COMMENTARY: A missed opportunity

c. 2008 Religion News Service CHICAGO _ It would be so refreshing to pick up the newspaper and see a story about my alma mater on the front page that didn’t make me cringe. There’s plenty of good news _ like the story of senior and defensive end on the Thunder football team Andy Studebaker, […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

CHICAGO _ It would be so refreshing to pick up the newspaper and see a story about my alma mater on the front page that didn’t make me cringe.

There’s plenty of good news _ like the story of senior and defensive end on the Thunder football team Andy Studebaker, who recently became the first Wheaton (Ill.) College player ever taken in the NFL draft. He’s heading to the Philadelphia Eagles.


Then there’s the front-page story in Monday’s (April 28) Chicago Sun-Times about Kent Gramm, a professor for 20 years in Wheaton’s English department, who has lost his job because his 30-year marriage is ending in divorce.

More specifically, Gramm resigned (rather than be fired) after he declined to discuss the details of his divorce with Wheaton administrators. While divorce does not lead to automatic dismissal, school policy requires the divorce to fall within acceptable parameters, based on Scripture, i.e., adultery, abandonment and the like.

Wheaton is certainly within its legal rights to insist on such a requirement, and trying to hold fast the institution’s moral rudder in increasingly relativistic cultural waters is honorable. Yet I still find myself profoundly disappointed by the school’s position in this case.

Gramm knew full well what his refusal to discuss the particulars of his divorce would mean to his career at Wheaton. He faced an unreasonable and painful choice, and I believe he took the spiritual high road. I wish I could say the same for my alma mater.

I don’t know what the prurient details _ if there are any _ of Gramm’s divorce are, and frankly, I couldn’t care less. What I do care about is that once again an evangelical institution earns a reputation, deserved or not, for siding with legalism over grace. And for an institution dedicated, as Wheaton is, to “Christ and his kingdom,” communicating grace in a world that so desperately needs it should always be the most important part of its mission.

I’ve heard from many fellow Wheaton alumni who read about Gramm and expressed their heartfelt disappointment and even anger with our community.

“Sending the message that if you go through something that ends in divorce … , you are then separated from your community, is horrible,” said a classmate whose parents have been married for almost 40 years and who has been happily married herself for a decade.


“In my mind, an ideal Wheaton would surround Dr. Gramm and his wife _ treat it like a death in the family or someone who is just diagnosed with cancer. You bring food, you offer to baby-sit the kids, you get them a gift card to Target _ you don’t fire the guy.”

One of my roommates from Wheaton who is going through a divorce herself (after more than a decade of marriage and two kids) had this to say: “I went to a meditation retreat where we were really challenged to look at ourselves and our pain without our `story.’ That was extremely difficult for me _ I have quite a story. I’m a saint in my story! But if I let go of that story, what am I? Just some woman with a marriage that didn’t work. Dr. Gramm is showing such grace and courage not to tell the story. It is none of our business.”

Another classmate said Wheaton’s rules about divorce are appropriate, since Jesus was concerned enough about it to mention several times during his ministry. “As with most issues related to gender and sexuality, the church has and continues to struggle to find a sustainable balance between encouraging holiness and demonstrating grace,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I will say that in my experience of Wheaton, the law seemed to have primacy over grace, and rules over authentic community.”

Marriage is a sacred compact and divorce is always a tragedy. But will effectively ostracizing and stigmatizing someone make marriage any more sacred and divorce any less tragic?

Late on Monday, I heard from Gramm directly. Far from painting himself as a martyr or victim, he was reflective and faithful.


I’ll leave you with his words:

“An authoritarian, narrow and self-righteous attitude shown by an institution does not teach students about the boundary-free geography of the kingdom of God,” he said. “I would like the wonderful students of Wheaton College to know that God is not going to fire them for anything.”

Amen.

(Cathleen Falsani is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and author of “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People.”)

 

KRE/RB END FALSANI750 words

A photo of Cathleen Falsani is available via https://religionnews.com.

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