A letter to my alma mater

It is the essence of love to be sensitive, it is a part of its doom; and anyone who objects to the one must certainly get rid of the other. This sensitiveness, rising sometimes to an almost morbid sensitiveness, was the mark of all great lovers like Dante and all great patriots like Chatham. 'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' No doubt if a decent man's mother took to drink he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be in a state of gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery.(…) For the first of all the marks of love is seriousness: love will not accept sham bulletins or the empty victory of words. It will always esteem the most candid counsellor the best. -G.K. Chesterton (The Defendant, Chapter 16: “A Defense of Patriotism”)

I first read this passage in my Advanced Christian Thought class in high school, and it comes to mind whenever I encounter some pseudo-patriotic variant on the “love it or leave it” theme protesting any criticism of the United States. While my opinion of Chesterton has shifted over the years (he’s an excellent writer, which cleverly disguises the vapidity of many of his arguments), being introduced to his work was only one of the many gifts I was given at my high school. Covenant is my alma mater in the truest sense—there I was encouraged to grow into the earnest overthinker you all know and love, to paint the walls (literally) with the colorful overflowings of my imagination, to think deeply about art and literature, and to look for the movement of God in even the most mundane circumstances.

I love my high school. And because I love it, Chesterton expects me to be its “most candid counsellor.”

Since I graduated in 2004, I have become increasingly conscious that while I had an amazing experience at my school, many LGBTQ students did not. And furthermore, while we were encouraged to discuss many aspects of Christian faith and practice from multiple angles, questions of sexuality and gender were not among them (heck, even the possibility that women could be pastors or equal partners in their own marriages was never honestly explored, which caused me no end of trouble for the first few years of my marriage). It took me years to discover and then independently fill those massive gaps in my understanding of human experience. There are too many stories that can’t fit neatly into the boxes on a table of “the Christian worldview” (in fact, the suggestion that there’s only one “Christian worldview” is laughable).

A large group of alums sent our high school a detailed letter back in August explaining these concerns and other, related problems. I sent my own letter, signed by my husband and his brother who are also alums, and we waited for a response. When it finally came it was underwhelming. Like Chesterton, it was well-written but with little substance. Disappointing, but not surprising. 

So here’s my letter. If nothing else, maybe it will be helpful for someone else who's come to the same sinking realization I did, that the way I had been trained to read the Bible had somehow put me on the wrong side of Augustine of Hippo's admonition that “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”* 

I truly believe that the people who responded to our letters sincerely think they're showing love to their students, but if your students consistently feel marginalized and dehumanized, I suggest you reconsider your definition of "love"—you keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

August 31, 2015
Covenant Christian High School Administration

7525 W 21st Street

Indianapolis, IN 46214

To the board and administration of Covenant Christian High School,

As Covenant alumni who benefitted greatly from our education there, we are writing in support and affirmation of the August 25^th letter from Marianne Richardson et al. Their requested changes to Covenant school policies are necessary for the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of not only Covenant’s LGBTQ students, but all students of every orientation and identity, by better preparing them to be loving, compassionate members of their communities.

Covenant’s core values as listed on the school’s website include

• Loving Community: a joyful pursuit of Christ in faith, hope, love, freedom, grace, and truth. 

• Human Dignity: all persons are created in the image of God and deserve of love and respect. 

• Academic Integrity: passionate, careful, honest, and charitable engagement with ideas.

• Church Solidarity: dedicated to a thriving local and globally diverse community of God.

A community that casts out its own when they fail to live up to expectations is neither loving nor in pursuit of Christ, especially when those who are being cast out are already marginalized by society and at a dramatically increased risk for suicide, homelessness, and assault. Neither does this treatment of these marginalized individuals respect their human dignity as being created in the image of God.

Furthermore, Covenant’s refusal to acknowledge alternate perspectives on human sexuality as held by many faithful biblical Christians gives the lie to both the claims to academic integrity and church solidarity. Currently Covenant cannot honestly claim to envision the “total preparation of the student” because upon graduation, many of us are totally unprepared for and completely flummoxed by the mere existence of ordinary individuals such as an office mate who is both lesbian and Baptist. This represents a failure of Covenant’s model of Christian education, in that not only are LGBTQ students further marginalized by the very people who should have shown them the most radical love and acceptance, but even straight, cis-gendered students are ignorant of the lived experience of faith and sexuality outside Covenant’s walls.

We challenge Covenant to live up to its values—to lovingly embrace all their students in the community of Christ, to respect them as children created in God’s image still learning what it means to live out God’s will for their lives, to welcome generous and respectful debate, and to embrace the whole church even when those diverse limbs and organs of the body of Christ have similarly diverse beliefs about the Christian life.

Erin (Hall) Kissick (Class of 2004)

David Kissick (Class of 2004)

Scott Kissick (Class of 2006)

*(Since I blame Augustine for Western Christianity's unhealthy fixation on sexual sin, I think it's only fair to enlist his support in trying to alleviate some of the symptoms of this pathology.)

(and here's a link to the Google Doc version)