Wheaton College held its first dance tonight. This really is a lot of excitement over nothing. I understand that to the media it’s a great human interest story. It’s such a novelty, I know, that here’s this backward college that has prohibited dancing for so long and is now getting with the times. Of course, there are alumni, parents, and other Christians that are denouncing this as an example of Wheaton’s slow decline into liberalism. Frankly, both groups are simply wrong.

The policy was put into place at a time when dancing carried with it a taboo among evangelicals that is no longer widely held. There was a time when card playing, co-ed swimming, movies, and a whole host of otherwise generally innocent activities were looked down on by religious people because they took their religious beliefs seriously. Were such prohibitions misguided? The clarity of hindsight may suggest they were. But at a time when drinking on college campuses poses a major problem, sexual crimes and diseases among college students are commonplace, and students show up for their freshmen year knowing less and less each year, I think some of these prohibitions should be revisited.

Wheaton is the kind of school that other colleges should try to emulate. The kind of problems that plague other colleges simply don’t exist at Wheaton College. There are undoubtedly students who break the rules, but for the most part, it’s a school that considers character and morals to be more than buzz words. It’s lived out in the classroom, the dorms, and in the community. Students are committed to service and scholarship. I’d encourage anyone who is quick to dismiss Wheaton as either a dinosaur or a fallen angel should take a closer look.