Analysis: Moore Replaces Land as ERLC President

I wasn't going to write anything during Holy Week, but there is big news in the Southern Baptist world right now.  The Reverend Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, has been selected to succeed the Reverend Dr. Richard Land as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Committee.  As Land before him, Moore will be an even more public face of Southern Baptists than the SBC presidents who come and go every two years.

The Reverend Dr. Russell Moore

We've seen a lot of news (see here, here, here, here, and here), but not much analysis. I'll attempt to provide some here.

During the 1980s, Fundamentalist Takeover architects and footsoldiers spread the hilarious lie that the SBC's Christian Life Commission --- along with other institutions such as the Sunday School Board, seminaries, and missions agencies --- was overflowing with liberals.  The newly-constituted post-Takeover public policy arm of the SBC was called the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.  Around the time of the ERLC's founding in 1988, the SBC began withdrawing its support for the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.  (The BJC, a highly-respected advocate for religious liberty and the separation of church and state, now receives support from every major Baptist body except SBC-affiliated ones.)

The ERLC strives for "an American society that affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority."  Its mission is "to awaken, inform, energize, equip, and mobilize Christians to be the catalysts for the Biblically-based transformation of their families, churches, communities, and the nation."  Whereas the SBC was initially supportive of the Roe v. Wade decision and left the issue of abortion to individual believers' consciences, it eventually made pro-life advocacy its top public policy priority.  In the past 15 years, the ERLC has also advocated extensively for traditional marriage.

Since its inception, the Rev. Dr. Richard Land has led the ERLC.  Under Land's leadership, the ERLC moved the SBC's policy advocacy from its previously non-partisan posture.  While opposition to abortion and gay marriage have been the most prominent and well-known issues, the ERLC eventually provided theological justification (however flimsy) for almost all of the Republican Party platform by the 2000s.  In a sharp departure from almost every faith community, Land was a leading advocate of Operation Iraqi Freedom on "just war" grounds.  He also lent credibility as more and more white evangelicals began to oppose things like progressive taxation and government spending on health and welfare programs.  As the Christian Right became institutionalized in Washington, Land was at least as influential as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson.  He occasionally attempted a kingmaker role in Republican presidential politics, successfully in 2000 but unsuccessfully in 2008 (Fred Thompson) and 2012 (Rick Perry).

To Land's great credit, the ERLC has been an important voice for international religious freedom and human rights.  In the U.S., however, Baptists are divided on whether to adopt the persecution complex that evangelical cultural and political leaders love to proclaim -- the idea that the majority religion in the freest nation on earth is somehow a persecuted minority whose liberties are constantly threatened.

There were no shortage of controversies during Land's long tenure at the ERLC.  But as other evangelicals (white, black, and Latino) became less enamored with one-party politics and moved their advocacy into areas such as the environment, poverty, income inequality, and immigration, the ERLC has proceeded much more slowly can cautiously into those areas.  I don't know if "token support" is a fair characterization for the ERLC's advocacy on issues that challenge the GOP platform, but that is how it has been perceived by many in the faith-based advocacy community.

Last spring, Land made some remarks about the slaying of Trayvon Martin, a young, unarmed black man who was gunned down in Florida by a white neighborhood watch volunteer.  Land accused the Obama Administration of using the tragedy to stir up racial tension and "gin up the black vote" in the 2012 election.  A Baptist blogger presented evidence that Land had plagiarized some of his material.  Eventually, he announced his retirement following an internal ERLC investigation.

Land relishes his role as a culture warrior and has stated his intention to continue this work in other ways.  Louisiana College, in the throes of its own fundamentalist takeover, believes Land's name and energy will help save its fledgling planned law school.  As ERLC president emeritus, he will still have a platform if he wants one.

In a chapel sermon at OBU in 2001, the Princeton-, Oxford-, and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary-educated Land told OBU students, "People will tell you we can't legislate morality.  But we can.  And we must!"  After the sermon, one OBU professor remarked to me, "Richard Land doesn't speak for me!"

But alas, the ERLC does speak for the Southern Baptist Convention.  Perhaps, at long last, the ERLC's era as a de facto arm of the Republican Party is ending.  This seems to be the consensus emerging in the wake of the announcement that Russell Moore will head the ERLC.  One SBC insider predicted to me that, under Moore, we can expect common ground abortion work on issues like adoption, more attention to the environment and global warming, and more nuanced fiscal thought.  Perhaps the ERLC will join the National Association of Evangelicals and other faith-based policy organizations and take a more authentically biblical and less stridently partisan posture in Washington.

Moore is being unanimously lauded as the ideal candidate for this position at this time, not only by conservatives but also by the moderates who remain in the SBC (both of them! -- I kid.)  Moore will still have to answer to hard-right forces within the SBC.  While no one should be totally surprised if Moore's ERLC is merely more of the same, many Baptists eagerly expect some positive changes.  Of course, the ERLC will remain strongly focused on criminalizing abortion and preserving traditional mariage.  Yet many seem to expect a stronger emphasis on adoption and reducing the number of unwanted and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, rather than merely supporting ever more restrictions on abortion.  On homosexuality, Moore will have his work cut out for him, as a recent poll indicates that a majority of young white evangelicals (18-34) believe gay marriage should be legal.

No one expects Moore to be quite the sharp-tongued GOP insider that Land was.  Interestingly, more than one press clipping described Moore as "winsome" -- apparently in contrast to Land.  I'm sure Land's grand retirement banquet is coming, when an entire generation of post-Takeover SBC luminaries will pay their tribute.  But it's significant that no one is saying they're sad to see Land leave.

Please indulge one point of personal privilege here.  In my "real" work, I'm a political science Ph.D. student who researches, among other things, evangelicals' attitudes toward birth control.  While the issue is pretty much settled among evangelicals, I am curious to see whether white evangelical elites attempt to move toward a more Catholic position, as they have done on abortion.  In a wide-ranging book on the subject, Allan C. Carlson points out that Protestants opposed birth control from the Reformation until the 20th century (the 1930s for mainline Protestants and the 1960s for evangelicals).  Moore wrote a surprisingly positive review for the book, entitled Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973.  Moore said,

"This provocative volume by one of the world's foremost family-issues scholars suggests that perhaps American Evanglicalism unwittingly traded the Blessed Virgin Mary for Margaret Sanger.  The arguments are hard-hitting and unrelenting.  Reading this book is like seeing an unwelcome reflection a mirror. But it might just start a conversation that is well worth having."

So, does Moore believe that looking at evangelicals' acceptance of birth control is "unwelcome" or that we should be having a conversation about the morality of birth control?  I, for one, look forward to hearing more of what Dr. Moore has to say on this issue.

In any event, we here at Save OBU congratulate Dr. Russell Moore on his election to the ERLC presidency and wish him well in this very important position.  We are uninterested in worldly politics and endorse no outside causes or organizations, but have from time to time commented on how the post-Takeover SBC institutions have embodied (or failed to embody) historic Baptist distinctives.  I suspect many of us have strong opinions about the SBC's de-funding of the Baptist Joint Committee, the Takeover henchmen and their unethical actions surrounding the Christian Life Commission in the 1980s, and some of the ERLC's positions under Richard Land.

But let's all hope for a better future for evangelical advocacy and pray for Dr. Moore as he transitions to this new ministry.  A few were surprised that Al Mohler didn't get the position.  I asked them why they would have expected Mohler to go to the ERLC.  They responded that he writes and talks so much more about politics and the culture wars than he does about theology.  But I reminded them that Mohler already has his dream job.  My (amateur) first thought was that the difference between Land, 65, and Moore, 41, would be like the difference between Jerry Falwell and Mike Huckabee -- a friendlier face on the same hard-line positions.  But everyone I've talked to expects something substantively different.

Significantly, Moore leaves vacant a very prestigious post in Southern Baptist academica -- the deanship in Theology at the SBTS.  Let me be the first to nominate OBU Provost Stan Norman for the position!

Tim Tebow, FBC Dallas, and Evangelical Extremism

As longtime readers know (and hopefully appreciate), Save OBU is completely uninterested in secular politics and "culture wars."  This is a bit of a challenge for me personally because I essentially work in the culture war and politics business.  I'm writing a doctoral dissertation on evangelicals' contraception attitudes. Though at Save OBU my interest in Southern Baptist institutional life is primarily centered on higher education, I am constantly exposed to SBC/evangelical elites and other thought leaders who appear at least as interested in worldly politics as in the Kingdom God sent Jesus to proclaim.  It's true that most Save OBU supporters are culturally and theologically conservative, but I've learned that we have a lot of moderates and maybe even a few liberals in our ranks.  For the sake of unity, I've tried to steer clear of politics and culture wars.

Given all that, it would seem that New York Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow's announcement Thursday that he will not speak as scheduled at First Baptist Church of Dallas in April is irrelevant to our cause.  But on reflection, I do think the episode is indicative of something we talk about here all the time: SBC elites' ever-increasing fundamentalism and extremism.

As the story unfolded Thursday, three things struck me.  First, FBC's response to Tebow's cancellation was tacky, passive-aggressive, and reflected poorly on the church.  Second, the whole affair says a lot more about FBC's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffress, than it does about Tim Tebow.  Jeffress has a long history of controversial statements.  Tebow, on the other hand, has a long history of living his faith joyfully and publicly under intense scrutiny.  But what struck me most was seeing not one but several news headlines proclaiming that Tebow had cancelled an appearance at the "controversial First Baptist Church of Dallas."

For those who missed the story, you can find Tebow's announcement here, the church's press release here, and a partial compendium of Dr. Jeffress's statements here.

Given his record of provocative public statements, most notably about both major party presidential candidates in 2012 but apparently also about Catholicism, it's unsurprising and unremarkable that Dr. Jeffress would be labeled controversial. But FBC Dallas itself?  Isn't that a little unfair?  It got me thinking.

First of all, I thought Tebow was very classy to phone Dr. Jeffress in advance of announcing his decision publicly and to acknowledge "the faithful members of the historic First Baptist Church of Dallas."  Culturally, institutionally, and politically, it's undeniable that the congregation has moved somewhat to the right along with its pastors, the alternative Baptist state convention in Texas, and the entire Southern Baptist Convention's leadership.  Of course, the disappearance of moderates and others who rejected having their religion conflated with a political party has also pushed the median member further to the right.

But let's face the facts.  The people of FBC have always been conservative.  Before and after the Takeover, FBC Dallas was a (if not the) flagship church of the SBC.  Its longtime pastor, the Rev. Dr. W. A. Criswell, was a typical fundamentalist who preached inerrancy and premillennial dispensationalism.  (He was also lukewarm at best toward racial integration until it was no longer socially palatable to be racist.)  But just as no one could have called FBC controversial, few would have considered Dr. Criswell to be a controversial preacher.

So what has changed?

The legion of SBC elites who unleashed a storm of criticism on Tebow would have you believe that the media are at fault --- that they have forced Christians out of the public square, intimidated Tebow into bowing out, and labeled every conservative "controversial" or worse.  Even the Rev. Rick Warren, who should know better, joined the whine-fest.  But this is total and complete nonsense.  I remain utterly baffled that the majority religion in the freest nation on earth can sustain an imaginary persecution complex.

The First Baptist Church of Dallas wasn't controversial 50 years ago because its pastor wasn't controversial.  Southern Baptists weren't controversial because their seminary presidents and agency heads didn't double as political party operatives.  Baptists pretty much abided by the centuries-old consensus on what it meant to be Baptist.  And the evangelical impulse to engage the culture (contrasted with fundamentalists' separatism and obnoxiousness) was generally in line with that historic consensus.

If FBC Dallas is controversial today, it's because Dr. Jeffress is controversial -- not because the congregation or the media or anything else has changed.

You see, Dr. Criswell may not have supported George Romney for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, but he didn't publicly call him an unchristian, Hell-bound cult member, as Jeffress did when speaking about Mitt Romney.  And Criswell certainly didn't suggest that George Romney's religion disqualified him from public office.  Criswell did not like LBJ or Jimmy Carter, but he didn't say that they were paving the way for the antichrist, as Jeffress said about President Obama.  Like so many of today's SBC leaders, Dr. Jeffress wants to retain evangelicals' cultural engagement but has embraced the worst aspects of fundamentalism: anti-intellectualism, a completely delusional persecution complex, and a tone that seems to be deliberately as offensive and obnoxious as possible.

Even more obnoxious than FBC's angry and rude press release was Jeffress's pathetic attempt to force Tebow into his crazy camp:

"There doesn't seem to be any daylight between what we believe," Jeffress said, noting that Tebow is a member of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.  "He simply attributed it to needing to stay away from controversy."

Tell you what, Dr. Jeffress.  Let's let Tebow speak for himself regarding whether he believes, like you, that homosexuality leads to pedophilia or that the president is paving the way for the reign of the antichrist.

Personally, I'm ambivalent about Tim Tebow.  It occurs to me that people who flaunt their religiosity "have received their reward in full" (Matthew 6).  But I can't possibly know Tebow's heart and whether or not his motivation is "to be seen of men."  Either way, I admire his faithfulness, work ethic, and apparent humility of spirit.  One of my first dates with my bride, Cara, was a Florida Gators game in 2008, Tebow's junior season.  My brother and sister-in-law saw some of Tebow's (or God's, depending on how you look at it) spectacular performances in Denver late in the 2011 season.

After being hastily and harshly criticized by evangelicals who had for years been his strongest supporters, Tebow now knows how today's evangelical extremists operate.  When you're useful to them, they praise and respect you.  But when you exercise some independent thought that does not follow their theology or politics to the letter, they throw you out like yesterday's trash.

These are not the people we need running our conventions, our churches, or our universities.  For now, we're stuck with too many of them.  But in the truest Baptist spirit, let's remind the world that they do not speak for us as they wreck the reputations of our once-proud institutions.

Diversity at OBU: I See White People

As Veronica pointed out Tuesday in her discussion of diversity (such as it is) among OBU chapel preachers (if men; speakers, if women), OBU may not have a race problem.  More precisely, it may not have a race problem that differs substantially from the SBC's race problem.  So let's take each issue in turn.

Race in the SBC
Given that the SBC was formed largely over its insistance in the morality of slavery, it should come as no surprise that it has had problems with race over the years.  After the Civil War, the other denominations that split over slavery eventually reunited with their Northern counterparts.  Not the SBC.  During the Civil Rights movement, the SBC was notoriously silent.  Rev. Jerry Falwell, who disagreed with the Brown ruling that integrated schools and regularly featured segregationist politicians on his media programs, was typical.  Under the guise of opposing "secularism," Baptists founded scores of essentially segregated private schools in the 1970s.  Though by the 1980s and following it was socially unpalatable for even Southern Baptists to be openly racist, they continued to oppose all federal civil rights legislation and became wedded to a secular political party whose Southern Strategy catapulted it back into prominence during the Takeover years and whose primary electorate even today is less than 2-3% black in almost every state.

The SBC finally got around to acknowledging and apologizing for its racist past in 1995.  But as late as 2011, Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, dismissively and incorrectly explained the Baptist split in 1845 thusly: "What the Northerners were saying was that ending slavery is more important than spreading the gospel."

SBC pastors and bureaucrats sit around in meetings, wring their hands, contemplate name changes for the convention, and wonder why black people don't want to be Southern Baptists!  The name change committee based its recommendation on a survey that found a 53/40 favorable/unfavorable rating for Southern Baptists.  I doubt the committee published a breakdown by race because it could be wildly embarrassing, but I'd love to see that if anyone has it.

Now, in fairness, the SBC is going to elect a black president this summer, Fred Luter of New Orleans.  Given how many Southern Baptists gleefully joined the blatantly racist "birther" movement, I hope Rev. Luter is prepared to show them his birth certificate.

Messengers electing the Rev. Bryant White

Wright president of the SBC in 2010.

Which is harder, finding Waldo or finding a person
of color in the Southern Baptist Convention?

Now, there are several large black Baptist denominations, and I don't know what kind of partnerships or overtures have taken place between the black and white Baptist groups.  But I'm pretty sure more than just worship style divides white and black Baptists.  The best comparison I can think of (and the one I know best) is the Methodist tradition.  The Methodist Episcopal Church, South rejoined the national Methodist Church in 1939.  Of course, large black Methodist denominations also exist.  But while there were, of course, segregated white Methodist churches for many years, the (mostly white) denomination took a much more open, welcoming, and sympathetic stance toward blacks than the SBC did.  The United Methodist Church (formed in 1968 when Methodists merged with the Evangelical United Bretheren Church) has been quite progressive on civil rights and issues important to the black community, while the Southern Baptist Convention has been tone deaf at best, and outright hostile at worst.

Race at OBU

For the first 45 years of its history, OBU was segregated.  I don't know when it started admitting Native Americans.  But we do know that OBU began admit black students in 1955.  That year, OBU trustee and legendary FBC OKC pastor Rev. Dr. Herschel H. Hobbs led an effort to integrate the university.  (Given Hobbs's moderate temperament and disdain for culture war politics, this is unsurprising.  Fundamentalists grew to loathe Hobbs, booing him loudly at the 1980 Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis as he warned, "Beware the lures of creeping creedalism" -- a harbinger of the Takeover to come.  That's right.  No matter what kind of lip service today's Baptist leaders pay to Dr. Hobbs, when you think of Anthony Jordan, Stan Norman, Al Mohler, and other SBC luminaries, you need to think of them booing Herschel Hobbs.  Because that's whose side of the controversy they are on.  If they had been at that convention, they would have been booing Dr. Hobbs.  That is a certainty.  And it's what makes OBU's decision to name the religion department in his memory all the more strange and, frankly, insulting, given how the Takeover faction has besmirched his legacy.)

Also, OBU has drawn a lot of brown students over the years from places its white alumni traveled as missionaries.

Today, Forbes (in whose rankings we have plummeted the past two years) reports that OBU is 74% white.  If that seems like a gross underestimation, it's probably because it counts 7% as Native American and 5% as unknown.  Six percent of OBU students are black.  I don't know how that compares to the proportion of members in BGCO congregations who are black.  Again, the BGCO probably won't publish the data because it would be so embarrassing.

OBU definitely has an opportunity to make more progress in providing a first-rate Christian liberal arts education to more minority students.  Given that racial minority status is often correlated with relatively lower levels of family income and wealth, it is generally more difficult for minority families to send their children to expensive private universities like OBU.  Certainly athletic scholarships have helped in this regard.  OBU has a proud history of highly accomplished black student-athletes.  The football program should help the disparity even more, but from what I've seen, the coaches and recruits are as lily-white as the rest of OBU.  That should begin to even out over time, though.

To my knowledge, none of the black church traditions (Baptist or otherwise) have colleges in Oklahoma.  In fact, Langston University is the only historically black college or university in the state.  With a large endowment, relatively generous academic and athletic scholarships, and a first-rate (for now) faculty, OBU has the resources to draw non-white students.  But I'm not sure it has the culture.  Culturally, OBU, the BGCO, and the SBC seem to harken back to the 1950s as a kind of golden age.  And, if you recall, the 1950s were not such a nice time for black people in Oklahoma and elsewhere.

I wonder what percentage of the OBU faculty is black.  Again, it's not for lack of resources, opportunity, or desire.  It seems more of a cultural problem.  Now that mainline Protestants are no longer welcome to come teach at OBU, it seems the university is restricting its applicant pool to the most lily-white strand of American Protestantism.  That's right: Dr. Norman's new, narrower definition of who's Christian enough to teach at OBU is going to make it even less likely that we will have a diverse faculty.  And this is already an area of weakness for us.

Here's a picture from a banquet last week honoring significant milestones in faculty and staff members' years of service.

Here's the year before that:

And the year before that:

The theme of the week has been diversity.  If OBU actually expects to equip students to engage a diverse world, I think we need to get our own house in order.  It's not just that OBU lacks significant diversity, it seems to suffer from cultural and structural baggage imposed by the ever narrower definition of what it means to be Baptist since the Fundamentalist Takeover.  Given the SBC's (and by extension, the BGCO's) horrible record on and apparent disdain for diversity (whether theological, social, political, or racial), OBU is better off on its own.

Diversity at OBU: Chapel

When I started creating this post, I was surprised to learn that OBU was not as white as I thought it was. According to the OBU website, OBU is actually only 70% white-- a number much lower than probably most of us expected.

Actually, it turns out that student-wise, OBU is doing pretty well. The US is about 64% white and Oklahoma is at about 66%.  So, good job, OBU. I am pleasantly surprised.

But, perhaps that makes even more tragic my original reason for writing this post. As I have mentioned before, I spent two of my years at OBU serving on Chapel CREW-- the group of students who plans and executes chapel. And the truth is, students do actually have a lot of sway over what happens there-- so that is good.

But students do not have the final say (which is probably also good), and there are other political factors at play in who comes to speak at chapel at OBU.

One of the most interesting are three themed days which were there all four of my years at OBU and  remain on the OBU chapel calendar. One of them I have already mentioned: women in missions and ministry day. The other two are like it African American heritage day and Native American heritage day.

What are the implications of the existence of these days?

First, we had already wondered on this blog why someone like Voddie Baucham was possibly asked to preach at chapel this year. Well, the OBU press release does not say that it is African American Heritage day-- but everyone knows that that day falls on the first chapel of the spring semester. So I guess it doesn't matter that Baucham is well known throughout America for being sexist-- we'll still ask him to preach at OBU because he's black and, well, it's that time of year again.

Or what about the time that a pretty well known man from the area was asked to preach on Native American Heritage day? He made an interesting statement to the tune of, "I don't preach because I'm Native American, I preach because you want me to come." Luckily, he was given a different day to come preach.

All of that to say, it may seem like these measures strengthen diversity. But to me it really seems to highlight something I said in another post: if chapel is supposed to be a place where we are all led into worship, it looks to me like the only people being asked to lead are white men in suits.

It seems like the only reason we can affirm ministers of a different color is because we give them their own day-- but otherwise it's assumed that the best preachers are white. How is 30% of OBU's student population supposed to feel about that?

And if you happen to be neither white nor male, forget it. There's no day for you.

What does all of this have to do with OBU leaving the BGCO?

One of the things I have stressed from the beginning is that BGCO politics are negatively affecting OBU. We all know that the SBC has a pretty terrible history with regards to race. The denomination was founded upon the refusal to reject slavery-- something they later apologized for, in 1995. It seems a little late to me, but maybe I'm just a cynic.

Of course, it's not that surprising from a convention whose seminary president Al Mohler once said about the split between northern and southern baptists, "What Northerners were saying is that ending slavery was more important than spreading the gospel." And that was last December. The original article has since been removed, but in the world of the internet, nothing cam be unsaid.

So with cries of "Don't let culture change the gospel" the convention that currently owns OBU has set up three days a year to make up for past mistakes against minorities. Maybe it's just me but that sounds a lot like saying, "We're not very good at seeing when we are wrong." I can only hope that in 150 years my daughter will be alive to see the SBC apology to women.

Until then, these are the kinds of politics I am tired of seeing dominating my alma mater.

Faculty Friday: OBU an Indoctrination Station?

One of the most surprising, frequent, and outrageous claims our critics make is that OBU's professors are too liberal and that they are seducing students away from their faith commitments with the allure of worldly knowledge.

When this preposterous idea stopped being funny, I realized that it's actually pretty sad, paranoid, and frankly a big part of what enabled and sustains the new status quo at OBU.  Forget the fact that OBU professors would be seen as conservatives (or even extreme conservatives) on any state or most nonsectarian private university campus.  Forget the fact that almost every OBU graduate credits one or more of their professors with strengthening their religious faith.  Forget the fact that OBU professors go out of their way to try not to offend, shock, startle, or oppose the many avowedly fundamentalist 18 year olds who appear in their classrooms each August, but rather nurture them in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

The bizarre thing here is that someone, somewhere, is giving people the idea that OBU has liberal professors.  And that professors somehow separate students from their religious beliefs.  And the people pushing these falsehoods have been so successful at promoting these lies and irrational fears that there is enough cover for administrators to now actually hire and fire based on ideology/doctrine rather than achievement.  In any normal world, administrators who acted so brazenly, irresponsibly, and unethically would be laughed out of town.  Instead, they are rewarded with pats on the back from their Baptist Building buddies.

I decided to do some digging.  Who is planting the fear in people's minds that professors are leading young people away from the Right?  Turns out it's a pretty common delusion.  To cite just one example, here is a column from the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler.  Al Mohler is the man Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's newly fundamentalist Board of Trustees elected president in 1993 at the ripe old age of 33.  Fundamentalists gained control of the Board in 1990, gave students permission to tape professors' lectures, and eventually became so hostile to longtime Baptist educational administrator Rev. Dr. Roy Honeycutt that he finally resigned.

Playing to fundamentalist fears, Mohler sounds the alarm on professors' sinister agenda:

They see their role as political and ideological, and they define their teaching role in these terms. Their agenda is nothing less than to separate students from their Christian beliefs and their intellectual and moral commitments.

Mohler goes on to explain that "a good many of these professors deny this agenda, but from time to time the mask is removed."  He cites as evidence one professor who wrote an opinion column suggesting that students should spend as many years in school as possible in order to gain exposure "to the world outside their own, and to moral ideas not exclusively derived from their parents' religion."  Another faculty member suggested elsewhere (in the context of comparing demographic trends in "red" vs. "blue" states) that even if conservatives have more children earlier in life, many of those children will pursue higher education in "blue" areas.

Watch how Mohler takes one flippant comment from one professor and ascribes it to pretty much the entire academic community:

“The children of red states will seek a higher education,” [the professor] explains, “and that education will very often happen in blue states or blue islands in red states. For the foreseeable future, loyal dittoheads will continue to drop off their children at the dorms. After a teary-eyed hug, Mom and Dad will drive their SUV off toward the nearest gas station, leaving their beloved progeny behind.” 

Then what? He proudly claims: “And then they are all mine.” 

And then they are all mine. That’s right, a significant number of professors are happy to have parents spend 18 years raising children, only to drop them off on the campus and head back home. These professors are confident that the four or so years of the college experience will be ample time to separate students from the beliefs, convictions, moral commitments, and faith of their parents.

Mohler isn't talking primarily here about Christian universities, but I've heard people express the same or even more paranoid concerns about sending young people to OBU.  The truth is, now that Mohler and people of his ilk control what remains of "Christian" higher education, we have some even greater concerns (that are based on actual evidence) to worry about.  I couldn't help but think of OBU when I read Mohler's conclusion:

But [students] should not be subjected to the ideological indoctrination and intellectual condescension that is found in far too many classrooms and on far too many campuses. If nothing else, these remarkable statements of professorial intention should awaken both students and parents to what passes for education within much of higher education. The open hostility and contempt toward Christianity and Christian convictions is truly horrifying. 

Yet here we are, faced with a university run by people who seem intent on indoctrinating to the greatest degree possible, hold increasingly blatant contempt for (or at least badly misunderstand) academic freedom (and, ironically, other Baptist freedoms as well), and frankly seem to want to step in where parents and churches have failed and make students more fundamentalist, not less.

While OBU faculty continue to do the very fine job they've done for all these years, they are under increasing scrutiny and pressure from the BGCO-controlled administration.  While I'm sure it's tempting for Mohler and others to peddle their baseless fear-mongering, the truth is that the tables have finally turned.  If fundamentalist college administrators think what happens in an alarming number of college classrooms has been debased, the need to look in the mirror.  There's indoctrination, condescension, and contempt all right.  But it's coming from the young fundamentalists, not the aging moderates.  And administrators cannot escape the fact that this time, they're the ones who caused it.

Faculty Friday: Firing Professors a Favored Tactic among SBC Fundamentalists

OBU has seen its fair share of professors harrassed, marginalized, and even nudged into early retirment for not being fundamentalists.  This certainly happened in the early days of the Brister Administration, though I do not know if it happened much in the later years of his presidency.  Many of us thought academic freedom was under attack then -- how strange it seems now to look back at the early 2000s as the "good ol' days!"

As you probably know, OBU has only recently made it a practice to dismiss professors for ideological reasons.  As a private, religious instition, there is no recourse.  That's why it is important that we change the culture of the institution -- before even more outstanding, qualified, and dedicated Christian professors have their lives and careers disrupted in the coming years.

As a tactic of institutional warfare, firing academics for being insufficiently fundamentalist has a long and ugly history in Baptist politics.  Fundamentalists have been using this unilateral power for years.  First, they employed deplorable, unchristian tactics to fire seminary presidents.  Then, once they installed fundamentalists in administrative posts, they declared open season on moderate professors.

In 1994, Professor Molly Marshall, a distinguished and well-loved professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, was forced to resign.  Even though the faculty voted 44-8 in favor of a resolution opposing the action, newly-installed President Al Mohler used the dismissal to showcase his willingness to pervert his unilateral power to show SBC leaders that he was up to the task of making Southern a fundamentalist seminary, which he accomplished in fairly short order.  Today, Marshall is president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City.  Hopefully, we will have more to say about Professor Marshall's story.  Like many fine Baptist academics that the fundamentalists love to hate, she is an OBU graduate.

In 1999, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary fired Professors Alan Brehm and Dan Kent, who objected to signing off on the Baptist Faith and Message, which emphasized female submission.  (Five years earlier, Southwestern trustees fired the long-serving and well-loved President Russell Dilday for allegedly being a moderate.)  In 2001, two more professors lost their jobs for refusing to sign the newly-updated (and more conservative) Baptist Faith and Message.

While all these stories (and more) are very well known to people who followed the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, the stories of professors forced out of colleges like OBU, run by the state conventions, and much more numerous.  OBU avoided these embarrassing headlines because of relatively moderate administration and a university culture committed to a balanced, Christian liberal arts education.  Frankly I'm surprised the recent firings did not generate media attention.

Thankfully, OBU's descent into ideological cleansing has generated enough anger and protest from faculty, students, and alumni that the administration will think twice before firing more professors.  However, make no mistake: there are professors the BGCO would like to see fired from OBU tomorrow.  Though we are all righteously angry about the absolutely shameful treatment some of our beloved professors and colleagues received (and the fact that faculty search committee recommendations are routinely ignored, thus allowing more fundamentalists to be hired), we have sent a signal that in the future, administrators should consider siding with us rather than siding with the BGCO.  The BGCO's fundamentalist dream for OBU is simply out of line with the OBU community's vision of itself as a proud inheritor of the very best in Christian liberal arts education.  Administrators can no longer servce both interests.  They have to choose.

Later in his presidency, Mark Brister finally realized that Dr. Anthony Jordan was not his boss.  Hopefully the current president will get the message before too many more professors lose their jobs.