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Evangelical College fires Professor for converting to Catholicism

Posted January 19, 2006
January 10, 2006
BY LESLIE BALDACCI
Sun Times


A former Wheaton College professor who was fired because he converted to Catholicism found himself this week at the center of a debate about diversity and theological perspectives in private, faith-based schools.

Faculty members at the west suburban evangelical Protestant college must sign a faith statement that the Bible is the final authority. Catholics follow the authority of Scripture and the pope.

Joshua Hochschild, an assistant professor of philosophy at Wheaton College for four years, became a Catholic on Easter 2004. He was dismissed last spring.

"I was sad to be leaving my colleagues and students and an institution I valued very highly," said Hochschild, 33. "But I support in principle the right of the institution to have exclusive hiring policies. Not every institution is a liberal democracy. We both agreed that Wheaton has a right to exclude Catholics if it wants to. We both agree there are significant differences between what a Catholic believes and what a Protestant believes. Our significant difference was over whether the statement of faith was an effective way of implementing a policy of excluding Catholics."

WHAT THEY SAID

These were among comments posted on the Freerepublic blog:

*"Wheaton has a right to hire whomever they want. They hang themselves out as an Evangelical School, they have a right to have an Evangelical faculty."

*"Since he had a contract that required him to be a practicing protestant, he broke the contract by converting to Catholicism. He should have tendered his resignation. He had a legal and moral obligation to resign."

*"Ideally, Hinduism should be taught by a Hindu, Islam taught by a Muslim, etc. That's the way Cardinal John Henry Newman defined the Idea of the University."

*"Heck, I want Catholic universities to fire the atheists, feminists, and communists who have taken over. I can't exactly fault Wheaton for taking similar measures to preserve their identity, though I do think it's their loss."

*"This is not a new issue for religious schools. Sooner or later, you're going to be forced to choose which is more important to you -- the best available scholar and academic, or the one with the right profession of faith. Sometimes you'll get lucky and both those qualities will exist in one person, but sooner or later push will come to shove and you'll have to decide which you prefer."

*"Having a Catholic on the faculty would not sit well with some donors, no matter how evangelically minded his brand of Catholicism may be. Other schools have kept their blanket prohibitions on alcohol use or dances for similar reasons."

Hochschild now teaches at Mount St. Mary's, a small Catholic college in Emmitsburg, Md., where he lives with his wife and three small children.

Not 'exclusionary'

"Should Wheaton be open to non-Protestant voices? That's a question I find it very difficult to weigh in on," Hochschild said. "The most interesting thing to me is in what sense Protestantism differs from Catholicism, and how hard that is to answer, and also the question of how religious colleges can best maintain their religious identity."

Wheaton College President Duane Litfin described the school as "a voluntary community of people who share a set of convictions, living, working and teaching out of those convictions."

"There is nothing exclusionary about this," Litfin said. "We understand the nature of this kind of institution and what it requires to retain this kind of institution over the longer term."

Litfin, whose 2004 book Conceiving the Christian College details his philosophy, said Wheaton follows a "systemic model where the entire institution, root to branch to leaf, is about that sponsoring religious tradition. If you are going to be that kind of institution, you have to have people there who embody that tradition. The whole institution is a voluntary community that gathers around this core set of values and say, 'This is us. We stand together on these issues.' Our hiring policy says you embody what you stand for. This institution cannot exist without that."

'Umbrella model'

Litfin cited the University of Notre Dame as an example of an "umbrella model." Under the umbrella of a school-sponsored religious tradition are "a variety of voices, a critical mass of people representing the sponsored religious tradition and other voices."

Hochschild, who received his Ph.D. in medieval philosophy from Notre Dame, said he did not consider converting to Catholicism while there. But looking back, he says he was influenced by "seeing in friends their scholarly interests connected to their spiritual lives. At least for certain individuals, their academic work, their scholarly work, was linked with not just theological commitments but a spiritual life."

Mark Noll Leaving Wheaton for Notre Dame
Prominent evangelical historian and public intellectual to replace retiring George Marsden.
by Rob Moll | posted 02/09/2006 04:00 p.m.

One of the evangelicalism's premier scholars will be leaving one of evangelicalism's premier colleges. Mark Noll will be moving from Wheaton College to the University of Notre Dame at the start of the school year this fall.

"This is one of the most painful announcements I've had to make in my nine and a half years as provost," says Stan Jones, provost at Wheaton. Noll has served as an inspiration and role model to students as well as other professors, Jones says. "I was inspired by his balance and maturity of thought."

"We're delighted to have him," says John McGreevy, chair of the department of history at Notre Dame. "We feel we have a strong program already. Mark will augment that."

Long a respected historian among evangelical scholars, Noll's stature has risen in recent years. His book America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln was named "the most significant work of American historical scholarship" in 2002 by The Atlantic.

His 1994 book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, has become shorthand for the ongoing conversation about evangelical anti-intellectualism, says John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, a sister publication of Christianity Today. America's God however raised Noll's visibility beyond evangelical academic circles. It was one of the most important historical books in years, says Wilson, who called it Noll's magnum opus. In 2005, Time magazine named Noll one of America's 25 most influential evangelicals.

Noll's impact has been in three areas, according to Wilson: as an American historian, as a historian of evangelicalism to which he brought a global perspective, and as a scholar of the Bible in public life. His forthcoming book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis is a prime example, says Wilson.

Aside from his scholarly writing, Noll has fostered networks of evangelical scholars. He helped to found the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicalism, and in other informal ways, Noll fostered the evangelical intellectual community, according to Wilson.

"I think he has helped us break caricatures of evangelical anti-intellectualism," says Jones. "Noll is an exemplar of all that's good in Christian academia. He set the standard of what it means to be a Christian scholar and a Christian teacher." Despite being courted by other major universities, Noll has, until now, turned them down.

"The position he is going to is fantastic," says Jones. "There are two things Notre Dame is offering that Wheaton can't. One is Notre Dame's expansive intellectual community, especially in regard to history and religion. Another is the intensive training of a fine cadre of doctoral students."

McGreevy said the department had been considering how to replace George Marsden, who will retire in a little more than two years. Marsden has been a crucial part of the graduate program and the leading intellectual presence, says McGreevy. Marsden was unavailable for comment.

Noll expressed an interest in coming to the university, says McGreevy, and was invited to interview. Noll declined to comment on his departure.

"One of the attractions for us is Mark's interest in global Christianity," says McGreevy.

Noll is also active in dialogue between Catholics and Protestants. Noll and Carolyn Nystrom recently published Is the Reformation Over? "One thing Mark is committed to is Protestant/Catholic dialogue," says McGreevy. "Notre Dame is a good place to do that. There are lots of serious Catholics and Protestants who want to think about those issues."

"Mark is a good historian, very talented and distinguished," says McGreevy. "We're eager to welcome him."

Originally posted by Michael_Thoma:
Tensions may have arisen because outside ministries are gaining more members than Georgetown's own religious organizations, Oakes said.

"Our ministries have been growing whereas theirs have been stagnant," he said.

Originally posted by ebed melech:

Quote

Originally posted by Michael_Thoma:
[b] Tensions may have arisen because outside ministries are gaining more members than Georgetown's own religious organizations, Oakes said.

"Our ministries have been growing whereas theirs have been stagnant," he said.

This statement says it all, IMHO. Instead of looking inward to see what they might learn from these groups (umm...perhaps a little orthodoxy and Mere Christianity?) they go on the attack and throw them off campus. I think there is more here than meets the eye.

Gordo [/b]

I believe I can see a situation where Catholics at Georgetown could be targets of Protestant proselytization, but I also realize that Marxists,apostates, and the rest of that bunch who disguise themselves as Catholics have been doing this on Catholic campuses for decades