Let your light shine—in secret

One of children’s favorite Sunday school songs is “I’m Gonna Let It Shine.” It has a catchy tune and at one point invites children to blow instead of singing the word “blow.” The song is even Biblical. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

The downside of Christians letting their light shine has become evident to those following the peculiar case of Wheaton College and its alumnus in the news, Russell Vought. In response to Vought’s appointment as director of the Office of Management and Budget, one of Wheaton’s social media accounts expressed congratulations and encouraged prayer.

The message went viral thanks to a letter that over 1,500 graduates signed and distributed online. Signers took exception to Vought’s hand in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” and implored Christians to reject the “Temptation of Totalitarianism.” Instead of shining light on the Trump appointment, the letter started a controversy that, according to Emma Green at The New Yorker, escalated from “a small dustup” to a “full-on war that reached far beyond Wheaton’s students and alumni.”

Wheaton’s decision to take down its tweet provoked Daniel Davis, a 2014 grad, to fault the college for lacking a spine. In a piece at First Things, Davis complained that, when faced with a mob, Wheaton bowed “the knee” and took “the path of least resistance.” By refusing to “orient the college against the most toxic ideologies of our time,” Wheaton was also unprepared to defend the unpopular message of the gospel.

This is not the first time in recent memory that Wheaton’s administration has had to navigate disgruntled alumni, faculty, or students in its public postures. In 2007 Wheaton opened the Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy. But allegations of sexual misconduct by the former speaker of the House forced the college to remove the congressman’s name from the center even as courts adjudicated the charges.

In 2015, Wheaton endured another controversy. This time, Larycia Hawkins, the college’s first tenured black professor (politics), posted on Facebook a photo of herself wearing a hijab to indicate solidarity with Muslims. Criticism of the college from alumni and donors led the administration to place Hawkins on leave. She resigned a year later.

Even more recently, the college received sustained criticism for a report on racism that led to the removal of J. Oliver Buswell’s name from the college library. The former president had advised against admitting a black female to the college. The report concluded Buswell was guilty of racism and recommended the erasure of his name. For some alumni, the college had again capitulated to political correctness.

Former and current faculty have defended the college. Alan Jacobs, now at Baylor University, believes that Wheaton made mistakes but sees those mistakes as part of a growing process as the college moves out of its white, middle-class bubble into a “truly global” evangelicalism. Timothy Larsen, a current faculty member, asserts the college is still vibrant religiously and free from ideological bias.

By using Wheaton’s piety to defend the school, however, Jacobs and Larsen miss how evangelicalism contributes to the college’s dilemma. By shining its light on current affairs, evangelical institutions attempt to prove genuine Christianity makes a difference. This spiritual instinct goes beyond the natural inclination of colleges to call attention to successes among their members. Evangelical colleges combine institutional promotion with giving glory to God.

Drawing attention to graduates or faculty is especially tricky when campus politics are running left while born-again Protestants are largely right of center. When the calls of activists are humanitarian, egalitarian, and rooted in justice, evangelical faculty and students invariably want to link faith in Jesus to a worthy cause. Current options for signally sanctity for conservative policies is obviously not popular. Imagine invoking Jesus to support funding for police and prisons.

Evidence of the evangelical academy’s left-leaning bias is evident in the alumni letter that found fault with Vought. Wheaton alumni concluded that Project 2025 marginalized the vulnerable. Vought appeared to condone policies that went “far beyond humanitarian restrictions on abortion, by limiting access to contraception, daycare, and medical interventions for life-threatening pregnancies; prioritizing surveillance and control of women in crisis situations.” Many of these bullet points are close to the rhetoric of Planned Parenthood but among Wheaton’s graduates they come with prooftexts—“1 John 4:18, Luke 8:43-48, Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalms 46:1-3, John 14:27, Isaiah 41:13.” Although not an official Wheaton statement, the letter uses the Bible to justify contested policies.

The college followed a similar path in its report on institutional racism. Although an investigation of race relations, the report followed standard academic practice by including several land acknowledgments. “We lament,” that college property was still claimed to be owned by “the Lakota people.” In contrast, Scripture (“Ps. 32:5; Ps. 38:18; Ps. 102; Ps. 142; Jer. 14:20; Jas. 5:16; 1 John 1:9”) calls for “corporate repentance and lamentation ... when sin or injustice is present.” The University of Illinois might issue a similar land acknowledgement, but it comes without Wheaton’s appeal to Scripture. (Neither institution has returned land to native peoples.)

Wheaton has two ways out of this predicament. One is to follow the example of Harvard University and refuse to issue statements about politics. In a report on campus protests, Harvard declared that the “core function” of the university was “seeking truth through open inquiry, debate, and weighing the evidence.” Issues not germane to the university’s core mission should not obscure the institution’s first order tasks. For that reason, an institution of higher learning should not “issue official statements about public matters.”

The other way to avoid controversial publicity is to follow another part of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus repeatedly warned followers against public displays of piety. When you give to the needy, when you pray, when you fast, Jesus counseled, do so in secret so that you “may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret.” God sees deeds done in private and rewards accordingly (Matthew 6:1-17).

How to reconcile light shining and secret good works is not obvious. But surely Jesus says enough about the danger of sanctity signaling to give evangelicals pause before lining up their faith with the “current thing.”