A Christian university named after arguably the most famous Protestant reformer in the Reformed Tradition, John Calvin, has become an icon for liberalism. Calvin University, formerly Calvin College, is located in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is associated with the Christian Reformed Church denomination which has its roots in the Netherlands and is largely influenced by the early twentieth-century theologian, Abraham Kuyper.

Today, The Christian Reformed Church is a full-fledged liberal denomination that boasts inclusivity and progressivism throughout its layers of organizational structure, including at Calvin U.

Calvin University is home to a number of student organizations, one of which is Sexuality and Gender Awareness (SAGA). The group boasts that it is “a peer education group of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, plus (LGBT+), and straight students who support each other and educate the campus” and holds yearly events including LGBT workshops in the dorms, “You are Loved Campaign,” and “various speakers including The Gospel Coalition contributor, Mark Yarhouse, on topics connected to sexuality and gender.”

It seems Calvin has lost more than just its Reformed identity on sexuality. The school now boasts teachers who openly support abortion. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a history professor, is searching for loopholes in biblical ethics to justify abortion—this time by questioning how long we have before the soul enters the body, allowing abortion without moral responsibility.

When does the soul enter the body? And how do we understand that? How do we reconcile this theological question or apply this theological question to what we now know in terms of modern science? I mean, what a fascinating theological question and a question that I have not heard asked for at least a generation now, if not more, right?

So the theology around this question has almost not been allowed. And I think that we have an impoverished theological discourse now around this absolutely critical question. And so I would love to be able to go and draw some of those resources from 50, 60 years ago and put them on the table again.

And how do we have these conversations around life and around how we approach this in a pluralist society and how Christians bring their religious views to the table on an issue where people are bringing very different religious and moral understandings of these issues and what has been lost perhaps in pursuing this hardcore political gain and abandoning other modes of discourse and of persuasion.

And this isn’t the first time Du Mez has come out against anti-abortion legislation. Upset at the “radical Evangelicals” who are “gleeful” that the Supreme Court was set to overturn Roe v. Wade at the time, she argued in favor of the historical “pro-choice” position of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The truth is, many Christian women, in fact, many Evangelical women, do procure abortions. And throughout Christian history and throughout Evangelical history, you can see that pre-Roe v. Wade, and actually pre 1970s, lates 70s, and early 80s…there were mixed views on abortion in Evangelical communities.

Very few Evangelicals would celebrate abortion, they certainly weren’t in the “shout your abortion” camp. But there was much more nuance. So 1968, Christianity Today had a special issue on abortion, and uh, the gist of it was it’s really complicated.

And, it’s not a good thing, but it is sometimes a necessary thing in the case of rape, in the case of incest, in the case of the health of the mother, even. And even the Southern Baptist Convention, up until 1976, endorsed a pro-choice platform. So there is a history of seeing abortion as a complex moral issue, and sometimes the lesser of two evils.

Watch: