Wheaton College Gets Larycia Hawkins to Walk Away from Her Job and Controversy

CHICAGO, IL — The professor who said Christians and Muslims worship the same God and the college president who tried to fire her for saying so appeared together in Chicago Wednesday to announce their reconciliation and their parting of ways.

Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science, will leave Wheaton College after eight years of teaching. And President Philip Ryken will create an endowed scholarship in her name for interns to conduct summertime peace and conflict studies.

The other terms of their agreement which ends the administration’s bid to fire her are confidential.

The controversy, which began in December as Hawkins responded to a question about why she was wearing a hijab in a demonstration of solidarity with Muslim women, stirred emotions, opinions, and protests among students and faculty at the evangelical Christian school and gained nationwide attention.

This is what she wrote in a Dec. 10 Facebook post:

“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God. As part of my Advent Worship, I will wear the hijab to work at Wheaton College, to play in Chi-town, in the airport and on the airplane to my home state that initiated one of the first anti-Sharia laws (read: unconstitutional and Islamophobic), and at church.”

Even as Hawkins and Ryken came together in Chicago to announce their agreement in person, a demonstration was taking place back on the Wheaton College campus where a group of students and faculty were calling for a nationwide fast to “confess and repent of the sins of racism, sexism and Islamophobia, and recognize that all humans have dignity and are created equal in the eyes of God.”

At issue for Ryken was the nature of God as viewed by Christians and Muslims, and the view of God as expressed in the school’s statement of faith, and that’s why he moved so resolutely to fire Hawkins for her words over the objections of students, other religious leaders, and the faculty senate.

On Wednesday, the college president struck a different tone.

“We are moving on in genuine friendship,” Ryken said at the press conference, and “trusting in this campus to restore what’s been lost and broken.”

He offered words of praise for Hawkins and her “sincere faith in Jesus Christ.”

“We want to learn everything that we can from this situation,” Ryken said. “We hope to become a better, stronger community with a shared understanding of academic freedom in the context of Christian convictions.”

Hawkins said this episode has been painful and difficult for her. At one point, she rejected a proposal that would have allowed her back at the school but without tenure.

“When you wake up in the midst of what seems like a dark night of the soul, with a song in your heart, you have something in you, something you can scarcely believe yourself, because the world didn’t give it to you and the world can’t take it away,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins was the last of six people to speak at the press conference, which took place at First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple. About two dozen interfaith clergy, alumni and faculty were in attendance, according to ReligionNews.com.

On Saturday, Wheaton College released a joint statement announcing Hawkins and the school had come to an agreement and would explain the agreement at Wednesday’s press conference.

A teary Hawkins took the opportunity to thank her students.

“Just because I walk away from Wheaton College doesn’t mean I walk away from them,” she said.