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Thanks, Matthew. Is there a place we can find Nick’s words? I’d love to read them.

I agree that this is in the news because of some Calvin professors and students’ desire to seperate themselves from the Christian Right in the eyes of the world. But here’s why it looks bad for Calvin from a reformationally-minded person’s perspective: graduating students wearing black armbands as a symbol of their difference during Bush’s speech. In an already over-politicized age, Calvin students’ protests are not a reformational act, but an act of using Bush as a lightening rod to get their own perspective “out there” in the media. It is too easy for people like Sean Hannity to rope “protesting” students and professors in with any other politically liberal group—because that’s what these people who were protesting seem to be acting like by using Bush’s appearance at Calvin this way. This is what I was trying to say earlier. Who cares what the media thinks? Do they have the truth on this issue? I think it looks bad for Calvin students and professors to be “protesting”. They ought to be reforming culture, not protesting it. Sure, that might not make CNN, but it’s what we’re called to do.

Obviously I don’t have a lot at stake in defending the reformed perspective of Calvin College, but why poopoo the protesters? Who says protests can’t lead to reformation? Protests can be extremely effective in effecting change. Black armbands might be lame but I have seen protests and strikes used effectively to stop governments from doing bad things, and we’ve seen protests in Eastern Europe recently cause corrupt governments to fall.

Grant, isn’t there room in your ideal world for people to speak out against leaders they disagree with?

By the way I thought Bush’s speech wasn’t so bad. What he is going for seems to be decent: it’s a good vision to try to let community and faith-based groups make stuff happen, and to make inefficient government bureaucracy disappear. It’s just too bad that a lot of what has happened during this administration serves to disempower local peoples and empower large corporations and big government. I’m thinking about things like oil drilling in Alaska, Haliburton monopolies, and dramatic increase in the size of government and military spending. The rhetoric is nice but the reality isn’t. Hats off to the protesters.

Since I haven’t yet heard much from those present and involved, I’ll offer my own words.

Note: This is a post from my blog in response to some of Gideon Strauss? comments on the appearance of President Bush at Calvin College last Saturday.

While certainly unable to speak to the motives and thinking of all those who ?protested? President Bush?s speech at Calvin, I think I can offer an explanation of the sentiment or ethos that many wished to express. I struggle even to use the word ?protest,? because, as noted in most of the press, the President was warmly received and given a fair hearing. Such ?protests? might better be termed ?demonstrations? to emphasize how innocuous, if not entirely apolitical they were in nature.

As a student who worked to organize and initiate what I would call a ?critical response? to the President, I think I can speak to this somewhat?though I will do so without presumption and humbly.

After hearing of the President?s intended visit to Calvin in late April, a group of students approached Calvin?s administration to propose a means to offer a such a critical response to the visit. Our reason was simple: we have serious moral concerns, as Christians, over the progressive wedding of the Republican Party with our faith in America. If Calvin, as a Christian liberal arts college is to accept the President?s commencement speech offer, would it, as an institution not further perpetuate this rather simple understanding of the Christian faith? Considering the simplistic understanding that most North Americans have of Christians, this is a rather justifiable concern. Perhaps the concern is only further exacerbated by the President?s own self-proclaimed faith and his admission that it has influenced major policy decisions that are not commensurate with that same faith.

Calvin is well known for bringing often-controversial musical artists and figures to its campus as an educational tool to encourage students to parse truth from the culture around them. In such instances, the school maintains a critical distance from such artists and the ideas they purport in order to allow such critical reflection from a decidedly Christian, and more specifically neo-Calvinist, perspective.

A Presidential visit to the college should require the same kind of critical distance and dialogue about issues of faith and politics. Thus, we proposed to Calvin?s administration that we produce buttons that read ?God is not a Republican or a Democrat? in a tip of the hat to Sojourners campaign late last year. Our reasoning was certainly different than that of Jim Wallis and company?and indeed we flipped ?Democrat? and ?Republican? to sacrifice as much in the way of political overtones as possible?but we felt the symbolic sentiment was one that would appropriately initiate a dialogue much overdue in the United States. And Calvin College is a good place for that discussion to begin.

In an effort to explain our motives and reasoning, we penned an explanation from which the following is excerpted:

Our reason for making the buttons and stickers is to express a more nuanced understanding of the Christian faith. Many of us have concerns about the President?s policies?whether the issue is the budget deficit, the war in Iraq, the environment, or the treatment of prisoners. We are concerned that many Americans perceive all Christians to be politically conservative. Others seem convinced that rational, thinking Christians must endorse all things on the left side of the political spectrum. Both are wrong.

-In retrospect I wish I had also added a note of concern about those marginalized and oppressed by a system that should changed. But it was 4 a.m. when I was writing the original copy and I would be graduating in but a few hours. Forgiveness, please.

Nick Wolterstorff was originally scheduled to speak at the commencement. At the behest of many sincere students who were disappointed they would not hear his wisdom, he agreed to provide some remarks on the morning of the commencement during a gathering of Seniors for brunch. His comments touched on much of what I have explained above?that Calvin has for good reason maintained such a critical distance from the political powers that be. This does not preclude the Christian from engaging in politics, but we should never allow our faith or ours intellect to be co-opted as such.

I think Nick?s comments get at the heart of what such an appropriate response ought to consist of in light of such a major event. I?d like to think that not only did cool heads prevail, but heads prepared to confess to a world riddled with pain, in Wolterstorff?s own words, ?This should not be.? I hope that we succeeded.[url][/url]