College Avenue: When Evangelical Colleges Turn Liberal
Walker, Graham
"College Avenue GRAHAM WALKER When Evangelical Colleges Turn Liberal you HAVE HEARD OF THOSE evangelical colleges. There are the brand names—like Wheaton, Gordon, Houghton,...
...Now I get it...
...Hip students and younger faculty were keen on the supposedly stunning assertion that you could be a Christian without also being a Republican...
...But there are some signs of hope...
...I did not know what they were talking about, until I learned about Peggy Cam-polo and later went to the CCCU event in Grand Rap-ids...
...I was a delegate...
...Wrong...
...And a lot was coming down the pike...
...Now I do not mean to make more of this than it deserves...
...Several delegates argued that the colleges or their sponsoring churches ought to establish rituals to sacralize same-sex unions—so long as those unions are celibate...
...Nobody ever sued Wheaton for violation...
...College Republicans still had campus chapters, but for real cachet you headed to the meetings of Evangelicals for Social Action...
...REGNERY PUBLISHING, INC...
...of vast swaths of evangelicalism...
...declare yourself a citizen of the world...
...Of course, what was new in Sider's message was not concern for the poor, but the claim that Bible Christians, if they really loved Jesus, should support massive, govern-mentally imposed redistribution of wealth...
...And even at more "progressive" colleges, the newest, youngest faculty seem less habitually prone to liberalism, more eager for the mind of Christ than the spirit of the age...
...in,~vw...
...N TUANCE IS A KEY CONCERN of evangelical faculty, 1 especially if famous evangelicals lack it...
...I was from Berkeley, California, and not from an evangelical 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005 background, so I had heard this agenda in its original quasi-Leninist form without the Bible proof texts...
...When I was a trustee at a relatively conservative college, I reviewed a proposal to send students to James Dobson's Focus on the Family Institute in NOVEMBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 57 C A AI L Colorado...
...The answer is not always what you would expect...
...As elsewhere, the problem is often baby-boomer faculty, still apparently in recovery from stringent fundamentalist upbringings...
...Once my generation began filling the ranks of the retiring professoriate, it was only a matter of time before things got even groovier...
...She speaks for "Evangelicals Concerned," a group that justifies the practices of "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people...
...For instance, Peggy Campolo—wife of Tony, graduate of Eastern University, and frequent evangelical cam-pus speaker—is widely known for her defense of homosexuality...
...rathzrr Walker is vice president for academic affairs, and professor of political science, at Oklahoma Wesleyan University...
...This fostered an institutional ethos that is, to say the least, a bit different from State U Now faculty and graduate students can sip and puff at will, so long as they do so off campus...
...I was in Campolo's audiences, too...
...Some praised it for its nuance...
...I,, I gk' P,,fk ing (i"p" r • Rite...
...But the organizers balanced him out...
...If truth is the first casualty of war, urban legends seem to be the first product of America's War on Terror...
...Is it not...
...Sider's "Discipleship Workshop" claimed that to truly "take up the cross," the most deeply committed followers of Christ would "explore actions of revolutionary leaders," "create new economic systems," and "renounce citizenship to...
...God is free, and creates free, unpredictable men in his image, who sometimes found colleges at his behest...
...Their mantra is "evangelicalism does not entail fundamentalism," or more simply, "I'm not Jerry Falwell...
...There are the brand names—like Wheaton, Gordon, Houghton, Calvin, and Seattle Pacific—but there are also dozens of others, all told 102 members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), a group generally understood as the hard-line end of the Protestant collegiate spectrum...
...This was not the majority view, but it was not met with general shock either...
...C O L L E G E A V E N U E G R A H A M W A L K E R When Evangelical Colleges Turn Liberal you HAVE HEARD OF THOSE evangelical colleges...
...Like Tony Campolo, I was once on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, whose new President Amy Gutmann pretty much embodies coercive ultra-secular academe...
...These campuses have been changing for a long time, reflecting, not surprisingly, the gradual greening ("pinkening...
...Two years ago, evangelical standard-bearer Wheaton College changed its rules on drinking and smoking...
...they are mostly underage anyway...
...x DISINFORMATION v., Disinformation strikes at the heart of the liberal lie machine, putting a stop to the top twenty-two poisonous myths about terrorism, al Qaeda, and the war in Iraq...
...What is striking is not so much the rule change as how college leaders thought about it...
...DISINFORMATION Do You Know the Truth About the War on Terror...
...You are wondering: Does not the traditional Trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Spirit have a certain patriarchal flavor to it...
...If you want the real truth about the War on Terror, you have to start here...
...To his credit, Ron Sider publicly reconsidered his earlier socialist enthusiasms in the light of new evidence...
...It is not that Peggy endorses homosexual promiscuity...
...Is it not...
...As early as 1978, well-known theologian Ron Sider of Eastern Baptist Seminary was hectoring evangelical campuses with his condemnation of "Rich Christians" in an "Age of Hunger...
...I wanted to know if the triangle and the "safe space" motto were intended to carry a moral meaning different from the one they carry on every secular campus where they are used to justify sin, and if so, how would students know...
...Traditional undergraduates must still refrain everywhere...
...But what is an evangelical...
...There is at least one thing I can say in favor of the evangelical colleges: It is worse elsewhere...
...X' aavz~.Ra}nrn ,m Available in bookstores everywhere, by calling 1-888-219-4747, or at www.spectator.org Code: CR17/C6833 58 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005...
...Theologians on some evangelical campuses are holding on to these names but reclassifying them as metaphors...
...Disinformation gives you the evidence—all the evidence—to shoot down disinformation and refute those who mindlessly repeat it...
...In November 2004, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities convened a "Consultation on Human Sexuality" with representatives from some 30 member schools gathered on the campus of Calvin College...
...Eastern University liked it so much they created a "Campolo School of Social Change...
...since the evangelical intelligentsia has already abandoned male headship in heterosexual marriage in favor of "mutuality," they might as well take the next step...
...But "Tony and I agree," she says, "that a homosexual orientation is not chosen and we believe that homosexual people should not have to be in the closet to be part of the body of Christ...
...Not to worry...
...Stand by for up-dates on linguistic evolution...
...Peggy Campolo may be standing on the furthest evangelical edge, but she is not alone...
...One woman delegate said that evangelicals should stop resisting homosexuality and instead turn their ire against "American greed" which has "harmed people all over the world...
...Surprise: I was denied tenure...
...I did not get an answer...
...After all, about 800 other U.S...
...Tony Campolo, a former Penn sociology professor and later a longtime sociology professor at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, took up similar ideological themes but wrapped them in blockbuster sermons on Christian compassion heard on virtually every major evangelical campus...
...The CCCU framed the event under the general heading of "Multicultural Competencies," thus putting the burden of proof from the get-go on those (like myself) who think that homosexual practices are not in the same moral category as gender, racial, or culinary differences...
...church-related colleges are not evangelical enough to qualify for membership...
...Wheaton's provost, Stanton Jones, deserves special mention for his incisive keynote refuting homosexualist ideology...
...Pr- HESS WERE MERELY the early rumblings...
...For 140-some years since its founding, the college had forbidden alcohol and tobacco...
...As a result, by the early '80s one could easily be praised as "prophetic" on certain evangelical campus-es by advocating socialism—just when socialism was being empirically refuted elsewhere on the planet...
...Are evangelical colleges fated to follow the well-worn path of secularization, trendy leftism, andmoral ambiguity...
...So, you are thinking, these schools are the acai demic counterpart to the dreaded "Christian Right...
...Right...
...he cannot reconcile them with the Bible...
...Some evangelical colleges now have their Women's Centers, their Africana Studies programs, and their Offices of Multiculturalism and Diversity...
...Dobson on the radio send their kids, where faculty take old-fashioned Biblical theology, rather than academic liberalism, as the ultimate authority—in short, where traditional faith and morals get their academic buttress...
...There are subtleties here, I grant, and careful people of good will believe these changes are justified and that they are not engaged in preemptive surrender to the secular left...
...I know...
...A handful of evangelical colleges remain willing to bear the dread label "conservative...
...The Bible may be ambiguous about wine and cigarettes, but it is clear about sex...
...She just believes that "being a homosexual" is comparable to "being black" or "being female" and thus demands civic rights and Christian reverence...
...I was a student at an evangelical college when Sider's road show first came through, and I kept the handouts because they were so stunning...
...Faculty at cutting-edge evangelical colleges soon became experts at devising evangelical justifications for whatever was coming down the pike from secular academe...
...And even some of them can have second thoughts...
...If you read James Tunstead Burtchaell's The Dying of the Light, or George Mars-den's The Soul of the American University—both superb histories of religion in American higher education—you might be tempted to think so...
...A faculty study committee opposed it on the grounds that students would not be "exposed to the full range of legitimate evangelical views" on abortion and homosexuality...
...This is where people who listen to Dr...
...Representatives of Calvin College proudly described their "safe spaces" campaign, where faculty put "safe space" stickers on their office doors to signal their eagerness to talk with students about "their sexuality" without "condemnation...
...Her husband publicly disagrees with her about homosexual sex acts...
...The best definition I have heard is attributed to Bob Jones Sr., an unrepentant fundamentalist with a few faults: An evangelical is a fundamentalist who says to a liberal, "I'll call you a Christian if you'll call me a scholar...
...The college argued that not all stake-holders agreed that the Bible requires abstinence from alcohol or tobacco...
...When evangelical missiologist Howard Snyder (now of Asbury Theological Seminary) was on a college lecture circuit in 1981, preaching a somewhat milder redistributionism, I was in the audience...
...Veteran investigative reporter and terrorism expert Richard Miniter has sifted thewritten record, met with countless high-level sources, and traveled the globe, from Sudan to the Philippines, from Saudi Arabia to Hong Kong, and from Washington to Brussels to track down and refute some of the most widely believed—and often pernicious—War on Terror myths and legends...
...Thirty years ago this portrait might have fit, but it rarely does now...
...After all, generic masGRAHAM W A L K E R culine pronouns might reinforce patriarchy...
...Another keynoter vigorously defended gay "marriage," arguing that The Bible may be ambiguous about wine and cigarettes, but it Is clear about sex...
...God has given some people a homosexual orientation, they argued, and we need to affirm God's gift so long as we stay just within the limits of the literal word of Scripture...
...Because evangelical college faculty crave respectability, they are beguiled by the siren songs emanating from the penumbras of secular academe...
...This murk yielded the occasional gem...
...He formerly taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at Catholic University of America, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton...
...Many operate under feminist style sheets: i.e., ukases commanding the use of so-called inclusive language in faculty and student writing...
...More significantly, the college argued that Illinois law forbids "discrimination" against any employee on the basis of his personal use of "legal products...
Vol. 38 • November 2005 • No. 9
