So here’s a brief report on my brief vacation.
Thanks to those of you who wrote me concerned about my health or sanity or very existence, because I had virtually disappeared.
In response to the many requests to say something about Berry College and Chick-fil-A, I have to respond that the facts on the ground point in the direction of a kind of prudence impossible to spell out on a blog.
Berry IS a kind of a institutionalized culture conflict: A residential campus run and paid for Chick-fil-A is the source of something like 120 of the students in our classes. The “chicken people” have no say at all over curriculum, hiring, and so forth. And Berry has a pretty standard curriculum with hiring practices conforming pretty much to the standards of disciplines. So one campus is evangelical or pretty much Southern Baptist (not all the students there are Baptist but all conform to Christian social discipline) and the other isn’t even remotely Baptist or only vaguely Christian (although most of the students are more than vaguely Christian). This cultural conflict is manageable for the most part unless the whole nation takes an interest in it.
Meanwhile, dialogue proves to be difficult. There’s a lot of “they hate us because we’re gay” vs. “they hate us because we’re Christian” stuff going on when the cultural issues are being discussed on various places on the social media. Too much animosity along these lines, of course, could undermine the relatively and free and open discussion on any and all issues that’s been one distinctive feature of a Berry education.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:31 am
I was a WinShape (Chick Fil-A) scholarship recipient during my four years at Berry College. I was also a student of Peter Lawler for the final three years of my time at Berry–it took me one year to hear about his legendary classes on political philosophy. I agree generally with his assessment of the campus culture, although he seems to overstate the divide a bit. Perhaps things have changed in the decade or so since I left Berry. Students living on the mountain campus in the Chick Fil-A dorms were required to sign a pledge saying something to the effect that you were entering into a covenant not to drink, have sex or do drugs during your 4 years at Berry. Since most of the chicken scholars, myself included, were Southern Baptists, or in some other way rooted in the evangelical culture, they saw nothing whatsoever wrong with this sort of covenant–why would a Christian partake in such activities? Especially when you know that True Love Waits? I don’t have anything like hard numbers on this, but I know for sure that I was not the only chicken scholar to break my covenant. However, because I did so discreetly, I was allowed to stay on for the four years. I was part of a counter-culture within the counter-cultural Chick Fil-A campus. We inhabited the first floor of the dorms and took consolation in one another, observing the ironies and inconsistencies of self-help, happy-go-lucky, praise and worship evengelical Christianity. We knew that most of the WinShapers were good people at heart, and would go on to be productive and contributing members of society, but we also knew that we could only be members of such a society if we maintained a certain degree of irony when dealing with them. In time many of us would come to understand this irony in a new way, as charity, the mode of relationship and discourse between members of the Church. There were a few homosexuals in the group–not just on the first floor, of course–and in their own way they had come to understand the Church’s teaching that homosexuals are called to practice chastity. In the one instance I can recall of a WinShaper outing himself as a homosexual, his announcement was met with the expected disdain and gossip, but he was not forced to leave the dorms or give up his scholarship, and in time the group made room for him. Several renewed their friendships with him. Perhaps things have changed, but my guess is that you will find on the mountain campus the same spectrum of views you tend to find on the campuses of most liberal arts colleges coming out of the protestant tradition–some will condemn homosexuality outright and attempt to remove homosexuals from the community, others will adopt the non-judgmentalism of the larger American culture, and still others will balance condemnation of sodomy with love of homosexuals, “hating the sin but loving the sinner”.
There is more to say, but this is already an indulgently lengthy post.
So, by way of conclusion: it seems that living among the Berry chicken people was an important step, both in my own life and also in those of a few close friends, in the search for a mature and authentic Christian life. It helped us to see more clearly certain shortcomings in evangelical culture, to give voice to these concerns, and, eventually, gave us the courage to seek out their remedies in the tradition of the Church. Peter’s example was, in its own way, a model for this search. For this reason, if for no other, it seems like the WinShape program plays an important role in maintaining the truly liberal educational environment at Berry College.
August 1st, 2012 | 12:31 pm
That is ammazing.
August 1st, 2012 | 2:02 pm
So I really am touched by and agree with the conclusion, and especially the last sentence. The conflict has, in fact, heightened a bit over the last decade. I should probably add that a disproportionate number of our very fine political science majors have been chicken students, who have uniformly been open-minded and eager and just about impossible to offend.
August 1st, 2012 | 11:52 pm
Right on Berry Chicken! I never knew of this specific WinShape scholarship till this post, but you speak the truth of my similar experience at a Catholic university which despite its allegedly pejorative conservative culture and curriculum–but also, in part, because of its very selfsame liberal arts education–always entailed an openness to the truth. As such it was open to many people, including openness in regard to deeply personal issues like sexuality. It allowed for irony too as we also had our own version of the “first floor.”
I hope the WinShape program prospers through the storms of this unwanted national controversy. You are evidence of what I take to be its intent–a formation in excellence of intellect and character.
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