our references to CRT include popular ‘CRT-adjacent’ advocacy cloaked in the secular or religious language of social justice”) makes it seem like CRT could cover just about any race-related statement, class, book, or activism. While CRT is broad in some ways, it is also a very specific worldview and ideology.
One final response caught my eye. An alumna of GCC authored a petition in March asking the ad hoc committee to not to prevent discussions about racial justice from taking place at all. This petition claims that the committee “fell into the trap of viewing any discussion of racism as indicative of CRT.” It then calls on the Board of trustees “not to inhibit discussions of race and racism on campus and in the classroom.” Personally, I feel like this is a valid request and concern from this alumna.
My Take
There is a lot going on here. I’d like to take a moment to set the stage for why this was important enough for me to research and write on before I leave you with my personal conclusions on the matter.
I attend a Christian college that is much smaller than the 2,400 students of GCC. However, if someone were to look at the curriculum for some of our classes, I think that some of the same concerns might be raised…if you look strictly at the book list. Books we have been reading in classes over the last three years include Brown Church by Robert Chao Romero, Many Colors and Prophetic Lament by Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, and The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby. This is why this story caught my attention. I am hesitant to talk to people in my conservative Christian circle about the books I’m engaging with in class for the very reason that I don’t want to see my school caught up in a controversy like this.
Now, I said that you might conclude my school was “woke” by looking at the book list. But if you sat in on a zoom class discussion, you would see that we really wrestle with the ideas presented in these books. These discussions are not comfortable. It makes us think. Sometimes we realize there is racial sin in our lives that we need to repent of. Other times we vent how much we disliked the ideas presented in the book and we offer alternative ways of interpreting the information presented. My professor, my classmates, and I have certainly not accepted unequivocally the ideas presented in these books. We take the time to evaluate these authors against scripture.
I would like now to share some of my own conclusions on the controversy.
First, I’d like to affirm that while CRT as a worldview and an ideology runs contrary to the Scriptures, the ideas of confronting racism, of working for justice, and of caring for the oppressed most certainly do not (see Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17, Amos 5:24, Matthew 7:12, and James 1:27 for starters). As John Stonestreet said on the April 29 episode of the World and Everything in it Podcast, “The problem with CRT is not the fact that people talk about “R”, the problem with CRT is the fact that when people talk about “R” they’re talking about it from a “CT” worldview.” In other words, race and justice issues must be addressed by Christians.
Second, I believe it is important to engage with worldviews that are different than ours in order to learn how to make Christ known in the best way possible. Again, John Stonestreet says, “A Christian college is not a sheltered experience, or at least it ought not be.” I have been thankful over and over for the viewpoints that I am exposed to in my classes, even though I do not always agree with them. Regarding the books we read in class, my professor wrote out a document explaining why we read books we may disagree with. Concerning the ones I listed above, the document states that these are ways of engaging with Christianity’s role in the shaping of US History from various perspectives…the key here is various perspectives. We need to be well-rounded in our understanding of the world.
Finally, everyone makes mistakes. While I would argue that having Tisby as a speaker for chapel was not a mistake in and of itself, perhaps there was some lack of oversight. Here I think the final paragraphs of the GCC report are key. It says: “GCC is a human institution. We have identified instances where the College’s vision, mission, and values were not well-represented…This is but more evidence that the Fall confuses man’s best efforts and impedes human flourishing. Our appropriate response is to maintain vigilance in reliance upon God’s grace.” I agree that it is not possible for an institution, Christian or otherwise, to perfectly represent their mission and values in all situations.
In closing, I admire GCC for taking the time to investigate the claims. I don’t agree with all the conclusions and action steps they ended up with in the report, but I am grateful that they made the report public. But I agree with John Stonestreet and others that we can’t just throw out any talk about racism for fear that it might be promoting CRT. It is a topic that must be discussed in Christian higher education. In the words of Tisby, quoted by Christianity Today, “Much needed conversations about racial justice are being muted in the environments where they are needed most, such as Christian colleges and universities.” I am thankful for my classes that facilitate these discussions, always bringing us back to scripture.
A Note About The Color of Compromise
Having read Tisby’s The Color of Compromise in its entirety for class, I want to make a note about the book and about Tisby. I actually recommend reading the book. I don’t endorse everything he says. But Tisby is a fantastic historian. His historical observations are wonderful. Personally, I felt that this was the case more in the first half of the book than the second. I also want to note that although I haven’t yet watched the actual talk Tisby gave at GCC, I read the comments about it as written in an article for Patheos.com by Historian Andrea Turpin. Her assessment that his talk was focused on history jives well with what I know of Tisby from his book. The Color of Compromise didn’t touch on action points until the last chapter. And when he finally gets there, the focus of the action points in on learning and educating oneself, and then deciding what to do from there. Turpin asserts that this is the case in the GCC talk as well.