I found your letter beautifully written and often moving. I sometimes nodded an “amen” as I read, not least during the inspiring paragraph about how Almighty God has graciously used, and continues to use, Wheaton alumni to further His purposes in the world. Some of you I know personally and admire heartily. I have prayed with you and for you. I hope we will find an occasion again soon to pray together and encourage one another. I, however, have a different assessment from you as to the current state of Wheaton College. I have already made a simple plea [Some Say It Thundered: The Lordship of Christ at Wheaton College] which I hope that you will be willing to read charitably, prayerfully, and with an open heart, as I have done your letter. To that simple plea I am now adding a specific request.
The part of your letter that I most regret is the action commitments at the end. Nevertheless, those are about strategy and therefore fall under the category of prudence. If after further, careful, prayerful reflection you still think the action commitments are prudent, then we can agree to disagree about that in good conscience as fellow believers in Jesus Christ.
If you do not think you can set aside your action commitments, however, then my one request is that instead you add one more to the list. It is: we will decline to recommend any institution of higher education to prospective students and their parents which is not a thoroughly Christian one which we sincerely believe is being more faithful to Christ in all of the areas of concern that we have raised about Wheaton College.
 Those of us who are currently called by God to work at Wheaton College regularly hear the concerns that you have raised from alumni in person (some of these alums have even been our friends ever since we were classmates together). Quite frequently, what we hear from you next (including people who have signed this “For Wheaton” letter) in the very same conversation is that therefore you have decided to send your child to Hillsdale or Baylor or the like. Those, however, are Christian schools where faculty members are not even required to be Christians, let alone adhere to a statement of faith. Those are schools where worldliness (to cite a concern about Wheaton in your letter) is lived out fully, openly, and unapologetically in the lives of students, faculty members, and staff.
I admire both Hillsdale and Baylor, and I am certainly not trying to pick on them, let alone call for a boycott of them. I am only humbly appealing to you to also evaluate other institutions to see if the things that concern you about Wheaton are also present at them. And, if they are, that you, in fairness, then apply to them the same action commitments you have made regarding Wheaton.
May God bless you and be with you all.
In Christian love and fellowship,
Tim Larsen, class of 1989, MA ’90
McManis Professor of Christian Thought
Wheaton College