Up a creed without a paddle

I thought about applying for this position... until I read more about the institution.

Among their Faculty Membership Requirements, one finds such gems as the following:

1. [X] College faculty members are required to subscribe to three historic Reformed “forms of unity”—the Beligic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dordtrecht—and pledge to teach, speak, and write in harmony with the confessions....

2. [X] College faculty members are required to be active members in good standing of a congregation in the Christian Reformed Church or a denomination in “ecclesiastical fellowship” with the CRC as defined by the CRC Synod....

3. [X] College faculty members are expected to support and promote Christian education at all levels and are normally required to provide their children with Christian schooling for grades K-12. Schools affiliated with the Christian Schools International (an association of parent-run schools with traditional ties to the CRC community) are expected to be the primary schools of choice, though exceptions are usually granted for home schooling or enrollment in non-CSI Christian schools....

A search of old issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education brought forth even more entertaining bits. To wit:

Howard J. Van Till, a now-retired physics professor at [X] College, had an even more grueling experience when he published The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us About Creation (Eerdmans, 1986). The administration had no problem with his writings, but angry members of the denomination objected to his support of evolutionary theory and his suggestion that biblical texts had been strongly influenced by the cultures in which they were written.

Under pressure, the college's Board of Trustees formed an investigative committee. The situation soon turned Kafkaesque. For three and a half years, Mr. Van Till met with the group monthly to explain his theological views. "As the years of questioning and interrogating continued, the arena of concern just got larger and larger," he recalls, "until it became a test of the entirety of my theological position."

This, Pablo, is why I'm wary of "creedal" churches and other institutions that demand unthinking obedience to sets of bylaws concocted by earthly religious authorities. They never content themselves with merely reiterating basic religious principles; oh no, they must dictate everything, up to and including dictating what schools people are "allowed" to send their children to and what results a researcher is allowed to find. ("What Would Galileo Do?")

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't fit in there for the same reason that I'd make a lousy Catholic, Mormon, or fundamentalist of any stripe. I'm just not very good at that whole mindless-obedience, marching-in-lockstep thing. It's rather sad that these people are so determined to raise their children as intellectual cripples who have never seriously confronted a single foreign idea.