Talk:Gordon College (Massachusetts)

POV

This article reads like an advertisement and most of the information seems directly lifted from the Gordon College website. I'm going to label it POV. Please try to make this article objective and try to find more sources for information. -Fearfulsymmetry 16:35, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Also added cleanup tag. -Fearfulsymmetry 19:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Even as a Gordon graduate and proponent of the school, I'm inclined to agree. It reads more like a brochure than an encyclopedia article. -Andrew 23:28, 31 January 2007

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BetacommandBot 06:53, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thomas Howard was not Fired

An anonymous user added this sentence to the article:

The college gained some notoriety in the mid-1980s, when faculty member Thomas Howard was "obliged to resign" after converting to Catholicism.

While the statement does have a supporting reference (from a Gordon professor, no less), it's worded in a misleading fashion that implies that Gordon ousted Howard. Thomas Howard resigned on his own initiative and openly admits this. He was "obliged to resign" because as a Roman Catholic, he no longer believed in the college's mission - Gordon is a non-denominational college that embraces all Christians, while the Roman Catholic Church is an exclusive, sectarian institution that claims to be the "one true Church" and that all other Christian traditions are in rebellion against the authority of the Pope. It's unfair to paint the college as prejudiced because a professor who believes the college has no right to exist unless it turns over its property and endowment to the local Catholic bishop decides that he can't teach there. For what it's worth, Thomas Howard wrote a book called "Evangelical Is Not Enough" where he admits that he converted to the Roman Catholic Church mainly because he liked it from an aesthetic perspective (Howard was an English prof), and that he picked the Catholic Church over the Orthodox Church simply because he was a Western Christian and no real insight into which of the two competing "one true Churches" really was the "one true Church." --ManicBrit (talk) 00:37, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll chime in here. Remember that encyclopedias, and Wikipedia in particular, focus on the verifiable. Removing sourced statements is most definitely frowned upon. So, what did that source say? You may have a more nuanced view, but verifiable sources take precedence. And original research may quickly become an issue here, so let's be sure to avoid that, as well. Here are my questions: 1) was the source a RS and 2) was it really quoted? --inquietudeofcharacter (talk) 16:42, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

So I just looked at the source -- it's definitely written with the idea that some professors at evangelical colleges are being obliged by the colleges themselves. I'm curious about the perspective that "this isn't Gordon College's fault -- the Roman Catholic Church is exclusive and Thomas Howard resigned for that reason" (at least that's how I'm reading what otherwise seems like a non sequitur comment about an "exclusive, sectarian institution"). A search for Thomas Howard + Gordon College also produces this blog post, which includes some interesting primary source material that would back up the perspective of the RS used in the article. --inquietudeofcharacter (talk) 16:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I know how busy we can all get but I haven't seen a reply in a couple of days. Either way, though, the sources seem to support the original phrasing. Will revert, since it used a reliable source. --inquietudeofcharacter (talk) 22:16, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

It seems I must have hit the "preview" button instead of the "save page" button. I know I did reply. But no matter.

Thomas Howard resigned from Gordon College because he no longer believed in its vision, and right before he handed in his resignation he published a full-length book disparaging the college's religious underpinnings, going as far as saying that evangelicals weren't part of "the Church," that their style of worship was a travesty, and that they needed to re-institute an episcopal church government and adopt belief in Transubstantiation - and that was the book's FIRST edition. In the second edition, he wrote that they all needed to join the Roman Catholic Church. This is not "original research." I have a copy of Howard's "Evangelical is Not Enough" in a box in my attic, and if it's an issue, I'll gladly spend half an hour looking for it and produce verbatim quotes. I'm sure that any college has numerous instances of professors resigning - sometimes being prodded to resign, or outright fired - because they turned against their institution's mission and said inflammatory things about their institutions and philosophies. Few if any of these instances are worthy of note in encyclopedia articles about these institutions.

The way it's worded in the article - that Gordon "gained notoriety" after it "obliged" Howard to resign - makes it sound like Gordon was a nasty, bigoted, Bob-Jones-University-esque institution that fired Howard due to anti-Catholic bigotry. This is also a rather short article about Gordon, and the bit about Howard is an odd rhetorical turn that inflates this minor HR incident into a defining black mark against the institution. This is strange, considering that Gordon is a college that's refused to bow to the Religious Right, admitted the likely truth of evolution, allowed gay activists to present their side of the story to students, and even allowed Thomas Howard back on campus on several occasions to present Catholic apologetics to the students. So we have a college that has its detractors in the evangelical community for being "too liberal" being presented here on Wikipedia as an intolerant, bigoted fundamentalist college. Of course, some enterprising Gordon staffer or student might decide to post more about the Howard affair in the Wikipedia article - noting what Howard had written, his commitment to being a Catholic evangelist devoted to converting evangelicals to the "true faith," and the reasons why this conflicts with the college's multi-denominational vision...but I hardly think this would add to the encyclopedia quality of the article. Of course, they might also decide to share some of these factoids with you via a letter from their lawyers.--ManicBrit (talk) 23:13, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Hey, that's all great stuff, but it needs to be properly placed. Go to Thomas Howard (writer and scholar) and add all that stuff in there. You can then go more in-depth about Howard's particular views and link to that article from this article (this isn't the place for being extra particular about Howard, only his relationship to Gordon as a former faculty member). And what I've read thus far makes this sound like more than a "minor HR incident" (that one article about Wheaton is about Catholics at evangelical colleges, and saw fit to reference Howard's departure from Gordon) and I don't think it's a "black mark against the institution" at all -- see, that's a concern about the reputation of the college, while we aim to simply be factual about such matters here at Wikipedia. Let me pose a question: is including data on Catholic University of America that says it has one of the largest (perhaps the largest -- I can't recall) black-white graduation rate gap of all the institutions of higher education in the United States about having a "black mark" against Catholic University? Not at all! It's merely a question of reliable sources and verifiability. No matter how you think this particular statement "makes it sound", it appears to use a direct quote from a reliable source. Frankly (and I hope I'm not being too frank but just clear enough to make the point that needs to be made here), how you think it sounds doesn't matter as much here -- Wikipedia has broader guidelines (WP:V in this case) than your opinion (or mine, for that matter). Deleting sourced information along with references because you don't like how it "sounds" to you certainly isn't what we're going for here. That being said (I really hope I wasn't too harsh!), your opinion is still valued, for sure -- if you can find a way to word it without pushing POV, and sticking to the sources, then feel free to do so! So, to recap: concerns about "how it sounds" and a "black mark on the institution" aren't nearly as relevant here as what Wikipedia's says about verifiability not truth. --inquietudeofcharacter (talk) 01:32, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I hardly think that saying Gordon College "gained notoriety," which means "ill-repute" according to dictionary.com, is an accurate statement. Gained a bad reputation with who? That's quite a value judgment, and the cited source doesn't say anything about Gordon getting a bad reputation - it just poses the question of whether evangelical colleges can have faculty members who are Christian but from traditions hostile to evangelicalism.

But in the constructive spirit, I'm going to add a section of "notable faculty" and put Howard there, with his story worded in a more neutral and accurate way.--ManicBrit (talk) 01:08, 19 June 2010 (UTC)