Every now and then, administrators in our Christian colleges find them­selves explaining to dissatisfied sup­porters why some controversial person or other was invited to speak on cam­pus. They usually regard it as an un­pleasant duty — in part because in most such cases, the invitation to speak was not initiated by them but by some sector or person in the college (often a professor) that does not bear the responsibility of dealing directly with the Christian public. It should not surprise us that some administrators tend to be apprehensive about visitors coming to the campus and may favor restrictions of a sort that I would regard as jeopardizing academic freedom.

Sometimes professors are recruited to help explain to an irate constituent why a certain speaker was invited — or should not be considered as ineligible to speak on campus. Note the distinc­tion here: defending the legitimacy of the original invitation to speak does not mean endorsing the content of the speaker's comments or even claiming that his address was effective as a communication exercise. The fact of the matter is that many speeches on college campuses fail as attempts at significant communication. And of those that do succeed, many are not judged to be interesting and worthwhile. But even when I feel that a guest speaker's visit has not been a success, I usually defend the original invitation as legitimate and appropriate; indeed, I am willing to plead with our supporters not to be un­duly critical when it comes to the parade of visitors to the campus.

Our strategy in Reformed higher education is not just to acquaint our students with Biblical teaching and or­thodox Christian thought but also to make them aware of a wider world of thought and culture. Books by philosophers of all persuasions are to be found in our libraries and can be as­signed in courses. Films are shown, and plays by major classical and con­temporary playwrights are performed. A wide range of musical productions is included in the curriculum and in performances on campus; some of those performances are by members of the college community, while others are by visitors. Our interest in the visual arts is similarly broad, for Reformed col­leges do not wish to be thought of as narrow.

As I indicated, I defend all of this in principle and in practice — however disappointing an individual visit by a guest speaker or cultural group may be. But there is one area in which we do tend to get tangled up when it comes to guests on campus — those whom we invite to lead us in worship. There is a reason why we are having difficulty in this area. I would like to focus on that reason, and in the process I hope to demonstrate some­thing about the nature of Christian higher education.

As I write, Redeemer College looks forward to a visit to our campus by Prof. John Bolt of Calvin Seminary. He will be here to meet with our pre-semi­nary students about the possibility of studying at Calvin Seminary. During his visit, he will also lead a chapel ser­vice. He is one of our former faculty members and a good friend of the col­lege. We look forward to his visit and to his address in chapel.

We also have ministers from the local area as guest speakers at chapel. Some of them are Christian Reformed, some are from other Reformed denominations, while still others can be described as "evangelical." Oc­casionally we get one whose theologi­cal orientation seems elusive. Their visits serve something of a public rela­tions function, of course, and so the college is more "ecumenical" in terms of opening its "pulpit" than a church with well-defined doctrinal standards would be. For example, a minister who does not believe in infant baptism might well be found leading a chapel service in a Reformed college. I have no objection to this practice.

If we get into difficulty on occasion, it is when high-powered or well-known lecturers who are not Reformed come to the college and are invited to lead a chapel service alongside some other planned events. I may then find myself explaining to critical supporters of the college that although it was perfectly appropriate to have speaker X on campus delivering an academic lecture or two and filling us in on the latest developments in this or that field, he may not have been an ideal chapel speaker. (The critical supporter, having heard what speaker X had to say in chapel, maintains that he should not have been invited to our campus at all).

It puzzles me that many people who work at our colleges seem inclined to run together the role of guest speaker on campus with guest chapel speaker. Certain difficult situations that come up could easily be avoided if we distin­guished between these two roles more clearly. But there is a pattern of think­ing behind our mistakes in this area.

The decline of antithetical con­sciousness — in both theory and prac­tice — is largely to blame here. College-level education is supposed to help students become critical thinkers. They are encouraged to challenge their professors in class, although not much comes of this nowadays. (Many professors complain that students today are too willing to believe whatever their instructors tell them). And they are also encouraged to be critical as they work through their reading assignments. When guest speakers address them, the students are supposed to show them the proper respect but also ask tough questions. A speech is normally followed by a ques­tion-and-answer session, in which members of the college community, in­cluding the professor who extended the original invitation, can take issue with the speaker and set the record straight, if need be. Such, at least, is the old-fashioned antithetical theory of Christian higher education.

But we now live in a very agreeable age in which dissent is widely regarded as socially inappropriate. Walter Ong, in particular, has emphasized that the impact of the philosopher John Dewey on North American schooling has led us away from any willingness to debate and do battle, and toward an overly irenic, peace-seeking approach to education. It seems that we are in school to learn to agree and get along together and become contented mem­bers of the group, rather than to learn to take a position and defend it. Polemics has been replaced by irenics.

Now, chapel is just the setting in which we hope to see a spirit of agree­ment and sweet irenicism prevail. When someone addresses us in chapel on the basis of the Word of God, the proper response of the college com­munity should be a heartfelt amen that comes to expression in daily life. We are not in chapel to learn to think for ourselves but to give communal ex­pression to our submission to God's Word. And that's precisely why we need to be careful when we invite people to lead us in chapel, just as some Christian Reformed consistories are of late becoming more careful and discriminating about the men they invite into their pulpits. They have "closed" their pulpits to certain men who were once eligible to occupy them. The officebearers who have taken this step are aware that there must be agreement and an irenic mood in the worship service. We do not at­tend church to hear many different theories and doctrines paraded before us so that we can decide for ourselves what to believe concerning the Christ.

The undertone of agreement that should be present in chapel is seeping into the classroom and displacing the willingness to take issue and even to reject what is presented by a lecturer or guest speaker. Conversely, the range of approaches and alternatives that one would properly expect to en­counter in a college classroom is start­ing to pop up in chapel. Each is taking on the character of the other, and each is therefore losing sight of its proper role and place in college life.

What tends to happen in our col­leges, then, is that we neglect the fun­damental distinction between worship and academic interchange, and also between the infallible Word of God and the all-too-fallible words of men. We do not cast our nets widely enough when it comes to bringing guests to campus to challenge us in academic lectures in which those guests are in­vited to speak up for points of view that students need to confront "in the flesh," as it were.

We are too eager to maintain sweet irenicism in the classroom, and so we tend to invite guest speakers who will reinforce what we have already taught the students. But on the other hand, we have become somewhat too free in terms of inviting people of alien per­suasions into our chapel pulpits — especially if they are high-powered guest lecturers claiming some sort of membership in an officially Christian church or organization. Because we are eager to impress these guests with our friendliness and hospitality, we arrange a chapel service that will give them an opportunity to address the entire stu­dent body. The result is that students are exposed to non-Reformed ideas in a setting in which those ideas cannot be challenged or contradicted. We are not in chapel to talk back, for the word being addressed to us is supposed to be drawn from the Bible. And the stu­dents may well be drawn into prayers that are not in accordance with God's Word either.

And so I am asking for reform in two areas. Let us be bolder and more con­tentious in terms of interacting with an academic and cultural world in which all sorts of important ideas arise to challenge the fundamentals of our faith. In other words, let us continue the Reformed practice of meeting the world head-on and taking Humanism seriously. But on the other hand, let us be more sober and discriminating and restrained when it comes to gathering together for worship as a college com­munity. Let the word spoken in a chapel setting be God's Word — not some ideas of human devising. And let the prayers that go up there breathe the spirit of "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."