Wheaton College Responds to Questions Regarding Associate University Status with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation
WHEATON, Ill., Dec. 7, 2010 /
Christian Newswire/ -- Last week, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and Wheaton College announced that Wheaton has accepted the designation of Associate University status with the Faith and Globalization Initiative of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
Blair, formerly prime minister of the United Kingdom, started the Foundation to promote respect and understanding between the world's major religions, for purposes of collaboration on serious humanitarian challenges, and to present faith as a force for good in the modern world. As part of the initiative, Wheaton professors will teach a course on Faith and Globalization from the perspective of Christian faith.
Wheaton's
announcement of the designation spoke of the importance of the College's distinctively evangelical identity.
"As an institution of higher learning with a firm identity grounded in evangelical Christian faith, we align with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's quest to promote interfaith collaboration in addressing significant problems of human suffering such as malaria and extreme poverty, and to promote interfaith literacy and civility," said Wheaton College Provost Dr. Stanton Jones. "Efforts toward such ends contribute to the common good of humanity and serve to advance religious liberty, outcomes we passionately support."
Before accepting the designation, Wheaton spoke to the Foundation regarding the College's commitment to the exclusive claims of the gospel. We are, and remain, a community of committed evangelicals who affirm the unique truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and embrace our calling, out of love for others, to bear testimony to this truth. As our
Community Covenant states, we are committed to giving faithful witness to the gospel (Acts 1:8; 1 Pet. 3:15), practicing good works toward all (Gal. 6:10; Eph. 2:10; Heb. 10:24; 1 Pet. 2:11), and living lives of prayer and thanksgiving (1 Thess. 5:17-18; James 5:16; Titus 2:7-8).
We believe our commitment to practicing good works includes addressing poverty and disease. Our belief in the value of all human beings as made in the image of God grounds both our affirmation of the importance of religious liberty, which frees individuals to worship according to the dictates of individual conscience, and also our commitment to civility and respect when engaging individuals of other faith traditions.
Together, these distinctives lead us to affirm the value of collaborating in interfaith action toward remediation of pressing human concerns with persons of all faiths, even while our faith would lead us to seek to couple good works with testimony to faith in Christ. Our belief in common grace leads to our agreement, with Francis Schaeffer and other major evangelical leaders, that as committed Christians, we can participate in "co-belligerency": the fight against a common enemy, such as poverty or disease, with those who do not share our theology and may not be our allies on other issues.
We will not waver from our commitment to absolute truth, exclusive salvation through Christ, or the importance of verbal witness to these truths. Recognizing that these claims conflict with the claims of other religions, and that people of goodwill recognize these disagreements, we also affirm that such disagreements do not preclude engagement, civility, and cooperation toward good ends.
Wheaton College (Wheaton, Ill.) is a coeducational Christian liberal arts college noted for its rigorous academics, integration of faith and learning, and consistent ranking among the top liberal arts colleges in the country.
