My Take on Northland
Posted on May 7, 2013 by Bob Bixby
NOTE: Anybody can read this. Only those really interested in Northland should, although everybody’s welcome. But this post is for a particular target audience.
My alma mater is in a crisis. The cliché that crisis in Chinese is made up of two symbols combining danger and opportunity is not actually true, but it is true nonetheless that a crisis is often a jumbled concoction of opportunity with danger. This is where my alma mater stands.
The crisis is a combustible mixture of dire financial straits and ideological division. On Thursday, April 25, 2013, the president of NIU was summarily fired along with a few others in the administration. This sudden action by the board surprised many and put the faculty, staff, and student body that was largely loyal to the president and his direction in an emotional tailspin. But the dismissal was not necessarily without merit, though many would argue that it was unjust. Matt Olson and his team had been leading NIU on a dangerous journey from narrow fundamentalism to a broader and — in my view — more biblical understanding of Christian fellowship and association. This dangerous route from one narrow constituency to a new and broader constituency was fraught with difficulty and no man, no matter how genius his leadership, could possibly steer through the relational, philosophical, theological, and ideological minefield without something blowing up.
Something blew up. There were managerial mistakes.
And leadership has to own it. The board rightly thought that Dr. Olson and his team had failed in some areas and needed to bear the responsibility for the impending financial crisis and the increasing ire of a fundamentalist constituency. And so, with little warning and questionable process, they canned the president. That was Thursday, April 25.
When there is a void of leadership, leaders step up. Whether they are good or bad leaders is up for grabs, but anyone with any kind of leadership bone in him knows intuitively when there is a leadership void and cannot help but act upon his leadership instinct if he has any kind of interest whatsoever in the matter. There was a rush to fill the void. The cell phone companies love crises like these.
Boiled down, the crisis NIU is in is financial and directional. And it is the directional crisis that is the one that is most controversial and sensitive. Money matters are matters of math; you can either pay for it or you can’t. Directional issues, as in where is the leader taking us, are matters of conviction, theology, culture, tradition, relationships, and ideology. Those who did not like the direction that Dr. Olson had chosen were prepared with a plan to arrest the direction, return the school to its previous form of fundamentalism, and lock in on an ideology of secondary separation and movement-defined associations. (In other words, fundamentalism with a Independent Fundamental Baptist-MBBC-BJU flavor.) Within a week after the surprise firing of the president a candidate was proposed who was deeply entrenched in the network that is fundamentalism. He also happened to be the brother of one of the board members with credentials that would impress cronies, but not be able to stand against the scrutiny of serious examination by people with a mind to protect and rebuild the credibility of the university. He was also available because he didn’t have a job. A golden opportunity.
A quagmire of mixed messages ensued. Though the pretext for the sudden firing of the president was about one of management, the hasty proposal of an unqualified candidate deeply ensconced in a MBBC/BJU/IBC brotherhood was the clear signal of disfavor for the direction that Dr. Olson had taken. Was he being rebuked for his lack of business acumen or was he being given the boot because the direction was not acceptable? Was he being fired for sin with money or was he being relieved of duty for the sins of association? Or both?The faculty and administration along with the student body was in a state of confusion, but not in turmoil. Dr. Olson had displayed remarkable grace and poise in announcing his termination and the board had displayed Christian charity in allowing him to guide the students and staff by being the first to announce the news and setting the tone for a proper, biblical response. On Monday, April 29, Dr. Olson with grace and dignity publicly announced that he had been dismissed and pastorally set the tone for responding appropriately.
These are all brothers. And though there has been failure on all sides, the general timbre of tone has been one of humility. On all sides. In the providence of God I got to see some things from a real close perspective. I was scheduled to preach in chapel on Friday, May 3 and although there had been some suggestions by some on the other side of the argument over direction (the movement-fundemantalists) if I should be allowed to speak, I nonetheless was retained and I did not shirk to do what any leader would do; I made it clear which direction I thought was good for NIU. Thus, though entirely unexpected because I had been scheduled months before, I was able to walk around the campus and feel the atmosphere, speak to key players, pray with people, and shiver in the cold. Most of my conversation was with people directly related to the board, although I did get to spend quality time with Dr. Olson. I appreciate both board and administration and I am impressed by the difficulty of their task. I was able to ask some very direct questions of both board and administration and was moved by the absence of rancor and the candid admission of uncomfortable facts. The board is a humble board and on Friday, May 3 they apologized to the faculty and staff for the process with a sweetness of disposition that brought tears to my eyes. They appealed to brothers and sisters to be patient because we(all of us who care) are in this together.
I do not know how all of this will resolve itself, but I am interested and invested as much as I can possibly be, praying and talking and praying and talking. If you care, do the same. We are all stewards of our influence.
Money aside, the struggle at my alma mater is about the heart and soul of the institution and the direction it has been going. NIU is making some decisions; decisions that they have put on the back burner as long as they can because decisions divide. As Tony Blair said, “to decide is to divide.” Every dad knows this. You’re in the car talking about where to go for lunch and no one can decide, although every one has suggestions and feelings and desires. Everybody says, “I don’t really care. Just choose something.” As soon as dad chooses, “What? Oh, groan! You ALWAYS want to go there.” And so forth. To decide is to divide.
Simplistically put, the division of feelings at NIU is about whether it should continue in the direction it has been going or return to the more narrow confines of movement-fundamentalism with stricter rules, one kind of music, and a much smaller pool of Christian leaders to draw from. You either like the direction away from fundamentalism or you don’t.
But it’s more complicated than that. While many of us like the direction, we are not certain if we like NIU’s destination. I am one alumnus that will exert all my energy and limited influence to help NIU stay on the path that it has been following for the last 25 years and not return to fundamentalism. But whether or not I will lift a finger for NIU in the future remains to be seen. I, like many, wonder where NIU is going. Northland has not only got to decide if they are ready to leave fundamentalism, but they must decide if they are going to be conservative. The slippery slope argument is so effective in these kinds of things because people rightly remember institutions taking these same kinds of steps and then ending up in theological liberalism. Erroneously, they decide that the best argument against changes, therefore, is that changes are slippery slopes toward theological liberalism. This is fallacious reasoning and most critical and honest thinkers reject it. But it is true, nonetheless, that for a fundamentalist school to turn conservative it must make the same initial changes that are necessary if it wants to go liberal. Step one is to get unshackled from movement-fundamentalism and its network of leaders.
And I heartily endorse that step. Will that happen at NIU? This remains to be seen.
I would encourage my fellow alumni to consider two very basic principles as we watch our alma mater decide.
First, fundamentalism is not a guarantor of conservatism; freedom is.
The hot topics surrounding changes from fundamentalism are often centered on cultural issues of dress and music and lifestyle. It is deeply believed that fundamentalism is a guarantor of conservative music, dress, and lifestyle. But this is a superficial belief not borne out by the evidence of history. Furthermore, to be conservative is impossible for someone who does not have the freedom to be liberal. One cannot brag about being thrifty and not spending money if one has no money; he’s just poor. Many fundamentalists are incensed by the claim of some that they are not gospel-centered, but they miss the point. We are not saying that they do not know the gospel, nor are we saying that all evangelicals are gospel-centered. We are not saying that we do not like conservatism in dress, music, and lifestyle. Nor are we merely talking about “the plan of salvation.” What we are saying is that the Good News of the whole counsel of God as revealed in His Word is the exclusive guardian of our radically free souls! If NIU as an institution is to be conservative, it must be free first.
J. Gresham Machen and John Murray and others saw the dangers of movement-fundamentalism and tried to articulate a Christian conservatism that differentiated itself from the movement of fundamentalism. Machen’s classic work, Christianity vs. Liberalism, by the title alone, seems to be an effort to suggest that the alternative to liberalism was not just fundamentalism, but Christianity. Biblical Christianity was another alternative to movement-fundamentalism in response to liberalism, he tried to say. John Murray warned against the dangers inherent in setting standards of holiness as gauges of one’s Christian standing.
“Many … Christians today seek to impose standards of conduct and criteria of holiness that have no warrant from Scripture and that even in some cases cut athwart Scripture principles, precepts and example. The adoption of extra-scriptural rules and regulations have sometimes been made to appear very necessary and even commendable. But we must not judge according to the appearance but judge righteous judgment. Such impositions are an attack upon the sufficiency of Scripture and the holiness of God, for they subtly imply that the standard of holiness God had given us in His Word is not adequate and needs to be supplemented by our additions and importations. When properly analyzed this attitude of mind is gravely wicked. It is an invasion upon our God-given liberty just because it is an invasion upon the sufficiency of the law of God, the perfect law of liberty.It is therefore, appearances to the contrary, a thoroughly antinomian frame of mind.It evinces a lamentable lack of jealousy for the perfection of Scripture and invariably, if not corrected and renounced, leads to an ethical losseness in the matter of express divine commands.In the words of Professor R. B. Kuiper, ‘The man who today forbids what God allows, tomorrow will allow what God forbids.’”~ John Murray
As an alumnus of NIU I firmly believe that the best hope of solid, conservative Gospel fidelity is for NIU to be free. And that is the direction it has pursued up to this point. There are some expressions of their growing freedom that I personally object to, but they are not free to not do debatable things until they are free to do debatable things. A person is not free to be conservative with his money until he is free to spend money. One is not free to choose a more conservative music until he is free to choose a more contemporary music. What is done in freedom is the truest expression of who we are. And I believe that the amazing truth of the Gospel is that we have been set free. All things are lawful to us, though not all things are expedient. But we are not really free to make decisions of expediency on things that are forbidden.
I stand in strong support of NIU’s direction to this point because of the fact that fundamentalism is not a guarantor of conservatism. And I am conservative.
Second, fundamentalism is a movement of sub-movements premised on the untenable doctrine of secondary separation that disproportionately emphasizes separation over the more-emphasized doctrine of the Body of Christ that is revealed in Scripture.
One important component of interpretation is to sense the mood and tenor of the author through his writings. The author’s emphasis is made increasingly clear by repetition, metaphor, and in many other overt and subtle ways. Without doubt, the emphasis of Scripture is that God looks down upon His Church as one people. It is clear that separation is taught and all Christians practice separation to a certain degree. We may argue about the wisdom of certain decisions pertaining to separation and fellowship. We may make mistakes. We may sin. But we cannot legalistically define exactly how that is supposed to look and work in any given context and wrest a few Scripture texts out of the context of the entire emphasis of the Bible to elevate our understanding of separation as the key distinction that separates us from the rest of the Body of Christ. This is sectarianism and that, according to Paul, is a fruit of the flesh. It will result in an extra-biblical categorization of who is in and who is out. And it is impossible to practice consistently despite the creation of a theory called secondary separation.
Secondary separation is wrangled over even by its most ardent practitioners. This past week I asked the board member who was leading the coup to replace Dr. Olson what his concept of secondary separation looked like and he hemmed and hawed, saying that there are “many ways to define it” and essentially gave me no answer. What the four of us heard in that non-answer is, “We’ll practice it the way my good ole-boys want it to be practiced.”
Fundamentalism, despite the best efforts of some very gifted men to say otherwise, is an ideological movement premised on the doctrine of secondary separation. One professor said that fundamentalism is a commendable idea. Whether he is right or not, is irrelevant to the reality that fundamentalism is now more than an idea, it is an ideology of separation that emphasizes secondary separation. Conservatism is an idea; fundamentalism is an ideology. And at the center of that ideology is a devotion to the practice of secondary separation.
No proponent of secondary separation has ever been able to practice it consistently and it has therefore always resulted in sectarianism and cronyism where sub-movements within the movement agree on which inconsistencies they will allow. And they will sniff disapprovingly of the other sub-movements with their alternate variations of secondary separation. Thus, for example, one who has consistently harped that those who fellowship with Southern Baptists should be separated from because of the SBC’s associations with questionable things suddenly ignores this hard fast rule when his protege is both a professor in a SBC school and an elder in a SBC church even though the SBC is still rife with questionable associations. Most everyone in his collective of secondary-separationists take it in stride. It’s politics as usual. Secondary separation, for them, is an adjustable doctrine and malleable by the sheer influence of cronyism.
Northland International University needs to take a Gospel stand against secondary separation if it is ever going to be a solid, conservative school. If NIU is going to be faithful to the fundamentals of our faith and thrive in happy obedience to the full counsel of God in matters of life and practice, it must disentangle itself from fundamentalism. It must also take a practical business stand against cronyism if it is ever to enjoy the fruit of the larger Body of Christ and survive.
Where is NIU going? I am not sure. But I know that it’s direction has been rightly moving it away from the grip of movement-fundamentalism and I support that. Board, administration, alumni, and friends are humbly discussing and earnestly praying. We are not all in agreement on direction, but we are agreement in affection: we love Jesus and we love Northland.
Not all dangerous roads are bad. Perhaps the sleeping giant of NIU’s alumni will be aroused out of its disengagement and receive the institution that first pointed them to the glory of the larger Body of Christ even as long as 25 years ago. And perhaps NIU will find that this dangerous road has led them from the incubator of a movement to the warmth of real home.
And perhaps the danger of this moment will be its greatest opportunity.
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