Garber Letter
In the course of just a few days I have been close to enough to watch two versions of “gotcha” journalism. Week after week my work straddles the worlds of Washington, DC, and Grand Rapids, MI, and it is individuals and institutions in these two cities that have been had.
One evening during supper I got a call from a longtime aide to Senator Rick Santorum, asking me to pray for the senator as an AP reporter was going after him over his views on homosexuality. On the news later that night I saw Santorum’s face, and knew that it had already started. The days that followed were tough, as what we term the elite media offer us only two options regarding homosexuality: either one is heart and soul behind every homosexual hope, or one is homophobic. Santorum was scorched for trying to argue something more nuanced; in fact stating the current law of the land, as well as the moral vision of the Catholic Church (and every other ecclesiastical tradition that reflects historic orthodoxy in its understanding of homosexuality). By God’s grace the senator seems to have weathered the storm.
And then only days later I read your piece on Calvin College, and found myself thinking: one more time. I know that Santorum’s staff, and all who supported him in Washington and beyond, had the sense that the AP was out to get him—and they nearly did. Would it sadden or surprise you to know that that is how Calvin College interpreted your reporter’s questions—weeks before the story found its way to press? It was plain to all that WORLD already had a story before it got to campus, and was going to aggressively argue it. In Washington, and I suppose in Asheville and Grand Rapids, that is called “gotcha” journalism.
After spending 15 years with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the last several as its scholar-in-residence, I know the world of Christian higher education pretty well—for blessing and for curse. I know most of the presidents, provosts, deans, and many professors. Anyone who knows me knows that I long for these schools to be deeply, distinctively Christian; I have given my life towards that end. Where they aren’t what they should and could be, I lament; where they are strong, I rejoice.
It was within that context that I was invited to give a couple of years to Calvin College, to listen to it, and sometimes to speak to it, across the spectrum of its curriculum, in class and out. It was an unusual invitation. All year long I have traveled back and forth, continually pondering what I am hearing, and offering my thoughts about what it means for Calvin now and in the future.
Knowing who I have talked to about the very same issues that WORLD addressed, it grieves me to see your effort identified as distinctively Christian journalism; candidly, it seems in the same spirit as the AP hatchet job on Senator Santorum. Anyone who knew him and his efforts on behalf of legislation for the faith-based initiative, against partial-birth abortion, or for HIV/AIDS funding in Africa, knew that the AP was grinding its own ax—and was eager to chop off his head. With biases in hand, WORLD failed to tell a fuller story, a more truthful story; it was possible, had you not already come to campus with an ax to grind, a head to chop.
I know because I have had a year-long conversation about the pressures bearing down upon the college, and I am confident that Calvin is a different school than the one represented by your reporter. It is a complex institution, with great strengths and some weaknesses, places where its commitments are clear and places where it is struggling to see clearly. Sounds like everyone’s life, even seriously Christian lives. I do want your readership to know that my assessment of Calvin is that it is a serious place about serious ideas, preeminently its core commitment to the gospel of the kingdom shaping all of life and learning. Its president and his cabinet pour their hearts out to hold onto the heritage of faith which forms their educational mission.
I only wish that WORLD would have had the heart to listen more carefully and probe more critically—always and everywhere, that is journalism done more Christianly.
Steven Garber