Would I Still Choose OBU?

Hello, my dear friends! I am so glad to be back with you.

As Jacob already said, I left you for a while because I was getting married! In some ways (marrying a Baptist at age 22) I suppose I am very much a typical OBU girl. :) For those of you interested in pictures, some of the teasers are here.

I write this post for fairness (Jacob got to brag about his beautiful new daughter) and also because, believe it or not, my wedding reminded me about some of the things I love about OBU.

It has been asserted that I hate OBU or that I have turned my back on OBU. That may be true in some ways. But on my wedding day, I could not help but notice how much OBU has given me. OBU will always be a special place in my heart-- it is the place I met my husband. And not only that, it is the place I met the majority of my bridal party. Actually, now that I think about it, there was only one person in the wedding party who was not either family or a friend from OBU.

OBU really was a great place for me. I received an excellent education and met some of the best friends that anyone could ask for. Together, all of us questioned, discussed, learned, and grew. As I have said before, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I think that sometimes I forget the huge hand that OBU has played in who I am today. And for that, I am extremely grateful.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that students like me will not be going to OBU much longer. And the ones that do go are much less likely to have my same experience.

When I was a junior in high school, looking for a place to spend my college career, I was not the typical person who might generally be looking to OBU. I was not a Baptist and I was not an Oklahoman. But I was drawn to the school because I had a friend who loved it there and saw that it was recognized across the board for spectacular academics.

My parents, believe it or not, did not want me to go to a faith-based school. Outside of the "Bible Belt" it is not uncommon to hold the assumption that faith based schools do not have as good academics as their secular counterparts. When it came to choosing a college, my parents were far more concerned about academics. The point of paying for an education is to get an education-- not to become a better Christian.

I think that this is still a pretty fair argument. But I wanted to study religion, and my heart was set on OBU. In the end, my parents were convinced by OBU's excellent rankings and both of them really enjoyed the visit that the three of us made to campus. Believing that the educational investment would be worth the money, they happily sent me to Shawnee, where I believe none of us were disappointed in what I got.

Now, at OBU, I learned that perhaps getting an education and growing in your faith are more related than my parents were willing to believe during my college search. But, as I learned from Arthur Holmes during welcome week, a Christian college is not a church. The primary goal must still be education-- although one may be surprised to find that even in pursuit of that goal Christ is King. At OBU, I saw the beauty of joining a community honestly seeking both God and truth.

I am unsure that if I were looking for schools now if my parents would be convinced by OBU. If you haven't seen Jacob's post on OBU's falling rankings, the numbers are startling. When I chose OBU, my parents trusted that although they disagreed with the school ideologically, I would still get a fantastic education.

But is that still true today? Or has OBU lost sight of its vision? In an effort to protect its "Christian-ness," I fear that OBU has stopped being an excellent institution of higher learning. The problem is that its excellence is part of what made OBU Christian. Each of us was encouraged to study as a means of encountering God-- and to do so with excellence for that is the highest calling of Christ.

Now, I am afraid that OBU is trying to be safe. But encountering God has never been safe. And so instead of good, Christian education, OBU is offering pat answers and certainty.

My parents would never have been willing to pay for that-- and I'm sure I wouldn't have wanted it.

Those of us who are vested in OBU's future need to consider what kind of students we will be attracting with this new path the institution has taken. If we continue in this way, I fear that our story may be similar to the SBC seminaries-- which it seems many OBU grads are avoiding. We will no longer be able to attract the best students; they will find their education elsewhere.

Please continue to help us bring OBU back to the place that made me first fall in love with it. I know I am not the only one.

Welcome Week 2012: The Idea of a Christian College

Welcome Week continues for more than 500 incoming OBU students who moved in Saturday.  Our thoughts are with them, and with all the students, faculty, staff, and administrators preparing to begin a new academic year.

If you've been on Bison Hill during August the past 8 or 10 years, you probably know about a little book by Arthur F. Holmes called The Idea of a Christian College.  I know the faculty has held the book in high esteem for some time -- perhaps since its publication in 1975.  I don't know when it became required reading for Welcome Week.  But for some number of years, a small-group faculty-led discussion of the book has been a critical component of the Welcome Week experience.

Such is the case again this year.  Eleven faculty and staff from across the university are leading new students in a discussion of The Idea of a Christian College.  From every indication we have, these professors are all outstanding.  Given the composition of the list, I'd say there was absolutely no way Provost Norman or any of the new fundamentalist deans had anything to do with putting Welcome Week together -- and that can only be a good thing.  No need for the indoctrination to begin before the first day.  Let's at least wait til the freshmen get to "Apologetics" 101.

Actually, Holmes makes a compelling argument that the Christian college is not the church and thus does not have a role to play in "defending the faith."  The emphasis is on how to integrate faith with learning.  Holmes thus allows for not only empirical knowledge, but also revelatory knowledge.  Christian professors should model and strive to help form a faith that can withstand the most rigorous intellectual scrutiny.

Considering his thoroughly conservative outlook, Holmes offers a strong defense of academic freedom.  With freedom comes responsibility, of course, but it occurs to me that the new sheriffs at OBU would probably have preferred to use a book with a watered-down definition of academic freedom that the new SBC elites could approve to give the illusion of legitimacy to the SBC's "academic" functions and institutions.

Faculty are discussing Holmes's book this week and emphasizing three key concepts: the integration of faith and learning, academic freedom, and Christian worldview.  We've already pointed out how the concept of "Christian worldview" can be easily manipulated into a naive fundamentalism.  But given the extremely high quality and integrity of the people involved and the apparent fact that the faculty and student life staff are still steering the ship (at least as far as Welcome Week is concerned), we're encouraged.

As Welcome Week gives way to the first semester of college for the Class of 2016, our hope is that "all truth is God's truth" is more than a slogan at OBU.  We know that against vocal opposition, the new administration has imported trappings of the overly dogmatic post-Takeover faux-academic fundamentalism to Bison Hill.  But as long as OBU can remain the kind of college Art Holmes envisioned, that fundamentalism will not take root.  If we're lucky, those who propagate it will soon realize that they are unwelcome.  Let's help them realize it sooner rather than later so that the early Whitlock years will be remembered as a sad but short chapter rather than a decisive turn toward ignorance and irrelevance.

And let's hope that President Whitlock cares more about his legacy in the eyes of OBU students and faculty than SBC elites.  But make no mistake: he can't have it both ways.  The new fundamentalists have made that impossible.  Whitlock will have to choose.

A Review: The Importance and Impact of Worldview

This week, we're reviewing a series of essays in the Baptist Messenger by OBU's Whitlock-era religion hires.  You may find the original article for this review here.


Again, this article is a basic introduction to the concept of "Worldview" with a bit more explanation as to what areas a "worldview" covers-- and what material will be covered through the rest of the series. The author begins with a story of three friends on a Safari. Upon seeing the same safari animals, each comes to a different conclusion about the meaning of such a sight. This difference, the author suggests, is due to "worldview." A "worldview" then, is the conceptual lens by which each person makes meaning in her/his world. The author determines the four core questions answered by "worldview" to be: "What is our nature? What is our world? What is our problem? What is our destination?" The author continues to suggest that "worldview" is thus important because it provides the frame by which we all make meaning out of the events of our lives. The author concludes by mentioning that there are many different kinds of worldview, "Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Existentialist, New Age, etc.," and gives some criteria for determining if "someone’s worldview is true—that is, if they see the world the way the world really is?" His suggested criteria include internal consistency, external consistency, and liveability. After reiterating the importance of a worldview which answers fundamental questions, he ends by saying, "It is, therefore, crucial that we examine our worldview, to ensure that we see the world the way God does."


First, the author is quite right to suggest that every person has a "worldview" and that it is the way we all make meaning of our world. I, perhaps, would not use the word "worldview" but the way he defines it, it does the trick. This is very similar to the idea of "thinking theologically" about all things which I introduced yesterday. The point is interesting, then, that the author admits that meaning is created by each person and not picked up objectively from the outside world. This is a very astute observation and bears remembering.


So then, perhaps I do not take issue with the idea of worldview but with the way it is being appropriated. One of our commenters (Thanks, Chris!) astutely pointed out that calling our own particular frame with which we view the world the "Christian Worldview" is simply taking the authority of Christianity and stamping it onto our own set of meaning-making presuppositions. Surely, we derive our worldview in great part from religion-- I'm not saying that the author's worldview is unchristian. But is it the Christian worldview? Are there not many things on which Christians disagree? 


Especially in light of the way the author of the last article insisted that worldview is adopted from the bible, it makes me cautious when anyone speaks of "The Christian worldview" or "The Biblical worldview." Case in point, let us take the example of the animals on the safari. Sure, Christians might all agree that those animals are created by God. But then what? Should we protect them as God's creatures? Or should we care nothing for them because as soon as the earth is destroyed Jesus is coming back?-- Both options come from people with "Christian worldviews" and find their backing in scripture.


So my problem with worldview, with the way it is being used by the authors of these articles, is the way that they turn to worldview to solve all of their problems. It is as if we could just teach everyone the right answers to the four questions of the article, "What is our nature? What is our world? What is our problem? What is our destination?," then we would all know the right answers to everything all the time. (Also, look for the suggested answers to these questions provided by the series in the upcoming articles. Thus far we really only have hints-- but we're getting there.)


But that doesn't really work. First, Christians don't know everything (remember Paul's looking into a mirror dimly), and second, that which we do know, we disagree on. So even if we had all of the completely correct answers to those important questions (we don't), we still probably wouldn't know what to do with them.


The other major problematic implication of this use of worldview is the divisions which it draws between "us and them." There are the people with the "Christian worldview" and there are those with other kinds of worldviews. Ours is true and theirs isn't. End of story.


That is a shockingly different affirmation than the one which I received at OBU which was to "seek God's truth wherever it may be found" and that "all truth is God's truth." Rather, this use of "worldview" presupposes that Christians have the monopoly on truth. I am not saying that we should believe everything we hear-- but I am saying that people who are not Christians are not stupid. And they don't believe what they believe for no good reason.


Again, take the author's example of the animals on the safari. I may not agree with the new age persona he crafts to say there is a "spark of the divine" in the animals just as there is in human beings. But, probably I could learn a lot more about caring for the creation of God in real ways from someone who does believe that than from many Evangelicals. 


And what about the picture he gives of the atheist response, supposed to be characteristic of Richard Dawkins? Fundamentalists might be surprised to find how much they have in common with Dawkins worldview-- i.e. the need for absolute truth based on hard evidence. Granted, they come out on different sides of the equation. But believing there is proof that there is a God and believing that there is proof that there is no God requires many of the same underlying presuppositions.


I guess what I am trying to say is that reducing someone to a "______ worldview" be it Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, New Age, etc. means we cannot take them seriously as people. Because believe it or not, there is as much diversity in each of those movements as there is within Christianity. And each of those people probably has something to teach you.


If we are going to affirm that all people are made in the image of God-- then there is something to learn about God from all people, no matter their worldview.


If OBU really wants to "equip students to engage a diverse world" the way to do it is not to teach them why they are already right and already have all the answers while everyone else is wrong. 


And finally, once they leave Bison Hill and begin to meet people who are different from them, they may find that many different "worldviews" are "liveable." I'm not saying that makes them all worth the same. But I think it's pretty offensive to say that no one can live a bearable life without Christianity. It's the straw-man fallacy. People all over the world spend their whole lives unchristian all the time. And if you think that they are all miserable, what will it do to your faith when you find out that they're not?


So I agree with the author that "worldview" is important. But I am unsure if it can be taught as a definitive set of answers. First, those are answers that we don't have-- and they are answers that are incomplete anyway. If we are truly seeking to be a Liberal Arts University which integrates faith and learning-- that probably means my faith is going to be shaped by that which I learn-- and hopefully I will never stop learning. 


The purpose of education is not to create students with all the answers. The point is to teach students how to learn-- and that God is faithful to us when we seek to find God in the truth. But all of us must be willing to change, because this side of glory, we will never have it figured out completely.

A Review: Christian Worldview and Divine Revelation

This week, we're reviewing a series of essays in the Baptist Messenger by OBU's Whitlock-era religion hires.  You may find the original article for this review here.

Unsurprisingly, this article is a pretty straightforward introduction to the concept of a Christian worldview. The author argues that worldview is something which comes from God-- by means of revelation, which he defines as the Bible. A worldview, the author continues to say, is like a pair of glasses. It does not change our surroundings but allows us to see other things clearly, as they really are. Thus, it is important to stand on the truth of scripture as the foundation for our lives. The author gives another image, that of a puzzle. The Bible is like the picture on the box and everyday we put in more pieces as we put together the puzzle. But we have to be careful not to get mixed up with pieces from other puzzles. The author finishes by concluding that our theology determines our worldview and the Bible determines our theology.

As a student of theology, I am encouraged endlessly to "think theologically" about all aspects of life. (It's even something of a joke at Brite, how much of a catchphrase that is.) So that aspect of worldview, I understand. And quite right, as Christians, our theology determines much of how we see the world.

What is interesting to me in this article is that there seems to be only one way to understand scripture, and one type of Christian worldview.

I began to understand more of the author's theology when the second word of the article reminded me that God is indeed male. (For those of you keeping score at home, a masculine pronoun was used for God 10 times in this short 950 word piece.)

For those of you who are convinced that I am a feminist nit-picking because I am left with little else to quibble with, I assure you, that is not the case. First, the implied "worldview" the author seems to be advocating for all Christians follows the usual post-Takeover route to being oppressive to women. (Oh, and look for that pattern throughout the series.) 

Secondly, the use of the masculine pronoun emphasizes something I said yesterday; this is evidence of the echo chamber. Again, as a student of theology, I can tell you that no one is going to publish anything that uses masculine pronouns for God unless they are evangelical. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being evangelical (although I maintain the language is oppressive), I'm just saying that maybe the author is talking only to an increasingly insular subset of Christians.

Further, the author proves to have continued the trend of the post-Takeover 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. In 1963, the BF&M maintained that "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ." But this sentence was removed in the fundamentalist-inspired 2000 revision. Thus, Jesus is no longer the fullness of God's revelation, but God is found in the words on a page.

Don't get me wrong. I have dedicated my entire life to understanding those words on the page. But the Word of God (capital W intended) is Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh. I am not saying that the author would not affirm that Jesus is indeed the fullness of God's self revelation. I am only saying that he presents the only necessary revelation for a worldview to be the Bible.

Suddenly, it is no longer sufficient for Jesus to be the Truth (John 14.6) but we can only stand on the "inspiration, authority, and total truthfulness" of scripture. Now, I'm not disagreeing with any of those things, I'm simply pointing out that pragmatically, it makes a huge difference whether one is standing on Jesus as the Truth or upon affirmation of the words on the page.

The problem with saying there is one Christian worldview and that it is based on scripture is that scripture has been understood so variously throughout our history, that statement is impossible. When someone says, "The bible says...(x, y, z)..." what they really mean is, "My interpretation of the bible is... (x, y, z)..." There is no such thing as objectivity. And so even though the Bible may be inspired and authoritative and totally truthful -- none of us know what it means. 

200 years ago, people (even Southern Baptists) held up the Bible and proclaimed that God did not intend for the races to mix in marriage.

At some point we need to acknowledge that that was our action based on words in our holy book-- and that we messed up. We read it wrong. All of us did. And certainly we haven't figured it out between now and then.

We all see in a mirror dimly, we all know only in part (1 Cor. 13:12).

If the Bible was easy to understand, why would we have seminaries? And why would we have so many denominations? All of those splits have come from different ways of understanding the same words on the page.

So, I am skeptical of an author who claims that the Bible is like glasses that make us see everything else more clearly. Surely, that is my experience sometimes. But so often, I read the Bible and it makes everything more complicated.

I am 100% agreed that all aspects of my life and thought life ought to be put under the lordship of Christ. But I am not sure what that means all of the time, and I don't think that anyone else does either. Last time I checked, all of us had a really old book that didn't come with any other instructions than read it, try your best, and trust God -- because God is faithful.

Claiming that one way of reading that book is authoritative is not the firm foundation we need. 

I like the metaphor of the puzzle. But if the image on the box is God -- that's a box I'm not going to see this side of glory. So I'll just trust that the pieces that fit belong in the picture.

What Does it Mean to be Baptist?

This week we have looked at some of the other Baptist universities who have stayed with their conventions after the fundamentalist takeover. Some of these colleges are not much like OBU. Some of them are a little bit closer. And some of them may as well be OBU if a few things had gone differently.

But each gives us an interesting look at the same question. What does it mean to be a Baptist-- specifically with regards to higher ed?

For our friends at Shorter, they will be waiting until December to find out if their addition of a lifestyle statement to the requirements for continued employment there will ruin their accreditation visit from SACS. Because although it is their prerogative as a private institution to institute such a statement, it is a big no no in the world of higher ed accreditation to do anything which denies the value of tenure-- i.e. firing professors for refusing to sign even if they are tenured. It's estimated that one third of their faculty will leave before they sign.

Is that what it means to be a Baptist? Making sure that all of the people we associate with act a certain way, hold certain political views, and above all, not to take seriously the requirements of an institution for higher learning?

We have seen this week that that is certainly what it can mean to be a Baptist.

But something we here at Save OBU have said from the beginning is that the recently fundamentalist state conventions do not have the last word on what it means to be Baptist. And perhaps, in 1910, when our forerunners decided to build a co-ed, liberal arts university for their newly incorporated state instead of a seminary, it was because they knew that to be Baptist could mean a celebration of learning and truth seeking in all disciplines.

So this week, we say Baptists should be known for what they are for, not for what they are against.

I look forward to exploring each of the historic Baptist freedoms in turn and their implications on higher education. Perhaps we will see that the future is not so bleak after all.

There is another possibility for the future-- one for which Save OBU will continue to advocate before it is too late.



For those who are curious, I take number and outline of the four Baptist freedoms from Walter Shurden's book, The Baptist Identity. Shurden, Walter B. The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms. Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys Pub, 1993.

Diversity at OBU: Theology

Welcome back, and a glorious Easter Monday to you all.

I hope you have enjoyed our Easter break and theological diversion and that you have had a chance to think on this most wonderful weekend in the liturgical year, along with the mystery and symbolism which accompanies it.

Easter is my favorite holiday of the year and I certainly enjoyed reading Jacob's take on it.

This week I was planning on looking at diversity at OBU. Although I had originally wanted to begin with racial diversity, Jacob's Easter posts got me thinking about another kind of diversity. Specifically, what is the theological diversity at OBU?

This, I can only speculate on-- I haven't looked at any stats (and I don't think those are the kind of stats that people publish), but I did spend four years at OBU studying and talking about theology, so I can tell you a little bit of what I saw.

Most people at OBU think very similarly when it comes to theology-- and that's ok and probably expected. After all, it's a baptist school in a conservative state. It's not strange that most people both come into and leave OBU thinking like a typical conservative evangelical about what God and the bible are like.

Some issues will be pretty divided: gender roles. Some issues will gain a small following: open theism, rejecting inerrancy. Every now and then there will be one student who sees the resurrection or virgin birth as a metaphor. I had a theology teacher who said he once received an ethics paper arguing that prostitution should be allowed. So, you never know what is going to come out of a twenty-something, every now and then.

But here's what I want to focus on: how are those dissenting students treated? How was Jacob treated in the comments on his Easter posts? And how did I feel by the time I left OBU?

Granted, I'm going to be to the left of most people at OBU, but to the right on the spectrum generally. Comparing my theology to what is generally believed at OBU and at my new mainline seminary, I would probably agree much more often with those at OBU. But I feel much more accepted in the world of mainline protestantism because it is acceptable there to figure out your own theology.

But shouldn't the tradition which affirms so strongly the priesthood of the believer be the place where it is acceptable to seek after God for one's self? And shouldn't a place that affirms that all truth is God's truth be unafraid of open inquiry? Especially into such important issues of doctrine?

But instead OBU tends towards the authoritarian-- if you disagree with x, y, or z, we're pretty sure you're not even a Christian.

Those brave enough to question are so often cast out as unacceptable.

Where does this attitude come from? And what ties need to be broken before students can be accepted and encouraged to think deeply about the most important issues in their lives instead of policed?