Even though more than a year has passed since Alex Bolyanatz’s contract with Wheaton College was terminated, the anthropology professor still has questions about his dismissal from the evangelical Christian school.
Bolyanatz had taught for six years at Wheaton, where he had annually received good reviews from students and administrators. But after his fifth-year review at the school in December 2000, he received an ominous letter from Wheaton Provost Stanton Jones. It stated: “During your term at Wheaton College, you have failed to develop the necessary basic competence in the integration of Faith and Learning, particularly in the classroom setting.”
Months later, Bolyanatz was told that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. And although he suspects that his lectures about evolution in his anthropology classes may have played a role in his dismissal, Bolyanatz says he never really received a straight answer from Wheaton officials as to why he was fired.
Jones said college policy prohibits him from commenting on personnel matters.
“Evidence suggests from students and colleagues that my work was satisfactory,” said Bolyanatz, speaking from his office at Benedictine University in Lisle, where he now teaches. “So I don’t know what really happened.”
Incidents such as Bolyanatz’s dismissal from Wheaton have troubled educators across the country. Wheaton is one of about 100 evangelical Christian schools nationwide that require instructors to commit either verbally or orally to faith-based doctrines.
The issue isn’t limited to conservative Christian schools. At the nation’s 235 Catholic colleges and universities, instructors who teach theology are required to obtain a “mandatum” from the diocese where their college is located, attesting that the theologian teaches only authentic Catholic doctrine.
That mandatum could have the potential to affect the intellectual freedom of some academics, experts say.
“The Catholic position on principle is that there cannot be a conflict between science and faith, because they are one,” said Monika Hellwig, a theologian who is president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. “But the mandate could be a problem if the bishop really wanted to interfere and had rigorous, narrow positions.”
There are differences between the mandatums at Catholic institutions and the faith-based statements issued by more conservative Christian schools.
“The mandatums are requirements that are directed to the individual theologian,” said John McCarthy, a professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago. “But it is different from the faith-based statements in that mandatums aren’t issued by the university–it’s a specification in the relationship between the bishop and the theologian.”
The American Association of University Professors, which monitors higher education institutions, technically doesn’t oppose faith-based statements issued by colleges and universities. But there is a concern about how these statements can negatively affect an educator’s job.
“It’s a very difficult issue for us and has been for a long time,” said Martin Snyder, the association’s director of planning and development. “It’s really a question of how you juxtapose academic freedom with the religious mission of an institution.”
Many educators believe that faith-based statements do affect a professor’s academic freedom, no matter how well meaning these doctrines are.
“There’s a way to find out the orientation and beliefs of a scholar to determine if he’s appropriate for a university–that’s what the interview process is for,” said Dan Lewis, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University.
There has been a backlash against faith statements. Earlier this year, Patrick Henry College in Virginia was denied accreditation by the American Academy for Liberal Education, a private group approved by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit liberal arts colleges.
The national accreditor cited the Christian school’s faith statement, which requires its professors to teach creationism, the belief that God created the world in six days. American Academy President Jeffrey Wallin said in a letter to the school that the policy was “restricting liberty of thought and freedom of speech.”
Jones said there is concern that some regional organizations may consider taking away the accreditation of Wheaton’s various schools because of its faith-based policies, which include having its instructors sign a 12-point statement of faith when they are hired.
Jones said these faith statements are necessary because they help define the identity of the school.
“The religious tradition we represent is defined by these doctrines,” Jones said. “There is a huge difference between a school that intrudes into the classroom versus a school that says, `Here are our religious tenets.’ After [an instructor commits] to those tenets, you’re free to explore. It’s not really a constraint. Only the person who isn’t sympathetic looks at these statements as a muzzle.”
Debate over limits on freedom
Officials from the American Association of University Professors say that faith-based statements are not a violation of their principles. Those principles, enacted by the association in 1940, state that schools can place restrictions on academic freedom in keeping with their theological views provided that those restrictions are placed in writing. But Snyder said the organization prefers that schools not limit their instructors’ academic freedom at all.
“We’d prefer the freedom model, but we recognize that a lot of schools sort of fall in the middle,” Snyder said.
But Snyder said there is a concern about schools using faith-based statements as an excuse for dismissing an instructor.
“The one real worry we have is the statements of faith is sometimes used to cloak some other motive,” Snyder said. “The faculty member might not be popular and could be dismissed on the pretext of violating a school’s statements of faith.”
A vote for statements
Bolyanatz, who is an evangelical Christian, agrees with the concept of having professors sign statements of faith.
“The purpose of the statements of faith is to give students a good idea of what they will be getting, not in terms of content in the classroom, but the milieu,” Bolyanatz said. “It’s like historically black colleges or women’s colleges–it doesn’t mean you just learn about women’s issues in women’s colleges, you learn everything there is to learn, but it’s done in a context that makes students more comfortable.”
Bolyanatz said he believes his problems at Wheaton began in April 2000, when he spent two weeks in anthropology class lecturing about the origins of man. The professor had planned to address evolutionary issues, so he invited Jones to attend.
“I believed having the provost come and witness the class was creating a firewall for myself,” Bolyanatz said. “So that if parents called the school, I imagined that the provost would be able to say, `I have been in his classroom and it was OK.'”
The lectures on evolution proceeded without much controversy, although Bolyanatz believes Jones was somewhat taken aback by his response to a student who asked whether creationism would be taught.
“I said we only have two weeks and this is a course about general anthropology,” Bolyanatz recalled. “I said I’m not going to waste your time reading something that’s not right and misguided.”
Bolyanatz said Jones didn’t personally address him about the lectures, and didn’t think he had violated the statement of faith by his response.
“The statement of faith can be read to be consistent with a creationist perspective, but it can also be read to be consistent with a more Darwinian view.” Bolyanatz said.
“I don’t think very many people at Wheaton are creationists, unless you define a `creationist’ as anyone who thinks God was involved somehow. (And you can be very Darwinian and still think that God was involved somehow.) So it never occurred to me that I was in some way violating anything–provost or no provost.”
But at the end of that semester, Jones called Bolyanatz into his office.
“To be honest, I was expecting an atta-boy, pat-on-the-back, this-is-what-we-need-to-tweak-a-bit speech,” Bolyanatz said. “But I got a 41/2-page, single-spaced document from him just blasting me. That was an indication to me that something was wrong.”
Due process concerns
Snyder wonders whether schools such as Wheaton follow due process when they dismiss a professor, presumably for violating a school’s faith-based doctrines.
“Even if there are limitations, that doesn’t absolve a university from due process,” Snyder said.
“If a person is going to be dismissed, the person needs to have the reasons in writing and the opportunity to appeal, a hearing before a faculty body. Then the faculty body makes the recommendation to the administration on the final decision. Because the faculty knows better than anybody what the school standards are.”
Issue to be addressed
The American Association of University Professors is scheduled to hold a conference in March at the University of San Diego at which the issue of faith-based statements will receive prominent attention.
Meantime, Bolyanatz has been well received at Benedictine, where he is working on a year-to-year basis.
His superiors say that the only reason he isn’t now being considered for tenure is because Benedictine doesn’t have an anthropology school.
“Alex is equally respected by his students and his colleagues,” said John Mickus, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences there. “We’ve all really enjoyed his presence here.”
Wheaton College’s Statement of Faith
– We believe in one sovereign God, eternally existing in three persons: the everlasting Father, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life; and we believe that God created the Heavens and the earth out of nothing by His spoken word, and for His own glory.
– We believe that God has revealed Himself and His truth in the created order, in the Scriptures, and supremely in Jesus Christ; and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writing, so that they are fully trustworthy and of supreme and final authority in all they say.
– We believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and was true God and true man, existing in one person and without sin; and we believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension into heaven, and in His present life there for us as Lord of all, High Priest, and Advocate.
– We believe that God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the entire human race; and that they were created in His own image, distinct from all other living creatures, and in a state of original righteousness.
– We believe that our first parents sinned by rebelling against God’s revealed will and thereby incurred both physical and spiritual death, and that as a result all human beings are born with a sinful nature that leads them to sin in thought, word, and deed.
– We believe in the existence of Satan, sin, and evil powers, and that all these have been defeated by God in the cross of Christ.
– We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice, triumphing over all evil; and that all who believe in Him are justified by His shed blood and forgiven of all their sins.
– We believe that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith are born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God and are enabled to offer spiritual worship acceptable to God.
– We believe that the Holy Spirit in-dwells and gives life to believers, enables them to understand the Scriptures, empowers them for godly living, and equips them for service and witness.
– We believe that the one, holy, universal Church is the body of Christ and is composed of the communities of Christ’s people. The task of Christ’s people in this world is to be God’s redeemed community, embodying His love by worshipping God with confession, prayer, and praise; by proclaiming the gospel of God’s redemptive love through our Lord Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth by word and deed; by caring for all of God’s creation and actively seeking the good of everyone, especially the poor and needy.
– We believe in the blessed hope that Jesus Christ will soon return to this earth, personally, visibly, and unexpectedly, in power and great glory, to gather His elect, to raise the dead, to judge the nations, and to bring His Kingdom to fulfillment.
– We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting punishment of the lost, and the everlasting blessedness of the saved.
