Editor’s note: Larsen, a Wheaton professor, writes here about a college controversy that’s getting national attention — and distortion, he says, with various media outlets charging that a new inquisition is arising. WOW will welcome a counterpoint from Professor Kent Gramm.

There is no reason why you should know about a faculty member leaving Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois), so, in case you did not happen to see the front page story in the Chicago Sun-Times, or the one of the cover of the Metro section of the Chicago Tribune, or the national coverage by ABC or Fox news—not to mention the numerous other media outlets that carried the story—here is a quick recap. Wheaton is an evangelical school at which all employees sign annually a “Community Covenant” in which they agree to pursue a way of life consistent with biblical Christianity as understood and articulated in it. Kent Gramm, a long-serving professor of English, resigned because he did not want to have a conversation about his divorce with the administration. He explained to the Tribune, “I think it’s wrong to have to discuss your personal life with your employer.”

Every year, Wheaton College hires divorced employees or retains newly divorced ones. In the six years I have taught at Wheaton this has been the case with two colleagues I consider close friends, and I don’t know how many other people as these matters are handled discreetly. (I’ve observed this firsthand by discovering in conversation that other faculty members are still not even aware of a colleague’s divorce that happened some years ago.) On the other hand, I have never known or heard of anyone, since I first joined the Wheaton community as an undergraduate in the mid-1980s until the present, who has been dismissed because of their divorce. In other words, the problem is not that Gramm is getting divorced but that he has refused to be transparent enough with the community for a discreet community leader to discover whether or not there are sinful patterns of behavior being revealed in this situation that need to be addressed.

Wheaton is the kind of deeply counter-cultural place that thinks that the whole person matters. You couldn’t be a member of a white supremacy group and teach at Wheaton, for example, however brilliant you might be in your discipline and effective as an educator. We are just uptight about racists that way. Likewise, if your spouse is divorcing you because she has finally got the courage to leave after years of emotional and physical abuse, that is the kind of thing Wheaton wants to know about. (I know personally, like, and admire Kent Gramm, and I would bet a heap of good money that there is no such thing going on in his marriage.)

The media and blogging story has been one of outrage against Wheaton as a prying, legalistic, puritanical, authoritarian institution. Watching from the inside, this situation has abounded in ironies. First, Gramm in exclusive interviews with major news organizations has defended his right to privacy – to get a quiet divorce that nobody ought to be concerned with except himself, his wife, and the readers of Sun-Times . . . He could have said that he was leaving us and it was nobody’s business why and that really would have been the end of it. In that case, I am quite confident that most members of the Wheaton community would have never even learned that he was getting divorced – it would have been handled in a truly private manner.

Which leads on to a second irony. Gramm has said that he does not want to discuss this because it would put him in a situation where he is being tacitly invited to accuse his wife. In reality, he indicates, a divorce would be better off without the finger pointing. The irony is Wheaton College already has a no-fault divorce policy. You can walk away from our Community Covenant at any time with no questions asked. You can just say, “none of your business,” about anything, and leave this covenant relationship instantly. Instead of pursuing this discreet, no-fault option, however, after a twenty-year covenantal relationship with Wheaton, Gramm has decided to start the blame game and accuse Wheaton of being the unreasonable partner. This relationship could have ended with a lot more class, but instead Gramm’s use of the media has dragged his long-term partner’s name through the mud.

This spills into a third irony regarding the outrage over Wheaton’s policy in the general media and blogging world. It has been loudly said hither and yon that Wheaton should not be allowed to have such a policy because marriage should be a purely private matter. Anything can happen in someone’s marriage—however cruel, unjust or despicable—and the key thing to keep in mind is that this is none of your business. On the other hand, the media coverage indicates, Wheaton’s voluntary covenant community is a kind of relationship that is so unseemly that the cops need to burst in and shut in down. It is not enough that right-thinking people would never choose to join such a community themselves: society should not even allow consenting adults to have such relationships. As one blogger has put it, “Shouldn’t common sense, or more importantly the law, prevail? If this is legal, then the law is an ass.”

The final irony centers around the issue of hypocrisy. The fact that evangelical Christians are hypocrites is so axiomatic that this card is played in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t sort of way. The classic hypocrite is the one who preaches one thing but does another. If a conservative Christian minister is found to be engaging in behavior which violates traditional Christian standards you can bet the media and the bloggers won’t say that it is happening in their private life and therefore is none of our business. (For example, I don’t recall a chorus of media and blogger voices saying that Ted Haggard was a good preacher and that this professional competence is all that should matter and we and his church employer should not be prying into his private life.) On the other hand, if Christians themselves do enforce their standards rather than break them this somehow also means that they are hypocrites. The blogs are filled with the knowing comment that, according to conservative Christian theology, everyone is a sinner so, ipso facto, the line must be being drawn arbitrarily and therefore should not be drawn at all (as if Christian organizations should not try to weed out spouse-beaters because they can’t successfully enforce a zero-tolerance policy on vanity.)

Well, what’s a Wheatie to do in response to all this? I suppose try, by God’s grace, to live by the Community Covenant. What does it say again?

According to the Scriptures, followers of Jesus Christ will:

Show evidence of the Holy Spirit who lives within them, such as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22);

“Put on” compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and supremely, love (Col. 3:12-14) . . .

Help us all, O Lord. Amen.

Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. His most recent books are Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford University Press) and The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (Cambridge University Press).