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In summer 2019, after Jim Gash had been selected to become the eighth president of Pepperdine, at a meeting he held with the Natural Science faculty, I asked what kind of Christianity Pepperdine would embrace during his administration. He gave two answers. One was short: “the Jesus kind, I hope.” The longer one addressed the broader context of Christian higher education: every institution that had maintained its Christian identity, he said, had done so either by having an official statement of doctrine or by keeping close ties with a particular Christian denomination. Because Pepperdine did not have an official doctrinal statement beyond the 1999 Affirmation Statement—and I believe he said at the time that it would not have such a statement, although my memory of that is less certain—it would retain its affiliation with the Churches of Christ. Certainly it was universally understood by the faculty here that no institutional doctrine would be implemented, until now.
By releasing “Pepperdine Believes,” the university has failed to live up to either answer to my question.
The Churches of Christ famously have the distinctive characteristic of not using creeds. Growing up in a Church of Christ congregation, I absorbed the message that not only were creeds unnecessary, they could be divisive. Indeed, the history of the ancient church creeds was contentious and political as well as theological. They were used to winnow out heretics and to declare a winner among rival factions. For adherents of the Restoration Movement, with its emphasis on unity among Christians, creeds were marks of a splintered church and should be shunned.
Among the responses to the “frequently-asked questions” is the claim that “Pepperdine Believes” is not a creed, because it is not being used as a test for church fellowship, and because Pepperdine is not a church. But a creed (from “credo,” which means “I believe”) is a statement of personal or corporate belief, which is precisely what this document is, even in name. In structure and in loose phrasing, it echoes the historic creeds along with some of the later confessions, while denying its debt to them. And despite the administration’s claim that this creed is intended to provide unity, it can and will be used to divide and winnow.
So much for the university upholding the traditions of the Churches of Christ. What about displaying a Jesus kind of Christianity?
The final and longest section of “Pepperdine Believes” is called “Christ-Like Living.” At that point, the document is no longer about circumscribing doctrine, but behavior. This section enumerates many laudable virtues, collated from lists in Micah, Galatians, the Pentateuch, and the Gospels.
Then this ugly and incongruous sentence rears its head: “We affirm historic, orthodox Christian beliefs about human sexuality.” That sentence has no place in a discussion of “Christ-like living.” It is a salvo by one group of Christians against another, as evidenced by its expansive footnote and its foregrounding of a policy that heretofore has been confined to the Student Code of Conduct. Jesus had nothing to say about homosexuality or same-sex marriage. As far as we know, he was not himself married. But he did have words for those who would set themselves up in positions of power and establish purity tests for God’s people. He called them whitewashed sepulchers, and he pronounced woe upon them for placing heavy burdens on the shoulders of others.
The Pepperdine community would do well to repudiate the statement “Pepperdine Believes” and to embrace a kind of Christianity that truly seeks to live and act as Jesus did, raising up the lowly, healing the brokenhearted, freeing the captive and the oppressed, that we may all be one.
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Contact Joshua P. Bowman via email: joshua.bowman@pepperdine.edu