David Timmer

February 19, 1971

``Every Tuesday morning of the school year the Chimes hope to place in the hands of the Calvin students a peppy newspaper chock full of news, views and ideas which will be of interest to all,'' wrote 1946 editor Roberta Timmer in the first issues of the school year. It was the first year for Chimes as a weekly newspaper (it had formerly been a monthly literary magazine), and the paper resembled a hybrid among what we now know as Chimes, an ICB and a junior high Sunday School paper.

The pride and joy of the four-page 1946-47 Chimes was its weekly meditation, contributed by Christian Reformed ministers and pattered somewhat after the Banner's Word-a-Week column. Other features included a gossip column, an occasional political column and ``Kitty Korner,'' ``the first serious attempt to produce a inform cord of conduct and customs among Calvin students.'' An occasional book review and a detailed weekly analysis of the student government constitution were also included.

1946 saw the introduction of compulsory chapel at Calvin college. The system was inauspiciously initiated of the beginning of the year by fiat of President Schultze, and was predicated on the need to accommodate the large numbers of students at chapel. It involved the ``numbers'' system, in which each student gave his number to the usher on entering chapel. Nothing was said about accommodation of the large number of faculty members.

That year also saw downward revision of Calvin's notoriously late eleven o'clock curfew for women. Dean of Women Grace Heckman Bruinsma thanked the women for the ``fine spirit of cooperation'' which they showed in accepting the change.

Apparently, the rule structure at Calvin in 1946 forbade students to drink, to play cards or to attend movies. These rules were supported stoutly by Chimes editorials (which otherwise were more inspirational than substantive in nature), one of which asserted, ``the rules and policies of our school are not an arbitrary set of statues collected by the administration. They are merely the expression of what our people believe to be right and good.''

The headlines in the first issue of the Chimes of 1956 heralded the purchase of the Knollcrest campus. Expansion of the college to Knollcrest was ``being considered.'' Since 1956 was also the year of the Christian Reformed centennial pageant, the idea of a new ``Memorial'' Seminary building at Knollcrest was a hotly debated issue in Chimes, with editor Charles Orlebeke and his staff taking a rather critical view not only of the Seminary building but the entire Centennial Pageant.

Chimes, by this date, had developed into a vigorous and outspoken advocate for the college in an uproar over the extent of faculty control over student publications. At a secret meeting before the 1956 school year, the faculty had debated the issue (no students were present, but a faculty member ``represented'' the student position).

Jazzing It Up

The Chimes writers were opinionated and aggressive in expressing their views; the letter column was crowded with replies from student. Chimes became an issue in the denomination at large when an editorial entitled ``God or Baal,'' which attacked heresy-hunters and schismatics, was blasted in the Torch and Trumpet as lacking in ``doctrinal sensitivity.''

The paper took a rather ambiguous position in the Eisenhower-Stevenson race, supporting the Republican party, but not without qualifications. After the elections in November, there was little comment on the national political scene.

Perhaps the biggest controversy of the year concerned the banning of a post-game performance by a student Dixieland jazz band. Dean Philip Lucasse gave two reasons for the decision by the college administrative council: a lack of familiarity (and therefore of potential appreciation) by Calvin students with jazz; and the possibility that the music might ``induce a lowering of normal restraint.'' Jazz lovers at Calvin, including assistant Chimes editor Dirk Jellema, reacted indignantly; music editor Leon Plantinga wrote a rather stuffy feature defending the decision and deprecating jazz as maudlin, coarse and simplistic.

Apparently, restrictions had been lifted on card-playing and theatre attendance by this time, but that did not prevent one annoyed letter writer from complaining about the number of students and professors who wasted time and money on these worldly frivolities.

A later April issue of Chimes carried a rather abstruse editorial by Jellema, whch mixed free grammatical techniques, Marxian social analysis and a certain theological desperation to produce an intensely personal statement. The editorial was criticized mainly on linguistic grounds, and Jellema responded with an editorial praising the joys and dangers of Spring, in simple, but complete sentences.

Chimes book reviewers analyzed not only books published within ``our circles,'' but also dealt with major American and European authors. There were, however, no movies reviewed, or even mentioned in 1956.

In 1965, however, Calvin Film Council presentations were advertised in front-page headlines. The Film Council presentations included Truffaut's The 400 Blows, Kazan's On the Waterfront, Bunuel's Viridiana, and Bergman's Through A Glass Darkly. Such freedom of viewing was not come by easily, however. Just one year previously On the Waterfront had been banned from campus by a faculty committee, and two years earlier, two successive Chimes editors had been censures for taking too many liberties in defense of the film arts.

Concern for national and international issues was far more evident in the pages of Chimes than it had been during the 1950s. Dissent over Vietnam had finally reached Calvin's campus, and a series of panel discussions, editorial and letters dealt with politics, protest and the possibilities of civil disobedience.

Theological discussion also filled the pages of Chimes, via editorials and letters. Calvin student vied with each other in the rather confused expression of increasingly complex and adventurous theological positions, dealing mainly with the relationship between faith and works and the value of systematic theology.

This current combined with a student reaction to the recurring criticisms directed against the college by fundamentalist Carl McIntire, who had created a furor in the church the year before by coming to Grand Rapids to defend himself against attacks by Calvin professors in the Reformed Journal. The result was an editorial entitled ``The Great Gap,'' written by Chimes news editor John Lagerwey.

In ``The Great Gap,'' Lagerwey contended that absorption with systematic theology had reduced the church to ``theological fence-tending'' of a set of propositions ``straight-jacketed by remote abstractions, each with its own parcel of proof-texts.'' As a result, he said, ``our moral behavior has become legalistica and fundamentalistic.''

What were we to do about this situation? Lagerwey proposed five steps for revitalizing theology and the church. The first was, of course, to rid ourselves of abstract systematic theology, ``and start theologizing all over again,'' with an open-ended biblical theology. Next, he proposed that we take a new view of the nature of biblical authority, one which would take account of varying Old Testament conceptions of God, for example, without rationalizing or ignoring them. The church, he contended, had not made use of the best tools available for reading scripture. ``We need not be dishonest scholars to believe in Christ.''

Lagerway then called for an end to heresy-hunting in the church, and a rebirth of tolerance and ecumenicity. ``There is no such thing as heresy. There are only Christians and non-Christians.'' He pleaded with the Christian Reformed Church to end its Pharisaical multiplication of the Ten Commandments, emphasizing the Reformation doctrine of Christian freedom. Finally, he appealed to Christains to resurrect their belief in miracles, in the power of love and of the Spirit of God. ``We believe in miracles, we say, but only those that Christ and the prophets did. We say we believe in the power of love, but we tote guns from Domingo to Danang just in cade love doesn't work... Did the outpouring of God's grace end with Paul, or are we afraid of what the spirit might say in the twentieth century?''

``The gospel, when not shrunk to fit a theological strait-jacket, is as gigantic a revolutionary force as ever,'' Lagerway concluded: ``Its ethic of love clears away the rubble of Do's and don'ts, spoofs fear, brings peace.''

Reaction to the editorial was swift and terrible. No sooner did Chime shit the newsstand than it was collected and withheld from further distribution by the administration. An emergency meeting of the Student Publications Committee, consisting of three faculty members and four students, was called to consider the matter. They decided that the editor and the writer had ``not only violated the College regulations regarding student publications, but have given occasion for many people to cast doubt on the theological stance of the denomination and the college.'' Asserting that the editorial had violated the ``responsible freedom'' policy governing student publications, apparently by not exhibiting ``a living and thoughtful reformed and Christian perspective of life,'' not being ``consistent with a loyalty to scripture,'' and by being ``morally and religiously offensive,'' the Committee condemned the editorial, repudiated its substance and its spirit, demoted the author of the editorial to the status of writer, and ordered the editor to print the Committee's statement and an appropriate apology.

Editor VanEldern apologized, and then went on to qualify this apology at length; he was apologizing for the fact that certain people took offense, he maintained, and not for the content of the editorial, which he proceeded to re-assert and re-explain. Assistant editor Thomas Hoeksema discussed the ``responsible freedom'' policy, concluding that ``Chimes is free like a guppy in a goldfish bowl.'' Associate editor Mark Wagenveld wrote an editorial about the Form of Subscription and doctrinal rigidity in the church, posing the question, ``Is keeping one's mouth shut the price of church membership?''

Despite the furor over ``The Great Gap,'' the 1965-66 school year was judged to be an excellent year for Chimes. The paper won several award in a statewide college journalism contest, including one for an expose of extensive corruption in the chapel ``numbers'' system. An informal Chimes poll revealed that more than one-half of the ``chapel checkers'' were engaging in dishonest checking practices. The news story was followed by an editorial with proposed the repealing of the compulsory chapel system.

Off the Leash

Obviously, Chimes has changed radically since its inception twenty-five years ago. The days of the bulletin-board format and paternal tone are over, as are the days of the front-page sports story and prior censorship. Under an admirable and progressive ``free student press'' policy, Chimes has been allowed to develop into a potentially effective and exciting journal of student opinion. The problem seems to be, if the history of Chimes in the sixties is any indication, that student editors are under the impression that they actually do have free rein, not always realizing that such matters as public relations with the denomination, theological intransigence, and ecclesiastical sacred cows impose de facto limits on a free student press, limits other than the editor's own discretion and Christian commitment. Even editors who may have known that these limits existed had no real way of knowing where the end of the leash was.

The Calvin administration in the past ten years has given evidence of the difficulties involved in balancing two contrary interests. On the one hand, there is a real desire to maintain officially, if not always in practice, the concept of student press freedom. On the other hand, considerations of denominational politics and theological orthodoxy have often outweighed that desire. All of the recurring Chimes ``busts'' of the sixties involved these unofficial considerations in more or less blatant degrees.