Aired on PBS, Linda Midgett's documentary feature examines a controversy that shook Wheaton College in Illinois, a religious university and institution prominent in evangelical circles (the Rev. Billy Graham's alma mater) in late 2015. Reacting to anti-immigrant rhetoric especially targeting Muslims, a tenured scholar, Dr. Larycia Hawkins, posted on her Facebook page a photo of herself wearing a hijab and wrote messages of religious tolerance, equating Christianity with Islam. With presidential candidate Donald Trump filling the media–and ISIS-inspired Muslim terror taking place on US soil–Hawkins' posting brought an immediate social-media backlash, threats, and overt racism. Hawkins was the first black woman academic awarded tenure at Wheaton, a status that meant nothing when the university provost suspended her for a "review" even as she graded final exams. A groundswell of support for Hawkins arose among students and faculty, but she nonetheless parted ways with the college. Filmmaker Midgett delves into the scandal and its aftermath to find a number of Wheaton instructors becoming disillusioned after the affair–although one wonders if similar stories of backstabbing and hypocrisy among the ivy could be told at secular campuses everywhere, especially in an age of toxic internet. Dr. Hawkins is profiled at length and portrayed as no radical bomb-thrower but a thoughtful lady from a minister's family in Oklahoma (in a black neighborhood still subjected to racist graffiti) who did not find sympathy for Islam incompatible with Christianity. In fact, according to others interviewed, medieval Christians viewed early Muslims as a heretical offshoot of the Church, not an embrace of a separate deity altogether. But these ecumenical attitudes have fallen victim to the cultural conflict between "progressive evangelical" thinking and chilly conservatism descending on Wheaton. A rather timely villain turns up in recently disgraced (for the present, anyhow) fundamentalist icon Jerry Falwell Jr.; the point is made that Christian evangelism and the more narrow-minded Christian fundamentalism are not the same thing–though one would require a leap of faith to believe that nowadays. A strong entry for religion and spirituality collections. Aud: H, C, P. (C. Cassady)
Same God
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