Vanguard University, a Southern California Assemblies of God school that was warned last fall about its financial oversight from an accrediting body and went through a string of leadership transitions this January, may be facing sunny days again.

School officials met with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) February 18 to show that they had taken recommended steps to remedy the fiscal and management issues noted by WASC during its September visit. College president Carol Taylor announced last week that WASC had granted the school's request to defer action on its accreditation review until its June 2009 meeting.

"In granting a deferral, the WASC Commission recognizes Vanguard's progress and has noted that this deferral provides the University a window of time to bring to fruition key initiatives that have been undertaken," President Taylor said in her online message. Deferment gives the CCCU member school time to show it can run with an independent board of trustees and implement sound financial management, which it had reportedly lacked for years.

Four days after the WASC meeting, Vanguard learned that Bruce Lindsay, a millionare who hung out on campus every day and became known as the school's "campus grandpa" and "student advocate," had died and left his fortune to the school, which is $42 million in debt.

According to the Los Angeles Times profile, Lindsay, 79, was known for his frugality and made his fortune in part by buying low-cost oil leases and flipping beach homes. The worth of Lindsay's estate is still unknown, but Vanguard has said part of the donation will go toward renovating its cafeteria, where Lindsay ate three meals every day.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at March 11, 2009 | Comments (1)

Sunday's Daily Mail and yesterday's Telegraph covered the removal of words associated with Christianity (and therefore, British history), fairy tales, and nature in the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary.

Words such as disciple, devil, monk, fern, elf, pasture, and willow have been removed from the 10,000-word dictionary and replaced with words such as MP3 player, blog, tolerant, democratic, and biodegradable - all to reflect England's multicultural, technological ethos, says publisher Oxford University Press.

Vineeta Gupta, head of children's dictionaries at Oxford, told the Telegraph, "Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are also much more multicultural. People don't go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words such as Pentecost or Whitsun would have been in 20 years ago but not now."

(That was probably a good call on Whitsun.)

It's a little unclear why both papers are reporting on the changes now, as the newest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary came out in 2007. Both papers cite an Irish mother of four, Lisa Saunders, who compared six editions of the dictionary from the last 30 years and was "horrified" by the number of words that had been removed.

"The Christian faith still has a strong following," Saunders told the Daily Mail. "To eradicate so many words associated with the Christianity will have a big effect on the numerous primary schools who use it."

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat aptly noted that the removal of animals like gerbil and porcupine from a children's dictionary is particularly perplexing, perhaps more so than the removal of churchy words. Vox Day of World Net Daily, on the other hand, sees the word-swaps as warning signs of the destruction of Western culture due to immigration and pluralism.

A sampling of words removed:
Dwarf, elf, goblin, abbey, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar, beaver, cheetah, colt, doe, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, porcupine, porpoise, raven, thrush, weasel, wren, acorn, bacon, buttercup, canary, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, county, cowslip, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, liquorice, oats, pasture, prune, radish, rhubarb, sycamore, vine, violet, walnut, willow

A sampling of words added:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue, celebrity, tolerant, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro, apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, chronological, block graph

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at December 9, 2008 | Comments (4)

Emir Caner, who converted from Islam to Christianity when he was a boy, has been tapped as the next president of Truett-McConnell College in Georgia. Kudos to Caner, but man do I disagree with his opinion of why someone should choose a Christian education.

"A parent should choose a Christian higher education for their child because of the investment in the student's mind. When they send their child to a Christian liberal arts college like Truett-McConnell, they are doing it for two primary reasons. First, they are sending their child to an institution that guards the mind from the destruction that can come from a secular education, and second, that prepares their child not just for a profession but also for how to live a life of character," Caner said.

"A Christian cannot be defined by what he or she does but by their character. That character, in turn, is formed by the investment of professors and staff who pour themselves into a student who will gain a thoroughly Christian worldview."

I hope he wouldn't think less of me for choosing to attend a big, liberal, secular university, where I had to consciously decide how I wanted my worldview shaped. Really, it's not as scary as many of good Christians think.

The more interesting element of Caner's story, though, is not his vision for Truett-McConnell, which, forgive me, I had never heard of. It's that he chose Christianity over Islam, despite what it cost him:

Caner, 37, is the son of a devout Islamic leader and most of his family, including his father, has disowned him. He converted to Christianity in 1982 with the help of a Christian friend who invited him to a prayer meeting at a Southern Baptist church.

After accepting Christ as his savior, he attended Criswell College in Dallas and earned a bachelor�s degree in biblical studies. He went on to earn a master of divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Texas.

Caner has written and contributed to a total of 16 books, including Unveiling Islam, which won the Gold Medallion Award by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

Though I doubt Caner's dad was a shotcaller for Islamic Jihad, the consequences of conversion sound similar to those suffered by the Hamas scion I wrote about earlier this month.

The reason the Christian Post states "most of his family" is that Caner's older brother, Ergun, is the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. You know the name Liberty because its the Lynchburg, Va., school founded by Jerry Falwell.

This post also appeared at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at August 20, 2008 | Comments (11)

Baylor University's board of regents has fired president John Lilley, whose presidency began and ended with disputes over tenure.

In 2006, associate professor of church-state studies Francis Beckwith was denied tenure. His appeal became a cause celebre in some evangelical academic circles, and he eventually prevailed. Lilley, however, continued to be viewed with suspicion by some Christian observers.

But it was April's decision to deny tenure to 12 candidates that really set the drumbeats going. Most years, about 10 percent of faculty up for tenure are denied. This year, the 40 percent rejection rate sparked accusations of a "purge" and capricious standards. Seven of the ten faculty who appealed ended up receiving tenure.

A press release from Baylor says board member Harold Cunningham will be acting president until an interim president is named.

Updates to follow. The Waco Tribune-Herald will no doubt have coverage throughout the day.

Posted by Ted Olsen at July 24, 2008 | Comments (0)

In March, the trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary suspended professor Peter Enns over theological concerns regarding his book Inspiration and Incarnation.

The controversy got a lot of people talking about the authority of Scripture and two weeks ago even made the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

No doubt the discussion will continue in theology circles (Enns will be on a panel discussing his ideas on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament at the upcoming Evangelical Theological Society meeting, for example).

But the higher ed part of the story though, seems to have more or less come to a close today. Enns and WTS issued a joint statement announcing the end of his employment at the school. A hearing on whether he whether he should be dismissed was to begin August 25.

The statement:

The administration and Prof. Peter Enns wish to announce that they have arrived at mutually agreeable terms, and that, as of 1 August, 2008, Prof. Enns will discontinue his service to Westminster Theological Seminary after fourteen years.

The administration wishes to acknowledge the valued role Prof. Enns has played in the life of the institution, and that his teaching and writings fall within the purview of Evangelical thought. The Seminary wishes Prof. Enns well in his future endeavors to serve the Lord.

Prof. Enns wishes to acknowledge that the leaders of the Seminary (administration and board) are charged with the responsibility of leading the seminary in ways that are deemed most faithful to the institution�s mission as a confessional Reformed Seminary.

Prof. Enns expresses his deep and sincere gratitude to the Lord for his education and years of service at Westminster Theological Seminary.

That it was a joint statement may solve one of the dilemmas as described by John Frame in that Inquirer article: "Humanly speaking, it's hard to imagine how the school will survive. ... If Enns leaves, he will take with him a huge constituency. If he stays, another group will withdraw support."

Previous articles from Christianity Today and Books & Culture about Enns include:

Westminster Theological Suspension | Peter Enns's book Inspiration and Incarnation created a two-year theological battle that resulted in his suspension. (April 1, 2008)
Westminster Theological Seminary Suspends Peter Enns (Mar. 27, 2008)
Two Testaments, One Story | Top evangelical scholars team up for landmark commentary on New Testament use of Old Testament. (Feb. 8, 2008)
Messy Revelation | Why Paul would have flunked hermeneutics. (Books & Culture�s review of Inspiration and Incarnation)

Posted by Ted Olsen at July 23, 2008 | Comments (3)

Here's a sad story from The Christian Century about how Christians don't understand their own tradition, written by a woman who teaches "Intro to World Religions" at Piedmont College:

Students who complete the class say they feel more at home in the world. They are less easily frightened by religious difference. They are more informed neighbors, better equipped to wage peace instead of war.

The only place the course backfires is in the unit on Christianity. Students who have spent every Sunday of their lives in church may be able to name the books of the Bible in order, but they rarely have any idea how those books were assembled. They know they belong to Victory Baptist Church, but they do not know that this makes them Protestants, or that the Christian tree has two other major branches more ancient than their own. Very few have heard of the Nicene Creed. Most are surprised to learn that baptism is supposed to be a one-time thing.

With only five class sessions for each religion, I cover the basics quickly: early Christian history, composition and content of the New Testament, the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, central Christian doctrines and common religious practices. Faced with so much new information, students often have a hard time formulating their questions.

"If Paul wasn't one of the 12 disciples, where did he get his stuff?"

"Do Catholics really think saints answer their prayers?"

As often as I have answered such questions, my sinking feeling never goes away. The things I tell students are so different from the things they have heard in church that I can hear their brains straining against the waves. They never noticed that Matthew and Luke tell different stories of Jesus' birth, or that Mark and John tell no such stories at all. They never imagined that the first Christians did not walk around with New Testaments in their pockets. No one ever told them about Constantine, Augustine, Benedict or Martin Luther. They never thought about what happened during the centuries between Jesus' resurrection and their own professions of faith. In their minds, they fell in line behind the disciples, picking up the proclamation of the gospel where those simple fishermen left off.

Even as they are turning in their quizzes, the students know that something has just gone badly wrong. "I think I just did the worst on my own religion," one says.

The rest of the article can be read here. I find this tragic but not surprising. We're not even talking about a major university here that might offer in-depth explorations into a Christian theology foreign to Sunday School graduates. This is basic intro-to-Christianity, Huston-Smith stuff.

This reminds me of Os Guinness' book "Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't Think and What to Do About It." I also think it has a lot to do with the unbiblical teachings that can be heard in many churches.

Any thoughts?

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at June 17, 2008 | Comments (15)

April 25th marked the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's annual Day of Silence, described by the Network's website as a "student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment--in effect, the silencing--experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies." Not surprisingly, the nationwide event elicited a range of responses from evangelical Christian groups at both the national and local level, and therefore offers promise as an occasion for further reflection about what form Christian witness should take in a pluralistic democratic society.

Boycott, in the form of students staying home from school that day, was advised by both Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association. This strategy was often joined to protest, as seen at Mount Si High School in Snoqualmie, Washington (an eastside suburb of Seattle). According to a Seattle Times article, not only were 495 out of 1,410 students not at school for the day--"including 85 athletes whose parents had asked that they be excused for their personal beliefs"--but "about 100 people joined the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, a prominent anti-gay-rights activist, in prayer and song that questioned the dedication of a school day to what they said was a controversial political cause." The week before, Hutcherson, pastor of the local Antioch Bible Church, had called for 1,000 "prayer warriors" to join him in an ad in a local paper.

A form of protest was also displayed by Alexander Nuxholl, a sophomore at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois. Nuxholl was granted the right to wear a shirt that read, "Be Happy, Not Gay" on the Day of Silence by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court also ordered the school district not to discipline him for wearing the shirt. Nuxholl's case was litigated by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian nonprofit legal alliance based in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The ADF also sponsored a countermeasure or alternative to the Day of Silence, a second common strategy for Christian witness. The annual Day of Truth, which came three days after the the Day of Silence, was, according to its website, "established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective." Christian students are encouraged to wear T-shirts and pass out cards (outside of class time) that read:

I'm speaking the Truth to break the silence.
True tolerance means that people with differing--even opposing--viewpoints can freely exchange ideas and respectfully listen to each other.
It's time for an honest conversation about homosexuality.
There's freedom to change if you want to.
Let's talk.

This year marked the fourth for the Day of Truth (roughly 7,000 participants), and the thirteenth Day of Silence (roughly 500,000 participants).

In addition to boycott, protest, and the creation of an alternative, the Day of Silence saw another response from evangelical Christians--participation. The Golden Rule Pledge is promoted by Grove City College Psychology Professor Warren Throckmorton as an option for "straight Christian and conservative students [who] are conflicted about this day. They do not affirm homosexual behavior but they also loathe disrespect, harrassment or violence toward any one, including their GLBT peers." This response urges Christian students to act in accordance with the message on the cards they are urged to give out:

This is what I'm doing:

I pledge to treat others the way I want to be treated.

Will you join me in this pledge?

"Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31).

The Golden Rule Pledge website features first-hand accounts from Christian students who participated in this year's Day of Silence, including Jordyne Krumroy of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, who convinced ASU's Campus Crusade and InterVarsity Fellowship ministries to support Christian students such as her who chose to duct tape their mouths shut for a day.

Evangelicals are by definition a gospel-proclaiming people. Part of our becoming a wise people is learning to match our proclamation both to the manner of the Christ we proclaim, as well as to the occasion before us. Gospel wisdom, then, means not just learning when to speak, but what part of God's good news to speak first, and how that news should be delivered. On occasion, we may even find the best way to begin to "speak" this marvelous news is to remain silent.

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Posted by Derek Keefe at May 2, 2008 | Comments (19)

Florida's news outlets are abuzz again with the latest developments in the state's attempt to pinpoint guidelines for science education in public classrooms. This morning the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill 71?43 that requires public school teachers to offer "a thorough presentation and scientific critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution," more obtuse wording than that approved by Florida's Senate last Wednesday.

The Senate's bill, called the "Evolution Academic Freedom Act," was spearheaded by Sen. Ronda Storms and aimed at granting educators the right to present scientifically grounded alternatives to evolution, along with protecting them from disciplinary action for doing so. The bill borrows largely from an academic freedom bill drafted by the Discovery Institute, the leading research center on intelligent design, and focuses on teachers' First Amendment rights.

Proponents of both bills repeatedly stated that the legislation does not allow creationism or intelligent design to be taught in classrooms, and that neither bill includes religious language.

Florida legislators have until this Friday to come to agreement on the bill's wording. Considering the House's agreed-upon wording was already rejected by the Senate in earlier hearings, it remains dubious whether the legislators will be able to pass a bill at all.

Florida's debate over evolution began last October, when the State Board of Education adopted new science education standards that identified evolution as the "fundamental concept" underlying biology. Before the new standards, the Board of Education's statewide curriculum did not include the word evolution.

See CT Newsfeed's prior coverage of evolution and science education.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at April 28, 2008 | Comments (0)

Two of the hottest issues in evangelical theology right now are the New Testament�s use of the Old Testament and evangelical textual criticism. Peter Enns�s 2005 book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, aimed to pose difficult questions about the human aspects of Scripture. It received both praise and criticism from noted evangelical scholars.

And it made things difficult for Enns at his school, Philadelphia�s Westminster Theological Seminary. A battle over whether the book undermined or contradicted the Westminster Confession of Faith has been raging for some time now, and apparently came to a head Wednesday at the meeting of the school�s board, which decided to suspend Enns.

This note is now circulating from board chairman Jack White:

Thank you very much for your prayers for the special meeting of the Board of Trustees that was held on March 26 to address the disunity of the faculty regarding the theological issues related to Dr. Peter Enns' book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. After a full day of deliberation, the Board of Trustees took the following action by decisive vote:

"That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008."

In order to provide the entire Westminster community with a more complete understanding of the Board's decision and to offer an opportunity for questions and dialogue, the Chairman and Secretary of the Board will join the President on campus for a special chapel on Tuesday, April 1 at 10:30 am. Students and staff are encouraged to attend and participate. Following that special chapel, they will hold a separate meeting with the faculty.

Our concern is to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and assure a faithful witness for Westminster for years to come. To that end, please pray for everyone involved during the next two months.

The campus politics are particularly sensitive, since the seminary faculty had voted 12-8 to support Enns. In the meantime, both supporters and opponents of Inspiration and Incarnation had framed the debate as a battle for the future of the school.

We�ll have more on this story and its implications soon.

Posted by Ted Olsen at March 27, 2008 | Comments (43)

I don't pick up The Chronicle Review--an insert in The Chronicle of Higher Education--expecting to be spurred to reflection on the emerging movement. And I'm quite sure that was not what author and UCLA history professor Russell Jacoby intended. Nevertheless, his intriguing article, "Not to Complicate Matters, But...," collided with other reading from my week to produce that rare but welcome guest--a helpful insight. In short, Jacoby is frustrated with scholars' growing penchant to "complicate," "problematize," or "complexify" issues and think in so doing that their work is complete. To make his point, Jacoby cites mock and actual examples that will sound familiar to anyone who's laid their hands on a peer-reviewed academic journal in the last decade:

"I hope today to complicate our notion of cahiers - grievances - and the role they played in the States-General of 1789." The professors and graduate students at the symposium nod appreciatively. They have heard or read similar justifications untold times before. The author explains that he or she will "complicate" our understanding of some event or phenomenon. "In this article," writes an ethnic-studies professor, "I seek to complicate scholars' understanding of the 'modular' state by examining four forms of indigenous political space." Everyone seems pleased by this approach. Why? The world is complicated, but how did "complication" turn from an undeniable reality to a desirable goal? Shouldn't scholarship seek to clarify, illuminate, or - egad! - simplify, not complicate? How did the act of complicating become a virtue?

Towards the end of the article, Jacoby approaches territory that sounds more like an apologetics classroom at a Christianity liberal arts college than what one would expect from a professor at a large state university with works such as The Repression of Psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians to his credit (although, to be fair, Jacoby is also Honorary Vice President for Life in the American Pessimist Society, so maybe he's just cranky as a rule):

The new devotion to complexity gives carte blanche to even the most trivial scholarly enterprise. Any factoid can "complicate" our interpretation. The fashion elevates confusion from a transitional stage into an end goal. We celebrate the fact that everything can be "problematized."...We revel in complexity. To be sure, few claim that the truth is simple or singular, but we have moved far from believing that truth can be set out at all with any caution and clarity.

It's Jacoby's claim that current academic devotion to complexity "elevates confusion from a transitional stage into an end goal" that provides the link to the emerging movement. The very fact that this amorphous movement moves under the designation "emerging"--coming into view or existence--suggests a critique parallel to Jacoby's.

In late 2003, Peter Rollins, whose book How (Not) to Speak of God, has been described by Tony Jones as "the best bloody book on the emerging church yet," responded this way to an interviewer's question, "What would your 'emerging church survival kit' contain?"

An empty space? really. I think that if you want to survive Christianity, and I am not sure if its possible yet, you need one of those cartoon tunnels, something that can create a womb-like space in the being of your beliefs and religious services, a virgin space where the word of God can impregnate you...

The problem with using a metaphor of gestation--or even the designation emerging for that matter--to describe a movement is that it necessarily entails a coming birth, a definitive coming into existence. In order for the complicating, complexifying, and problematizing work of the emerging movement to prove fruitful to the Church, it will have to move beyond this transitional stage at some point, and deliver the greater goods of illumination and clarity. Here's hoping for a healthy baby.

Posted by Derek Keefe at March 7, 2008 | Comments (9)

"We're going to go on with the call of God on our lives," former Oral Roberts University president Richard Roberts told The 700 Club today. "God will deal with people and false accusations. All I can say is that it's not true, and leave it at that. God is the ultimate judge."

Roberts said he will remain a "spiritual regent" to the university and CEO of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association as he returns to a full-time healing ministry.

"The healing ministry has always been my first love," he said. "I am immersing myself fully back into the healing ministry, which was what I was doing before I became president of ORU."

Our background here. Tulsa World has a year-end roundup here, here, and here.

Posted by Ted Olsen at January 3, 2008 | Comments (56)

A story in today's Chicago Tribune illustrates one of the tensions of living in an increasingly secular society. The article, "Religious-based education on trial: Christian high schools sue University of California, alleging bias in admissions," discusses a lawsuit that an association of Christian schools is suing the University of California because "the admissions policy at the university unconstitutionally discriminates against them because they teach from a religious perspective."

More specifically the plaintiffs claim that "UC follows the policy of rejecting any course in any subject, even if it teaches standard content, if it adds teaching of the school's religious viewpoint."

The University denies it, of course: "That statement simply is not true," said Christopher Patti, counsel for UC. "There is no prohibition on religious content in UC a-g courses," he said. "If the course adequately teaches the subject matter and adequately teaches the skills that students need in that subject, then the fact that it may also make reference to other theories doesn't disqualify it, even religious theories."

Without knowing more the details of the case, on the surface it seems like another battle in the culture wars than in cultural confusion.

The University, for example, refused to give credit for a course called, "Course: Special Providence: Christianity and the American Republic," the text of which was "American Government for Christian Schools" (Bob Jones University Press). The reason rejected was that " Content was not consistent with the "empirical historical knowledge generally accepted in the collegiate community."

Now this could indicate that the University has a narrow, Enlightenment understanding of what constitutes history--it may, for example, rule out miracle a priori as an explanation for an event.

Or it could mean that the textbook and class have not prepared students to participate in classes and conversations that will take place in a modern, secular university on the topic of history. A university has the right and obligation to ensure that when students step on campus, they are familiar with terms, theories, and perspectives that constitute the conversation on campus on any given topic.

Christian schools have an obligation not only to teach from a Christian perspective, but to thoroughly immerse their students in the worldview and perspective of the secular university if they expect them to attend there. This strikes me as a reasonable requirement of the university, but a necessary requirement of those who hope to bring Christ's salt and light to academia. If we demonstrate that we have not listened to or thoroughly understood the point of view of those with whom we disagree, why would they ever give our point of view a hearing?

Posted by Mark Galli at October 8, 2007 | Comments (6)

New Saint Andrews College, the original classical Christian college in Moscow, Idaho, has been forgotten within the media hype surrounding Patrick Henry College - a more recently established classical Christian college in Virginia.

It seems that the two colleges are at odds. Patrick Henry College might be on a "mission to save America," to quote the title of Hanna Rosin's new book profiling the school, but according to a quote in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine from Doug Wilson - NSA's founder - New Saint Andrews is "trying to save civilization."

According the writer of the New York Times Magazine story, Molly Worthen - who is writing a book about evangelical intellectual life - NSA is outspoken about differentiating itself from their classical higher-ed counterpart:

When you ask teachers and students what sort of school New St. Andrews is, they often cite one school they are not: Patrick Henry College, the evangelical college in Purcellville, Va., with a reputation for training home-schooled Christian students to wrest the reins of power from "secular humanists" in Washington. "We believe in a much longer view," says Joshua Appel, a professor at New St. Andrews.

And again:

[NSA's] curriculum is a "reformation in higher education," says Roy Atwood, the college president. "The last thing we wanted to be was a Liberty University or a Patrick Henry. We are not interested in political takeover." Patrick Henry - which requires classical core classes and offers a major in classical liberal arts as well as more political fields - hemorrhaged faculty and students a year ago as a debate over academic freedom and the role of the liberal arts in Christian education divided the campus. "I wonder if the N.S.A. people are right," says G. T. Smith, a philosophy professor who left Patrick Henry after the turmoil.

Is this rivalry just another example of what should be like-minded partnering but instead is a divisive "We are right. You are wrong." mentality?

Posted by Kristen Scharold at October 1, 2007 | Comments (20)

With the new Creation Museum, which teaches a young earth, drawing tens of thousands of visitors, scientists who hold to Darwinism may have a public-relations answer. According to an article in today's Chicago Tribune, the 3.2-million-year-old bones of "Lucy," a small, apelike creature believed to be an evolutionary presursor to human beings, will go on a six-year museum tour, beginning this week. The exhibit, called "The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia," opens on Friday at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

But some paleontologists aren't too happy about the bones being transported out of Ethiopia, where they were discovered. They worry that the bones might be damaged and that they will be unavalable for further study while on tour. But not all think that way:

Donald Johanson, the paleoanthropologist who found Lucy in 1974, said her exhibition should have important payoffs in teaching children and adults about science.

"Seeing the original Lucy will surely heighten public awareness of human-origins studies particularly at a time when the validity of evolution has come under fire in our schools," said Johanson, now the director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, where he continues to do research but also has become a popular educator on human evolution through books and lectures.

"A broader exposure of Lucy to the public does have great educational value," he said.

It should be interesting to see what the interest in Lucy is, given that according to opinion polls roughly half of the American public has expressed serious reservations about the theory of evolution, which nonetheless has enjoyed almost unquestioned hegemony in academia and the mainstream media. Perhaps one explanation for the throngs at the Creation Museum is that there are so few politically correct alternatives for people who question the evolutionary metanarrative, which usually excludes God.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at August 28, 2007 | Comments (19)

Andrew Paquin is executive director of the 10/10 Project, a Colorado-based international development and advocacy organization focusing on Africa. He was also professor of global studies at Colorado Christian University, and last year was named faculty member of the year. (He also wrote a 2006 op-ed for Christianity Today on Saddleback Church's PEACE plan.)

Monday's Rocky Mountain News reports that CCU fired Paquin "amid concerns that his lessons were too radical and undermined the school's commitment to the free enterprise system." (No one at the school has tenure.)

School president Bill Armstrong wouldn't talk about Paquin's case in specific, but emphasized the school's commitment to capitalism. "What the university stands for, among other things, is free markets," he explained. He pointed to the school's recently adopted "strategic objectives," which include a commitment to "impact our culture in support of traditional family values, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, Biblical view of human nature, limited government, personal freedom, free markets, natural law, original intent of constitution and Western civilization."

Paquin told the paper he likes capitalism. The 10/10 Project, in fact, largely focuses on microenterprise. Capitalism, he says, has "obviously been one of the greatest wealth generators in the world. But I'd stop short of deifying it."

Paquin doesn't seem interested in returning to CCU, though some students are circulating petitions.

I hope we'll hear more, because the story seems very incomplete. The News article suggests that Paquin was fired because he assigned books by Jim Wallis and Peter Singer, but it's not at all clear that Paquin actually endorsed the books, and the college library carries many books by both Wallis and Singer. Armstrong insists that it's okay to teach about alternative viewpoints, so long as they're not endorsed, but it's not evident that Armstrong takes issue with Wallis.

One also wonders about how to read, define, and enforce those strategic objectives. Does Armstrong's support of a constitutional amendment banning "desecration" of the U.S. flag violate the school's commitment to "limited government," for example? As one often wonders in these stories of lines in the sand, How far is too far?

(I've earlier posted on whether there is an "evangelical view of economics.")

Posted by Ted Olsen at August 14, 2007 | Comments (21)

No one in Washington or in mainstream media outlets seems to be coming right out and saying it, but the implication from much of the reporting and commentary regarding yesterday's House Judiciary Committee testimony of former Justice Department official Monica Goodling seems to be that Christian college graduates shouldn't be permitted in high government positions.

Try to find a news story today that doesn't mention that Goodling is a graduate of Regent University's law school, that the school was founded by Pat Robertson, and that it has a distinctly Christian mission. (Several reports also note that she did her undergraduate work at Messiah College, another distinctly Christian school.)

In fact, Rep. Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.) spent most of his questions on Goodling's Christian education. Here's the transcript:

COHEN: Miss Goodling, I've read your vitae, and it says that you grew up and you mostly went -- you went to public schools. Was that K through 12?

GOODLING: Mm-hmm. (Affirmative.) Yes.

COHEN: And it says you went -- chose Christian universities in part because they -- value they placed on service. What as the other part that you chose Christian universities?

GOODLING: I chose them because I had a faith system, and in some cases -- I went to American University for my first year of law school and then I transferred. And I enjoyed studying with people that shared the similar belief system that I did. It didn't mean that there wasn't a lot of diversity of discussion, because in some cases I actually found that the debate at Regent was much more vigorous than it was at American University my first year of law school. But I enjoyed being surrounded by people that had the same belief system.

COHEN: The mission of the law school you attended, Regent, is to bring bear -- "is to bring to bear upon legal education and the legal profession the will of Almighty God, our Creator." What is "the will of Almighty God, our Creator" on the legal profession?

GOODLING: I'm not sure that I could define that question for you.

COHEN: Did you ask people who applied for jobs as AUSAs anything about their religion?

GOODLING: No, I certainly did not --

COHEN: Never had religion discussions come up?

GOODLING: Not to the best of my recollection.

COHEN: Is there a type of student, a type of person that you thought was -- embodied that philosophy of Regent University that you sought out as AUSAs?

GOODLING: In most cases, the people at Regent are good people trying to do the right thing, who wanted to make a difference in the world. If the question is, were I looking -- if I was looking for people like that, the answer is yes. I wasn't necessarily looking for people who shared a particular faith system. I don't have any recollection that that entered into my mind at any point. But certainly there are a lot of people who applied to work for this president because they share his same faith system, and they did apply for jobs.

COHEN: Are there a lot of -- an inordinate number of people from Regent University Law School that were hired by the Department of Justice while you were there?

GOODLING: I think we have a lot more people from Harvard and Yale.

COHEN: Well, that's refreshing. Is it a fact -- are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar the first time?

GOODLING: I'm not -- I don't remember the statistics, but I know it wasn't good. I was happy I passed the first time.

COHEN: Thank you. That's good.

National Review Online's Byron York noted that Cohen's questioning came shortly after another discussion of higher education:

Earlier, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was very concerned that Goodling had asked about the political leanings of a job seeker named Seth Adam Meinero, "a graduate of Howard University, one of the top, outstanding law schools in the nation." (Rep. Cohen did not protest, even though Howard's bar-passing statistics don't measure up to Regent's.) Goodling said she regretted making a "snap judgment" about Meinero's supposed political leanings, although she stressed that Meinero ultimately got the job he was seeking.

Posted by Ted Olsen at May 24, 2007 | Comments (22)

The local newspaper in Lynchburg, Virginia, reports that Jerry Falwell has been taken to the hospital. According to a Liberty University official, Falwell missed a morning meeting and was discovered unconscious in his office.

Posted by Collin Hansen at May 15, 2007 | Comments (0)

Last year, just before the students returned to the campus of the Roman Catholic Georgetown University, the school's Protestant chaplain informed six evangelical student ministries that they were being "disafilliated." That is, they could not use campus facilities for their events, could not advertise their events on campus, and could not use the Georgetown name or logo.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was one of the affected ministries, and the irony could not have been sharper: the daughter of IVCF president Alec Hill was a Georgetown student.

InterVarsity has been fighting legal battles at public campuses defending students' right to join voluntary associations on campus that could hold to the standards of Christian belief and behavior. There have been some very positive results from these legal actions at, for example, Rutgers (2002) and the University of Wisconsin-Superior (2007).

Georgetown, though, is a private, church-related university, and it had the legal right to ban any non-Catholic group from its campus. But that's no way to run a university. As Alec Hill said at the time, "As a parent, I am surprised Georgetown as a major university would close down freedom of association for their students. That seems contrary to Georgetown's ethos. It's an open marketplace of ideas."

Well, today I received a news release from IVCF announcing that Georgetown had completely restructured things, clearing the way for IVCF and other similar ministries to reaffiliate. Read InterVarsity's news release here.

While IVCF had to bring legal pressure elsewhere, genuine dialogue and listening seemed to work in this case. A university open the free exchange of ideas! What a blast from the past!

Posted by David Neff at May 9, 2007 | Comments (3)

Students across the country are becoming more religiously active, according to a New York Times story today.

More students are enrolling in religion courses, even majoring in religion; more are living in dormitories or houses where matters of faith and spirituality are a part of daily conversation; and discussion groups are being created for students to grapple with questions like what happens after death, dozens of university officials said in interviews.

The religious involvement The Times notes does not include conversions or rededications of the nominally religious.

Much of the article is not news to readers of CT. Increased diversity at elite colleges has led to increased Christian presence, often among minority groups. The story also cites the UCLA study on student religious involvement, which CT has also reported. In fact, much of this The Times has already reported on.

Still, the fact that increased religiosity on campus is so broad is important. So, how are the evangelical groups doing? Does increased religious involvement in general mean more people are attending InterVarsity and Campus Crusade groups?

Posted by Rob Moll at May 2, 2007 | Comments (1)

'Unisex toilets to tackle bullies' is the headline of a BBC story today. And, when you think of it, really, what could be more embarrassing for a bully than to be tackled by a toilet — and a unisex one at that.

Actually, the proposal is that England's rebuilt and refurbished schools should use unisex bathrooms (ah, let's call them loos like they do, since that's much cooler) with blurred glass walls, central sinks, and no urinals.

The Department for Education and Skills report explains,

Most anti-social behaviour occurs when pupils socialise and hang around in the toilets. To discourage this, along with provision elsewhere in the school for indoor social areas, the space within the toilet facility needs to be kept to a minimum, and hand-washing facilities should be made visible and potentially unisex by being moved out of the cubicle area as a direct extension to the circulation space. This also allows for passive supervision of the common areas from the circulation space, so that pupils can feel safe when using the toilets.

The report urges schools to lose loos' urinals because "research has shown that at puberty, boys� use of urinals is problematic. The trough type in particular can contribute to a medical condition know as �shy bladder syndrome�." Elsewhere, the report notes that since urinals are cheaper than toilets, urinals may be preferred in some cases. (Some alternative floor plans include urinals.)

So anyway, I just thought the article (which I found on the BBC's religion & ethics news page) was interesting. I'm sure that some of the culture-warrior readers (those who use terms like "war against boys," "forced androgyny," and "feminization") will be interested. But since this is supposed to be a specifically Christian blog, I'd like to make some direct connection to Christian life, theology, or mission.

So here's the tangentially related question for you: Several verses in the Old Testament refers to those who "urinate against the wall" (or, to use the King James English, "pisseth against the wall" -- surely one of the favorite references for any grade-school boy in a KJV-friendly Sunday school class or old-school Awana program).

Most translations, even formal equivalent ones, have updated this as "men." But there are other Hebrew words for "men," and these cases the Hebrew really says "urinate against the wall." In each case, those who urinate against the wall are not in God's favor. It almost always looks something like this: "And it came to pass, when [Zimri] began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends. Thus did Zimri destroy all the house of Baasha, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake against Baasha by Jehu the prophet."

So what's the deal? Urinating against the wall seems to besomething that both Israelites and other nations did, so it's apparently not just a cultural thing. But if the Bible identifies you as someone who pees on a wall, you're in deep trouble. Does God prefer squatting? Will England urinal-free loos be more biblical? Help me, Old Testament scholars!

Posted by Ted Olsen at April 27, 2007 | Comments (4)

Do a news search (Google | MSLive | Yahoo) on "Melissa Busekros" and you'll get several hits.

But what you won't get are many results from mainstream media sources. The Christian Science Monitor is one of the few outlets to pick up what is surely the hottest topic in Christian home-schooling circles.

The background: After the German government tried for two years to get Melissa's family to stop home-schooling the 15 year old, officials removed her from her home in February, put her in a foster home, and sent her to psychiatric treatment for "school phobia."

The update: Yesterday, on her 16th birthday, Melissa fled her foster home and showed up on her parents' doorstep.

Seems like a nice hook for a news story in the mainstream press, if they've been waiting for one.

Posted by Ted Olsen at April 24, 2007 | Comments (2)