By Linda Midgett
In a year as combustible and exhausting as 2020, it’s difficult to remember what happened last week, much less five years ago. But in early December 2015, the pot that has since boiled over into breathtaking polarization and cancel culture within evangelicalism and our country was merely simmering. I don’t think many of us knew what was coming. With the exception, perhaps, of Larycia Hawkins.
On the evening of Dec. 10, 2015, Hawkins, a Black, Christian woman, sat down at her computer and made a personal Facebook post. A tenured political science professor at evangelical Wheaton College (my alma mater), Hawkins wanted to reach out to Muslim women, who were increasingly being targeted for hate crimes.
In her post, Hawkins announced her intent to wear a hijab as an act of “embodied solidarity” during Advent, the liturgical season we’re in again now, in which we lament the darkness of this world and await the light of Christ. Quoting Pope Francis, Hawkins added that Muslims and Christians worship the “same God,” the God of Abraham.
Her post went live, and she expected perhaps a few hundred responses. Instead, an agonizing, two-month, public lynching ensued — in the name of theology.