CRCNA Synod forces The Banner and Calvin faculty into ‘confessional alignment’
Diversity of thought within the Christian Reformed Church has been officially censured.
Synod 2025 is over.
I will leave it to others to write about the gracious hospitality of Redeemer University and the warm opening ceremonies by Chatham First Christian Reformed Church (CRC), its congenial pastor Nate Van Denend and their local high school praise team.
The composition of Synod – the all-white male executive and near absence of female delegates – also requires commentary by others (one man in cargo shorts kept referring to the body as his “brothers,” something the Chair did nothing to tamp down).
As well, the apparent demise of the idea of a separate Canadian CRC deserves another column all its own. Suffice it to say that with 173 votes against and three for, that particular parrot is, per the Monty Python sketch, thoroughly and utterly dead. (A shout out to Pastor Martin Vellekoop, however, for telling our American friends that they have to deal firmly with the Christian Nationalism which animates much of their politics these days.)
For me, the enduring image of Synod 2025 will be the leadership of the Christian Reformed Church on stage next to a giant screen with the word “diverse” struck through.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Diversity axed
We were debating the mandate of The Banner, the denomination’s official magazine. Speaker after speaker approached the microphone and basically said that they don’t open the magazine hoping to think. Rather, they open it hoping to see only things they agree with.
And by this particular metric, the sense of the room was that Pastor Chong, its editor, has been an utter failure. My opinion, on the other hand, is that Chong’s editorials were a consistent call to a countercultural take on authority, a countercultural evocation of the ethics and person of Jesus.
The synod committee proposed a reworking of The Banner’s mandate. It turned out to be a cinch. Just delete any reference to diversity of thought and require the editor to fall 100 percent in line with the divinely inspired trifecta comprising our creeds, confessions and all past synodical pronouncements.
And, to make it easy for the audience, toss the proposed changes on a massive screen, zoom in on the word diverse and strike a line through it. Literally. No longer will The Banner reflect “diverse positions” and “various views.”
Sitting on stage just a few feet from this exhibition was the General Secretary of the church, Zachary King, nodding along as though this was just the most normal of things. In the back of the room were the presidents of our seminary and university. Would it have killed any of these people, as heirs of the rich intellectual history of the CRC, to approach the microphone and utter just a hint of disagreement?
Never happened.
Campus climate
Calvin University’s turn at the woodshed came earlier in the week. Synod 2024 had demanded of Calvin that it spell out precisely how it will handle (that is, whether or not to fire) faculty with views which divert from past synodical rulings on things like human sexuality.
Calvin’s leaders had an entire year to think over its response. Courage or capitulation? It chose the latter. They retained a lawyer to write a dense, 27-page report to Synod 2025 which is in places almost unreadable. The report humbly suggests a very tightly circumscribed pathway for the odd tenured dissident to keep her job. But remarkably, the report does not contain a single spirited defense of academic freedom of thought.
When Calvin University Provost Noah Toly and President Greg Elzinga addressed Synod, the submissive spirit continued. “Our job is to teach fully in accord with the teachings synod tells us about,” said incoming Board Chair Perrin Rynders. Afterwards, I was assured that back on Calvin’s campus, the provost is a “real tiger” for academic freedom. Just a tiger. As one who saw this unfold in real time, I have but one message for any Calvin professor who might entertain the prospect of deviant thought: these people do not have your back.
The fundamentalist turn of the CRC should now be clear to all but the most oblivious. It is not easy to be a leader in the CRC these days. First you must stand up and affirm that you cannot abide the lived lives of the lesbian or gay couple down the street or in your family. Now you must sign on to the anti-intellectual spirit of our times.
Our leaders have made their choices and those choices reveal character. With courage and conviction, Chong immediately resigned. He gave up the security of a pay cheque and the status of office.
Others have elected to go along to get along.
Thank you for succinct intelligent discerning review of Synods participants . This is not the Synod of years gone by. Relieved that John will tell it as it is / was. I have more clarity on how I will respond locally now. Anne
I am thankful for this post. What would Jesus do was a bracelet passed around many years ago in the CRC youth groups like Gems formerly Calvinettes. When I read John Tamming’s article on what Synod has done it grieves me. No I am not Dutch nor am I now under the umbrella of the CRC but I am a Christian. It is sad to think that Jesus came to turn the world upside down and those who have professed to follow Him in their lives through His word don’t know (many CRC Sermons and other denominations) that if they found themselves with nothing, or a family member who is “diverse” [ that cracks me up since we are all diverse in some way or another] or working with someone on the “street” because of past events or well, even listened to the “woman” [imagine that] Corrie Ten Boom on love and forgiveness! We are in a church now, albeit small but with a variety of folks and after leaving the CRC have found love and acceptance with growing faith that allows us to be ourselves, love on others and watch the Lord Jesus work using the Holy Spirit! Not only within the church but outside it as well through various “we love you” ministries! My take on the CRC thinking on the whole? Do you even want to know? IF you aren’t highly educated, read all the documents required, follow allllll the rules of tradition and forethinking then in the leaders eyes (not blanketing all leaders of course) then when do you have time to love as Jesus did. It is wonderful to have everyone clean, happy, following all the norm traditions in the CRC until you bring someone in who has lived on the street, walks on the street, been bullied on the street then its a real challenge for the to be/feel loved.
Don’t get me totally wrong, there are many, many loving people within the CRC but being “not Dutch” I’ve seen a lot of people who “weren’t Dutch” leave the CRC because of the thoughts and attitudes the encompass within .
May God have Mercy when we see His face. Our world is changing, and yes not for the better but He still asks us to love no matter what, however we can, wherever we can, with whomever we can.
And a final word, I had to “grow up” in my thinking as well and “listen”, listen, listen. Love in Him, K.
Amen. And this column is nowhere near too strong.
I challenge Rev. Vellekoop to define “Christian Nationalism” and to demonstrate that it “animates much of” the politics south of the border. I also can’t help but wonder what “dealing firmly” with it amounts to. But I agree about the cargo shorts: they have no place in the CRC.
I second that call to Rev. Vellekoop to define what he is talking about. One can sound especially grandiose, and be held forth as a rallying force, when the terms are nebulous. Academic freedom, diversity—these, too, are rallying terms that seem poorly defined. In secular institutions, academic freedom is taken roughly to mean one can hold any opinion and advocate for any position under the sun. While it may be clear to most faculty at Christian institutions they ought not be so far-ranging as their secular colleagues, I cannot see them, nor Mr. Tamming, putting themselves out there to establish boundaries. Can a person denying the traditional view of Jesus as Son of God, a la John Shelby Spong, be hired and encouraged as he continues in that belief at a Reformed Christian college? Would the less-strong position be OK in which a faculty member believes in the everlasting divinity of Christ come to the world in the flesh, yet explores what differences it makes to traditional Christian religion to believe like Spong? Might there not be boundaries that should be established for what is and is not proper study vs. advocacy on topics such as diversity, or human sexuality, in the life of a Reformed Christian academic (or leader in the CRC)? I don’t hear Mr. Tamming offering any alternatives, only bitterness that Synod 2025 is doing something. There is an entire soup of mixed beliefs embraced in other “churches”, and well-developed histories of (once?-) Christian institutions that have tried to stay “relevant.” Why, when one pocket of Christians acts on its convictions to pull back and be different, must there be a chorus of voices bitter at not being poured in with the soup? I don’t claim everything done by Synod 23/24/25 is squarely in the will of God. But a policy of “keep riding the tides” (which seems to be the basic tenet of the nay-sayers) is not a policy that has worked well in the case of other (once?-) Christian institutions. Adopting cultural norms in order to save culture (what some of us call being “in the world and of it”) echos the belief found among various characters in the Lord of the Rings that they can wear the “one ring” and use its power for good. The power found in the Church is that of the Holy Spirit calling women and men, brown and white, gay and straight into lives of holiness lived out in relational dependency on the Lord, with whom we might hope to live eternally. If our role in this is relevant (and I think it is), then arguing that some 2000 years of agreement, in a Spirit-led Church, over the human ailment (Sin) has missed the mark, or should be cast aside because of our cultural moment, seems, to me, a dangerous diversion of resources.