College suspends professor who said Muslims and Christians worship the same god

Dr. Larycia Hawkins

Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in Illinois, has placed a professor on administrative leave after she posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.” The official school statement Tuesday about associate professor of political science Larycia Hawkins’s suspension said Wheaton professors should “engage in and speak about public issues in ways that faithfully represent the College’s evangelical Statement of Faith.”
Following a protest and sit-in of about 100 people Wednesday afternoon on campus, President Philip Ryken and later Provost Stanton Jones said they would not be lifting the suspension. It wasn’t clear how long Hawkins was suspended for, but some of the student leaders who had been involved in talks with administrators said it was through the spring semester. Protesters chanted “Reinstate Doc Hawk,” “We love Wheaton!” and some evangelical women wore hijabs in solidarity.

In her Dec. 10 Facebook post, Hawkins was also wearing a hijab, explaining she planned to do so through the entire Christian season of Advent to show “human solidarity” with Muslims. She didn’t state why in her piece and did not return requests for comment to The Washington Post, but this fall has seen anti-Islam rhetoric rise sharply in the public square, including by GOP presidential candidates. Hundreds of people liked her post and more praised her intensely in comments.
“I stand in human solidarity with my Muslim neighbour because we are formed of the same primordial clay, descendants of the same cradle of humankind,” she wrote. “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book … But as I tell my students, theoretical solidarity is not solidarity at all. Thus, beginning tonight, my solidarity has become embodied solidarity.”
She linked to a Christianity Today interview with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf on the topic. In the piece, Volf said that “all Christians don’t worship the same God, and all Muslims don’t worship the same God. But I think that Muslims and Christians who embrace the normative traditions of their faith refer to the same object, to the same Being, when they pray, when they worship, when they talk about God. The reference is the same. The description of God is partly different.”

Source: The Washington Post