Stemming the drift

Trying to identify why the magnetic tug is always in one direction | Joel Belz

What is it about higher academia that seems to make it such a hard and fast rule: Given enough time, any institution, no matter how rooted in orthodoxy, will sooner or later slip away from its anchors. Why?

Some public wrestling with that perplexing issue came last week from an unlikely source. Gaylen Byker, the relatively new president of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., in a seminar at the annual convention of the Evangelical Press Association, traced the painfully familiar pattern. He called it a classic example of the principle of unintended consequences, saying that what starts as a gradual process too often becomes "a mad rush."

Most institutions of higher learning in North America, Dr. Byker said, got their start as centers of training for ministers. (All this, of course, was well before the current dominance of state schools). To produce well-rounded ministers, the schools began adding teachers in other subject areas-areas that soon became important in and of themselves. Securing faculty for such programs became competitive, and natural questions arose, like: Is it really important that a math professor hold to this school's theological position?