Wheaton Professor Finds a Fashionable Solidarity
December 14, 2015
A political science professor at Wheaton College is proudly donning a hijab during the Christmas season to demonstrate her “solidarity with Muslims.” One expects to see such nonsense at secular universities. But at the “Christian Harvard”? Say it ain’t so!
Anyway, while I’m not impressed with Professor Hawkins’ hijab as a fashion statement, I’m even less impressed with her theology. This wouldn’t matter at, say, UCLA or University of Michigan. It would still be stupid, mind you. But this being Wheaton, it is yet another reason why I encourage parents, with very few exceptions, to not send their children to so-called Christian universities. Most of them are not so interested in maintaining anything resembling biblical Christianity as they are in gaining respectability in the world. That will always be a losing proposition for any institution which is not ready to abandon such beliefs as Jesus’ virgin birth, atoning death, and physical resurrection.
An article in the Christian Post records several juicy pieces of wisdom from Professor Hawkins:
"I don't love my Muslim neighbor because s/he is American. I love my Muslim neighbor because s/he deserves love by virtue of her/his human dignity," Hawkins wrote. "I stand in human solidarity with my Muslim neighbor because we are formed of the same primordial clay, descendants of the same cradle of humankind — a cave in Sterkfontein, South Africa that I had the privilege to descend into to plumb the depths of our common humanity in 2014."Hawkins, who has been on the Wheaton faculty since 2007, further asserted that not only are Muslims her neighbors but they also "worship the same God.""I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God," Hawkins stated. "But as I tell my students, theoretical solidarity is not solidarity at all. Thus, beginning tonight, my solidarity has become embodied solidarity.""As part of my Advent Worship, I will wear the hijab to work at Wheaton College, to play in Chi-town, in the airport and on the airplane to my home state that initiated one of the first anti-Sharia laws (read: unconstitutional and Islamophobic), and at church," she added.
I cannot help but wonder at how someone who writes such drivel can be employed as a professor at an institution of higher learning. But it is worse than that. Her intellectual inconsistency (or dishonesty) is stunning. Only a privileged member of the American Left could conclude that loosely draping a colorful scarf over her hair constitutes “embodied solidarity” with Muslim women. I wonder if Professor Hawkins’ “embodied solidarity” will extend to giving up her rights to drive, vote, appear in public without a male family member, and having her testimony in a court of law rendered unreliable? After all, she apparently has a soft spot for Sharia.
Wheaton College seems to be living off the borrowed capital of its past; the place Billy Graham and Jim Eliot attended. But all indications are that Wheaton is no longer a stalwart of evangelical convictions. Employing professors who promote the jihadi sympathizing CAIR and believe and proclaim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is a bit problematic to that reputation.
