Trinity Christian College is done. Our last graduate has crossed the stage.
A college education presents the arguments that structure a student’s course of study so that each student decides which arguments make sense. It’s called liberal arts because the root word for “liberal” is the “liberty.” Students make their own informed assessments. Anything less is indoctrination. As C.S. Lewis stated, “Education is for free men. Training is for slaves. If training wins, civilization dies.”
Trinity excelled at education.
Small colleges create opportunities for many more students to explore leadership skills. Their faculties nurture students with personal attention not available at large universities. Students find their place and thrive. Contrary to popular opinion, their faculties, if Trinity’s faculty is an indication, are diverse in background, political affiliation and scholarly pursuits. Just when the CEO of Salesforce seeks the creative, critical thinking skills that liberal arts graduates bring, losing these independent-minded institutions weakens our democracy and leads inevitably to more uniformity at a time when we need diverse voices.
Finals week was the quintessential “both/and” experience: celebration of the amazing good Trinity accomplished for 66 years and joy in knowing 20,000 graduates are working creatively to make our world better — and grief.
We are losing the excellent facilities, a touchstone in south suburban Chicago. We are losing each other. Colleagues — who were my students before they were my colleagues and for whom I have deep respect and fondness — have not found jobs. That’s true for staff, too. We are not only being exiled from a place but also from one another.
This is painful because “a welcoming community” was an aspect that speakers cited repeatedly in Trinity’s recent finals week. Trinity’s stance toward the world was deliberately hospitable. Students from every tradition felt embraced by staff; they cited personal relationships with faculty members and each other.
One speaker said that, as an institution, Trinity had the one of the most diverse student bodies of any Christian college. That was particularly noticeable as students crossed the platform at graduation. Included were the white ethnic students from Chicago’s South Side and Hispanic, Palestinian, Middle Eastern, African American, Asian and African students.
In my early years, as we were working our way through the alphabet at graduation, you knew that when you got to the “Vs,” the Dutch kids whose community founded the college, the Vanders, made up much of the student body.
On May 8, there was only one “V.”
Grounding Trinity’s stance of hospitality was a fearless attitude toward cultural engagement; good trouble, as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis put it. Many Christian colleges, particularly in evangelical traditions, hold a rigidly defensive stance against society, worried about purity, and try to get as little culture as possible. Trinity, by contrast, saw its Christian commitments as a platform for creatively and critically engaging all of culture: business, the professions, the social sciences, natural sciences, the humanities and the arts.
We at Trinity rigorously prepared students — as evidenced in the 100% pass rate on the NCLEX exam for nursing students, accounting students making up the highest percentage in Illinois to pass the CPA exam on the first try and art students in my department earning acceptance to multiple excellent graduate programs. Trinity produced students who were curious and, because of their preparation, unafraid.
What freed Trinity from the defensiveness that afflicts other traditions was the assertion that there is no split between the sacred and the profane; every aspect of culture has meaning because God created it. That was the heart of the college’s stance.
This assertion is admittedly a statement of faith. The Lord’s Prayer summarizes this vision succinctly: “God’s will be done on earth, now, as it is in heaven.” It envisions humans flourishing. One doesn’t have to be a Christian to see the wisdom of seeking justice, loving mercy and being humble enough to admit when you’re wrong. The alternative to these values, whether you are Christian or not, is a Hobbesian “war of all against all.” Trinity’s expansive vision that all of life is sacred came to influence much of Christian higher education across the country despite Trinity’s small size.
Here’s an example of the sacredness of ordinary life. One of my sons spent a few years scrubbing pots and pans in Trinity’s cafeteria. Understandably, given the work and the pay, he chafed occasionally. I tried to remind him of the sacredness and care that he provided for the entire campus. If he didn’t get the pots and pans clean, no one at the college could do their job.
In every aspect of culture, from Trinity’s perspective, God wills that each of us thrive, that societies treat each other with justice and mercy, and that all of us give each other the grace to fail and recover. “On earth as it is in heaven” means no one is othered; everyone is embraced. Of course, the news is replete with aberrations to such a vision. This was true in Jesus’ day. Nonetheless, he said, “The kingdom of God — caring for each other, individually as well as at a societal scale — is right here among you.”
It’s what we experienced, in some measure, at Trinity.
Trinity’s legacy asserts that we all have agency to do the good that’s ours to do. And to act toward redemption wherever injustice appears.
John Bakker taught at Trinity Christian College from 1982 to 2024, serving as chair of the art and design department from 1982 to 2014 and intermittently as the director of the Seerveld Gallery.
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