James K.A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin University, has always had a way with words — but with his latest, that clever tongue is forked. Smith, the once darling of neo-Calvinism, thought it wise for his limp wrist to take up pen and go off the Reformed rails. Smith desires that Callvin University unhitch from the Christian Reformed Church because “in 2022, the synod …—the governing body of the denomination—adopted a report on human sexuality which stipulates that ‘homosexual sex’ violates the definition of ‘unchastity’ in the Heidelberg Catechism.” In other words, James K.A. Smith has caved to the spirit of the age and is and advocate of revolution over reformation and synthesis.

For the best responses to Smith check out Thiago M Silva’s Why Calvin University Must Remain Christian Reformed: A Response to James K. A. Smith and Robert J.A. Gagnon’s death-blow to Smith’s capitulation here.

NOTE: This is nothing new from Smith. Where there’s smoke and sulfur theres sodomites and fire. Read the article Prof. James K.A. Smith must be silenced from 2021 from when he posted this gay Tweet:

Other than that, here’s a little roundup across the web and social media in regard to Smith’s recent folly:

From Nelson Kloosterman’s Facebook (his comment to the article Capacious Audacity: In Which I Read that Piece by James K.A. Smith by Anne Kennedey):

I’ve read your essay this morning with deep interest, as an alumnus of Calvin College (now University), as a native of Grand Rapids, and as a departed son of the CRC. Among the reasons that make your essay so insightful is this: few “outsiders” are aware that Calvin’s love/hate relationship with the CRC reaches back for decades, well back to the 1960s. Just as WWII, with the German occupation of the Netherlands, ripped apart the Reformed Christian community in that country, so the revolution of the 60s ripped apart the Reformed Christian community of the CRC in North America. Part of the stimulus for this dissolution came along with the post-war Dutch immigration, especially to Canada. The Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto was a major player.

I’ll share only these two observations.

First, I’ve always been puzzled by the self-adopted mission of the wannabe avant-garde at Calvin (now represented by James K. A. Smith) to drag the CRC out of its benighted blue collar, lunch pail, immigrant-laden ethos. As the CRC (led by academics and clergy) burned the wooden shoes, replaced the lunch pail with the attaché case, selected parts of John Calvin and Abraham Kuyper for their project, and agitated for Calvin’s academic (and now: confessional) freedom while under the ownership of a confessional church, these efforts seemed to reek, not of reformation, but of revolution. (You need to read Guillame Groen van Printerer to catch that allusion.) This deep psychological “wannabe-ism” has led CRC leaders (academics and clergy) largely to abandon the championing of those very distinctives that had garnered the praise of so many “outsiders” in the 1940s and 50s: catechesis in classroom and pulpit, Christian day schools from K-college, Sunday observance, sacrificial generosity, and its out-of-step piety of family worship. Much of this abandonment occurred in the interests of church growth and cultural influence.

Second, in connection with the CRC controversy over women’s ordination, I have personally experienced the outcomes of promised toleration. The foundational premise of such toleration is that Scripture is ambiguous. Once this premise is granted, that ambiguity requires the moral and ecclesial posture of “live and let live.” This outcome paved the way for the current, correlative appeals to tolerate inclusivity and affirmation toward what people euphemistically call “homosexual marriage.” It seems clear that until very recently, the CRC’s deepest problem has been the inability and unwillingness to say, “No!” with the compassionate firmness of the gospel itself. That changed, for the better, with recent synodical decisions. Hence, the James K. A. Smith phenomenon.