The Worst are Filled with Passionate Intensity

Cedarville University Series
Part 1 - Cedarville: A Very Brief Introduction
Part 2 - The Worst are Filled with Passionate Intensity
Part 3 - Things Fall Apart
Part 4 - The Center Cannot Hold


In my last post, I explained that a fundamentalist faction of Cedarville’s support base objected to the university’s decision to welcome GLBT activists onto campus as evidence of its turn toward liberalism. Their objections may have been overruled, but they did not fade into obscurity. Instead, they continued to organize themselves around the belief that Dr. Carl Ruby and certain faculty members posed an active threat to Cedarville’s historical identity as a conservative Baptist institution. Their campaign received a boost when the General Association of Regular Baptists (GARBC) decided to end its affiliation with Cedarville in 2006, due to the university’s alleged failure to adhere to its doctrinal standards. According to GARBC, Cedarville had become too liberal, and for fundamentalist alumni, this was evidence enough to begin a more aggressive campaign to ‘reclaim’ the university.

As a student, I had little awareness of the machinations behind the events I witnessed on campus. My parents, former Plymouth Brethren who attended Baptist churches when no local Brethren congregation could be found, had little regard for denominational politics, and so did I. But at Cedarville, the internal political conflicts that plague American Christianity proved inescapable. They disrupted my studies and threatened the careers of my favorite professors. Even the existence of my church, a small urban congregation founded by the same faculty members targeted by the fundamentalists, seemed to be at risk.

The fight, which endures in my memory as one of the most vicious episodes of social conflict that I’ve ever witnessed, focused on Dr. David Mills and Dr. Tim Gombis. By my sophomore year, Dr. David Hoffeditz emerged as one of the most prominent fundamentalist voices on campus. Hoffeditz, a Bible professor, used class time to accuse Dr. Gombis and Dr. Mills (professors of Biblical studies and philosophy respectively) of heresy. The worst sort of heresy, by fundamentalist standards: he accused them of being post-modernists.

I write this article as a recent graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London. My graduate career is focused on political theory, and if I must be called anything at all, I prefer to be called a post-structuralist because I believe the label of ‘post-modernist’ is so commonly misused that it’s now practically meaningless. But according to popular fundamentalist discourse, post-modernism is the philosophical nemesis of orthodox Christianity. According to these fundamentalists, post-modernism denies the possibility of absolute truth and certainty of belief and it is therefore incompatible with Christian faith.

Even by this dubious standard, Dr. Mills and Dr. Gombis are not post-modernists. They were not post-modernists in 2006, when fundamentalist professors incited a group of students to write a letter of concern to the administration. And they were not post-modernists in 2007, when the university finally fired David Hoffeditz and another fundamentalist professor. The accusation seemed absurd to me in my undergraduate days and it’s even more absurd to me now. Both professors certainly questioned traditional conservative positions on economic policy and to an extent, gender roles. But there is nothing reflected in their academic work that supports the claim that either encourages spiritual doubts.

a 2004 paper written by Dr. Mills in response to a lecture on the Emerging Church Movement became a primary point of contention. The Emerging Church has long been a cause of concern for fundamentalists, who view it as a departure from orthodoxy. Though Mills never claimed to belong to the movement, he did not issue a blanket condemnation of it and its adherents, and corrected, briefly, popular misconceptions about post-modernism.

At any other academic institution, this paper would have passed without controversy. At Cedarville, it helped instigate a campaign against Dr. Mills and his colleague, Dr. Gombis, who had also been accused of deviations from orthodoxy. Led by David Hoffeditz, and other fundamentalist faculty members, students, and alumni, the ‘Coalition of the Concerned’ deliberately attacked these ‘liberal’ professors, and cited their employment as evidence of the university’s drift toward theological liberalism.

I was already something of a spiritual exile when I entered Cedarville. Dissatisfied by conservative Christianity’s rigid gender roles and the politicization of the faith, I’d hoped for a different environment at Cedarville. The tactics employed by David Hoffeditz and the students who supported him ravaged that hope. I felt like I no longer had a safe haven. Dr. Mills and Dr. Gombis modelled a faith defined by compassion and intellectual rigor. For many of us, that model had been missing from our experience with Christianity, but we aspired to emulate it once we witnessed it.

Amidst this chaos, the university fired David Hoffeditz and David Mappes, also a fundamentalist, though one less vocal than Hoffeditz. Their supporters claimed that the terminations were ideologically motivated; according to the university, the terminations were merited by Hoffeditz’s personal attacks on other professors. To date, neither side has convinced the other of the rightness of their position. Hoffeditz sued the university for wrongful termination and settled out of court. The American Association of University Professors officially censured the university for failing to adhere to professional standards expected for the severance of a tenured professor.

The current controversies at the university are directly related to this series of events. The university’s reaction to the Coalition of the Concerned and their passionate defense of fundamentalist Christianity seemed, to many, to be proof positive of its liberal drift. Over the next several years, additional controversies over the political views of proposed campus speakers like Shane Claiborne and the perceived liberalism of the student newspaper created a chaotic politically charged campus atmosphere that effectively divided the Cedarville community into liberal and conservative camps.

In the interest of transparency: I wrote for the student newspaper. I’m quite proud of this. I’m equally proud of the fact that my article criticizing a campus event on female modesty goaded the Board of Trustees into demanding that the paper never publish such an opinion again. The fatal criticism? I dared to suggest that a panel of male students, faculty and staff did not have the right to comment on female dress. Perhaps that was a bit too post-modern.

By the time my opinion piece attracted the attention of the Board of Trustees, I was a junior, and the appointments of two fundamentalists to the positions of  provost and academic vice president meant that the university’s administration had become dominated by the fundamentalist faction that controls it now. The Soulforce visit and Hoffeditz’s termination created significant animosity toward Dr. Carl Ruby, Dr. David Mills, and other moderate voices. That animosity, plus  and set the stage for the university’s current farce.

Editor's Note: While the specifics differ, OBU students/faculty/alumni and constituents of other Baptist colleges will no doubt recognize common themes in Sarah's telling of Cedarville's story: Exposure to legal and financial damages for wrongful separation of tenured faculty; exposure to censure from professional organizations and even accrediting bodies; fear (if not outright suppression) of legitimate student journalism; a general and pervasive threat that fundamentalist elements within a Christian university pose to academic freedom and ethical trustee and administrative leadership. Save OBU is committed to building solidarity among people courageously standing against fundamentalist encroachment in Baptist and evangelical higher education.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  Sarah's Cedarville series continues Friday. -j-