Politics: The Christian Way

This New York Times item about a journalist at a small Christian college in Georgia goes a long way to explaining the rocky relationship some Christians have with their own faiths.

Joel Elliott, a student at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, discovered that the University's president, Donald O. Young, doesn't have the master's degree he claims on his resume.

Elliott confronted the president in an interview, and the president told him that it was a mistake that the degree was on his resume. Everybody knew that he didn't have an advanced degree, Young said.

The reporter then asked a trustee, who said the mistake wasn't common knowledge, and that Young wouldn't have made the first cut without an advanced degree. This story ends well: the reporter writes his story, there is a little stuggle, but the president resigns his post.

The rub comes in the Times' interview with the David G. Reese, the academic dean of the school, who serves as its spokesman. Read his preachy, derisive remarks:

But not everyone on campus is so approving. Dr. Reese, for example, says that Mr. Elliott found himself at a fork in the road between the Christian way and the way of a newspaperman, and chose newspaperman. "The prescription that Jesus gives us in the Gospel of Matthew if we find someone overtaken in a sin, or who has wronged us, is to go to them, privately, and if they recognize it and show a readiness to make it right, you've accomplished your mission," Dr. Reese said. "Joel's view was that it would all be swept under the rug. That is a choice he had to make."

He added: "As a Christian, I feel it could have been better handled."

It betrays some of the invisibility and self-delusion that permeates religion. Many are taught that religion revolves around the simple concept of faith, a belief in something of which you have no proof. But this wasn't a question of deciding between the Christian way and some other way. And there was no crisis of faith. Even by Reese's own standards, the young journalist passed the test created in the bible scripture so self-righteously quoted above. He privately went to the president and got snowed.

That he can impugn the motives of a reporter who bucks the leadership of his school by telling the truth is startling to me. That telling the truth, and defying a liar who had deceived the whole community, should be regarded as something other than the Christian thing is unthinkable.

Joel Elliott confesses at the end of the piece to be struggling a little with his beliefs and the rocky time he had addressing this story. If I could send him my words, I would tell him that in terms of faith, his commitment to the truth is part and parcel of that faith. Truth is the elusive chimera that journalists are constantly seeking. And believing in your religious denomination or your fellow man all require leaps of faith. This young journalist took a leap, landed hard on the truth and now has a new perspective. And no preaching false interpretations of scripture can change that now.