A Brief Revival for Save OBU

As I noted a few times over the summer, I've deliberately scaled back the Save OBU effort.  For one thing, I believe it would be counterproductive to keep hammering OBU's now veteran administrators for offenses that occurred 2-3 years ago.  We made our point.  The last thing I want is to make things more difficult for the students and professors who are still trying to engage in rigorous, intellectually honest Christian higher education on Bison Hill.  Another fact is that I spent too much time on an issue that is near and dear to my heart, but not very relevant to my personal or professional life.

We certainly celebrate the university's many recent successes.  But we hopefully trust that things have stabilized.  Unless the situation at OBU takes another turn for the worst, you won't see daily updates and commentary on every OBU news release here.

Even so, there are a few developments I would like to keep before our friends and supporters.  The most recent Forbes list indicates that OBU's slide in the rankings has, mercifully, stopped.  The Hobbs College of Theology and Ministry has a new faculty member this year.  And sources confirm that OBU is planning to follow the lead of several other Catholic and evangelical institutions and sue the United States in federal court over an administrative rule issued by the Department of Health and Human Services last year.

I'll report on each of these matters in the days to come.

I also want to say more about an idea I considered over the summer.  The several Southern Baptist colleges that have reverted back toward fundamentalism in recent years should band together and petition the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.  Ideally, other evangelical colleges would join us in solidarity.  The CCCU should give guidance about how to protect academic freedom and ensure ethical administration when fundamentalists threaten and obliterate long-standing norms of institutional behavior.  Or, alternatively, the CCCU should give its blessing to these takeovers and say publicly that it does not care about what many Christian colleges have experienced in recent years.

Let's stay informed and stay connected.  Given that another unethical firing or any number of fundamentalist-inspired violations could potentially occur at any moment, we need to keep our movement active so that we can mobilize more easily when the next crazy thing happens.  Has the war already been lost?  Perhaps.  But if we truly want to be "loyal to our alma mater," the least we can do is stand up for what we know is right.

Save OBU is not dead yet!

OBU Honors Union University's David Dockery

We've wondered before about parallels between OBU and Union University, a Baptist college in Jackson, TN.  Longtime OBU President Bob Agee came to OBU from Union and retired to Jackson.  Union's president, the Reverend Dr. David Dockery, is widely considered to be the dean of Baptist college presidents.

At the 2013 SBC Annual Meeting in June, OBU honored Dockery for his contributions to Southern Baptist life over the past 20+ years:

OBU presented the Herschel H. Hobbs Award for Distinguished Denominational Service, named in honor of a legendary Southern Baptist pastor and denominational statesman, to Dr. David S. Dockery on Tuesday, June 11, at a reception in the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. 

The reception was part of the 2013 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. 

Dockery, who serves as president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., received the award from Dr. David W. Whitlock, president of OBU. 

“David Dockery has had a profound impact on Christian higher education, generally, and OBU, specifically,” Whitlock said. “In the providence of God, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities paired me with Dr. Dockery in their first-year mentorship program when I became president of OBU. His wisdom and influence was so important to me in that first year, and I count it a blessing to consider him a friend.”

Forgetting, for the moment, how revisionist (and maybe even offensive?) it is to honor post-Takeover SBC elites in the name of Herschel Hobbs (who fundamentalists booed at the 1980 SBC meeting), now seems as good a time as ever to compare how OBU and Union relate to the SBC and its post-Takeover leadership.  We'll take up that topic in a series of blog posts this week.

Among the few dozen state convention-affiliated Baptist colleges, Union is clearly the darling of the SBC.  I can't even keep track of how many SBC seminary professors and high-level agency staffers have sent their own children to Union in recent years.  Whenever one of them gets married, graduates, or gets a job, the elite SBC Twitterverse becomes a virtual Union Alumni Association meeting.  We have to ask why so many post-Takeover SBC elites send their kids to Union.  Is Union objectively and uniquely better than all other Baptist colleges?  Or that good for these guys' careers?  Or is proximity to Nashville decisive?

Dockery has mastered one of the most delicate dances in evangelical life: keeping hardline constituents happy while also maintaining some mainstream legitimacy.  In addition to his prolific writing, Dockery has served on advisory boards for evangelical institutions, including Christianity Today and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

His involvement with the CCCU is noteworthy as we try to get a sense for where the CCCU stands on the recent spate of fundamentalist encroachments at Baptist-affiliated CCCU institutions.  I'm sure Dockery wants to stay above the fray, and at this point in his career perhaps he's earned the right.  But I can't help but wonder if he smiled or frowned when he heard about the firings at OBU in 2010 and 2011, the wholesale faculty exodus at Shorter in 2012, or the takeover of Cedarville in 2013.

In a future post, we'll look more deeply at how OBU and Union each relate to SBC leadership.  We'll look for answers to the question of why so many SBC elites send their kids to Union while so few (if any) send their kids to OBU.  And we'll consider OBU's prospects for success if it abandons its rich heritage just to try to win over a few dozen guys who are always going to prefer Union anyway.

Dr. Dockery, who will retire next summer after 19 years on the job, will continue to be relevant to SBC life, especially in his role as chair of the Calvinism Advisory Committee.  I, for one, will always eagerly listen to anything Dr. Dockery has to say about Christian higher education.  And I wish him and Union success in this transition period.

Summer Update & FAQ

Greetings to longtime readers and a warm welcome to the many new people who have stumbled upon this site!

I mentioned in early June that the blog would be quiet this summer.  After a tumultuous 2010 & 2011, OBU's fundamentalist encroachment has subsided somewhat.  Top administrators have made their true intentions known, however.  This means OBU still needs a watchdog. OBU administrators currently lack the political cover necessary to complete their desired transformation.  But as soon as they believe they can get away with it, they will complete the fundamentalist re-orientation of the religion department and move on to other areas of the university.

These days, I'm spending less of my "Save OBU" time and effort on OBU.  Sure, I'm getting emails about various staff and faculty personnel changes.  I hear from a number of prospective students weighing their hopes for a great experience at OBU against the realities of what the administrators' actions have wrought.

Increasingly, however, I'm hearing from constituents of other Christian colleges.  Some are asking why I'm complaining about relatively minor goings-on at OBU when several other Baptist schools are in the throes of full-on fundamentalist takeovers that may result in harm to their reputations, financial ruin, and loss of accreditation.  Others, mostly from evangelical colleges that are not Baptist affiliated, are wondering how the problems at OBU, Cedarville, Shorter, Truett-McConnell, Brewton-Parker, Louisiana College, etc. could even happen at all.

I'll continue to monitor the OBU situation as best I can.  But in a future post, I'll lay out a vision for a collective effort wherein constituents of a variety of Christian colleges will appeal to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) for guidance about how to prevent fundamentalist-inspired trustee takeovers, presidential selections, administrative reorganizations, firings, and incursions against institutional norms and academic freedom.  The CCCU needs to strengthen and enforce standards for its member institutions.  Non-Baptist evangelicals need to understand what fundamentalists are doing to a significant swath of Christian higher education.  And Southern Baptist leaders need to get a clue and stop turning our colleges into their ideological playgrounds, presumably with the CCCU's blessing.  We need to find out: Does the CCCU even care?

Since the site has received hundreds of new visitors this summer and since many of you have written to ask about what's going on, I have responded to some frequently asked questions.

Click here to view our FAQ page.

Reflection on Calvin College (and Other Non-Baptist Evangelical Schools)

I've spent the past three days attending a conference at Calvin College.  Calvin's Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Religion and Politics hosted the Seventh Biennial Symposium on Religion and Public Life on the school's Grand Rapids, Michigan campus.  (Outside my involvement with Save OBU, I am a political science Ph.D. student with research interests in the area of religion and politics.)  I had occasion to talk with many professors who work in evangelical higher education, all of whom were very interested in Baptist schools' recent lurches back toward fundamentalism.

Lately, our blog has focused attention on happenings at colleges that are, like OBU, affiliated with Baptist state conventions:

• The coming split between the Kentucky Baptist Convention and Campbellsville University
• The transformation of Cedarville University from a liberal arts college to a fundamentalist Bible academy
• The ever-bizarre goings-on at Louisana College
• The Georgia Baptist Convention's shameful assault on Shorter University
• The GBC's support for fledgling fundamentalist schools like Truett-McConnell and Brewton-Parker
• Ongoing problems at my own beloved alma mater, Oklahoma Baptist University

Considering the all-out assault on OBU's liberal arts heritage from 2009-2001, it has been very disheartening to learn that, with respect to academic freedom and ethical administration, OBU actually has it better than a lot of Baptist colleges.

But we have talked about non-Baptist evangelical schools before.  Last summer, when the new round of Forbes rankings came out, we saw that non-Baptist evangelical colleges not only have fewer restrictions on academic freedom, but also better reputations than Baptist colleges.  (We've also talked about how, before the changes, OBU was regarded as the best Southern Baptist CCCU-affiliated college.  Now it is quickly losing ground to Union, Ouachita, Samford, and others.)

We also speculated about how the purported "Evangelical Renaissance in Academe" is likely not to include Southern Baptists as long as their rightful heritage as legitimate liberal arts colleges is continually under attack from fundamentalist forces.

Baptist power brokers want you to think that if they don't exercise control over colleges, the colleges will quickly abandon Christianity.  That idea is laughable to people affiliated with schools like Wheaton College in Illinois and Gordon College in Massachusetts which, in spite of having no denominational ties, manage to sustain a strong Christian commitment and identity.

Calvin is a bit of an anomaly.  The denomination that controls it, the Christian Reformed Church in America, is not nearly as fearful or dogmatic as today's Baptist state conventions.  Yet in spite of having a rigorous faith examination as part of new professors' hiring process, Calvin does not seem interested in imposing restrictions on academic freedom.  Calvin faculty hires must produce a letter of affirmation from a pastor, commit to joining a Reformed congregation within two years, and appear before a committee of faculty and administrators to discuss matters of faith and the meaning of Christian education.  Yet no one is being run out of the Calvin philosophy and theology departments for doubting  that Jonah was really swallowed by a fish or that the earth was created in 6 24-hour periods about 6,000 years ago.

Also to Calvin's great credit, it attracts academically talented students.  Just as a team is only as good as its worst player or an orchestra is only as good as its worst instrumentalist, there is a sense in which a university is only as good as its least academically capable student.  Let's be honest.  OBU has a HUGE problem in this area.  OBU admits almost everyone who applies, often probationally.  Calvin (and many of the top-tier evangelical colleges) are more selective in admissions and less willing to compromise academic rigor and quality.  If OBU truly wants to be a peer of Wheaton, Calvin, and Gordon, it needs to be more intentional about attracting (and retaining) better students.

When I tell evangelical professors about the worsening state of Baptist undergraduate education in certain quarters, they are almost universally sympathetic.  They cannot fathom seeing colleagues dismissed for the reasons OBU (and so many others) has given.  They cannot believe how much power is concentrated in fundamentalists' hands.  They are frankly offended at the notion that fellow evangelical scholars/professors cannot be trusted to sustain an institution's Christian identity without heavy-handed administrative intervention and denominational oversight.  They are perplexed by the dismantling of philosophy departments and the increasing trend toward dumbed-down "apologetics" and bizarrely defensive "Christian worldview" classes.

For the record, these people are NOT liberals, let me assure you.  They are people who believe in Christ as their personal savior, trust the Scriptures as authoritative, and go to theologically conservative churches every Sunday.

The more I reflect on the massive variation in academic freedom among Christian colleges, the more I think the CCCU needs to get involved.  We've expressed our qualms about the CCCU before.  But for better or worse, it is the institutional representative of these conservative Protestant schools -- Baptist, nondenominational, and otherwise.  Obviously the CCCU lacks an incentive to meddle in member institutions' internal affairs.  But the quality of the schools that have academic freedom starkly contrasts with frankly embarrassing turn of events at Cedarville, Louisiana College, Shorter University, OBU, and elsewhere over the past few years.

The fundamentalists won the Takeover fight in the SBC -- we get it.  "To the victor goes the spoils."  But now that the Takeover has moved from the state conventions to the colleges, we have to ask, when is enough enough?  There are many fine examples of academic freedom, ethical administration, and the responsible integration of faith and learning at so many evangelical institutions.  Baptists can do better.

Spring Break Reading 2013

Following last year's tradition, I probably won't post any new content during OBU's Spring Break.  But, as with last year, I do want to leave some links to recent stories you may have missed.

In January, we welcomed everyone to 2013 and explained our long break from blogging following November's Homecoming festivities.  We also laid out an agenda for the first part of 2013.

More recently, guest bloggers provided two widely-read series:

Cedarville University Series by CU Alumna Sarah Jones
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

Feminism at OBU Series by 2002 OBU Alumna Cortney Stone
"Thy Daughters True": Feminism at OBU - Part 1
"Thy Daughters True": Feminism at OBU - Part 2

"Thy Daughters True": Feminism at OBU - Part 3
"Thy Daughters True": Feminism at OBU - Part 4

I also had fun writing a few miscellaneous posts in February.  One chronicled FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's 1938 commencement address at OBU.  In another post, I wrote of my visit to the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, MD.  Also, in response to the brouhaha over Tim Tebow cancelling an appearance at FBC Dallas after learning of its pastor's incendiary remarks, I wrote a response that blamed the problem not on Tebow, but on certain evangelicals' extremism -- an extremism that earlier generations of evangelical leaders wisely avoided.

More relevant to our immediate purposes at Save OBU, I point you to two other important stories we covered in February.  First, see our write-up of former OBU administrator Tom Terry's address in Raley Chapel.  Second, I wrote a piece on the Winter trustee meeting.  We'll say more about the trustee meeting in weeks to come as we continue to ponder the BGCO's outsized influence at an institution where it provides an ever-shrinking share of the operating expenses.

Most importantly, please consider circulating this commentary to your friends and colleagues in evangelical higher education.  With new leadership and many of its member institutions prospering, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) is poised to exercise considerable leadership as it has for many years.  Yet, as a growing number of CCCU schools struggle against fundamentalist resurgence, the council has been silent.  Will the CCCU continue to sit idly while fundamentalists run some of its member schools into the ground?  Or can the council highlight what its successful members have done to stave off the threat of fundamentalist encroachment?  It's a vital question, and the answer remains unseen.

If you're an OBU student or staff member, we especially wish you a very restful spring break!  If you're affiliated with another college celebrating another week, our best wishes to you, too.  And if spring break is for you nothing more than a distant memory, well, I hope you remember it fondly.

Thanks to so many of you for your support.
-Jacob Lupfer

Where is the CCCU!?

Before I begin, let me extend a warm welcome to our hundreds of new readers this week.  Please look around the site and get to know us a bit.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  And please excuse this hastily composed stream-of-consciousness post.

I hate to interrupt guest contributor Sarah Jones's excellent series on Cedarville University.  But as fundamentalist encroachment proceeds apace at a number of evangelical colleges with no sign of letting up, I have to ask, Where is the CCCU?

For the uninitiated, the Council for Conservative Christian Colleges & Universities is a Washington, D.C.-based lobby for a very small subset of Christian colleges.  We've written about the CCCU here before.  Last March, we quoted Gordon College Professor Karl Giberson, who rightly said that some CCCU schools' "lingering attachment to some of the more dubious certainties and habits derived from Fundamentalism" badly hurt their credibility as legitimate academic institutions.  In April, Save OBU Contributing Editor Veronica Risinger  wrote a series on women at OBU.  She prefaced it by looking at women in CCCU schools, which the CCCU strongly implies are the only schools that are "intentionally Christ-centered."  On this score, Veronica noted that only 6% of CCCU institutions have female presidents: "For women who want to lead, the odds are a lot better if your school isn't intentionally Christian."  Finally, in July, I congratulated outgoing CCCU President Paul Corts and welcomed the newly-elected president, Ed Blews.

My interest in academic freedom and ethical administration in Christian higher education began when I heard about failings in those areas at my alma mater (Oklahoma Baptist University) from 2009 to 2011.  But I have been saddened (though not surprised) to learn that the situation is worse -- much worse -- at peer institutions like Shorter, Cedarville, and Louisiana College.  This is without even mentioning other Baptist schools who have apparently made their peace with the new, fundamentalist direction of the post-Takeover SBC such as Union University, Southwest Baptist, and North Greenville University.  And we constituents of institutions related to Baptist state conventions are just beginning to learn about goings-on at colleges related to other, smaller evangelical and pentecostal denominations that comprise a majority of the CCCU's membership.

Now, I suppose the CCCU does not want to meddle in its member institutions' internal affairs.  But unlike accrediting bodies, which must verify colleges' independent governance, the CCCU seems either unconcerned about or uninterested in stopping problematic threats to academic freedom and lapses in ethical administration that occur when fundamentalists take control.

Thank God moderates at OBU still had enough clout to prevent, or at least delay, the new administration from turning it into a fundamentalist Bible academy.  But if we OBU constituents are losing the battle slowly, constituents of Louisiana College, Cedarville, and Shorter are losing the battle swiftly and forcefully.  Will no one in the CCCU stand up for them?

I would think the tide of embarrassing press (Cedarville, Shorter), threats to accreditation (Shorter, Louisiana College) and dramatic declines in national rankings (OBU, maybe others) would get the CCCU's attention.  But I know of no evidence that this is the case.  CCCU President Ed Blews wants to focus on protecting scholarship and loan programs (which is good, I guess, though the wisdom of borrowing heavily to finance a private undergraduate education is debatable).  Blews also wants to protect "religious freedom" (i.e., challenge the so-called HHS Mandate, which is a little strange since the CCCU excludes all Catholic universities as insufficiently Christ-centered).  Of course it's vital for the CCCU to advocate on issues relevant to all its member institutions and I am as confident as anyone that under Blews's leadership, the council will continue to do so very effectively.

But the CCCU needs to realize something.  All is not well.  Sure, there are a handful of mainline-affiliated (literally no more than 15) and a few unaffiliated CCCU schools where academic freedom is secure and denominational politics cannot or will not interfere.  But at many member institutions, faithful Christian scholars and students are suffering.

I know it's a fine line for the CCCU to walk.  After all, the CCCU is a big tent considering its rather precise definition of what constitutes "intentionally Christ-centered."  Its membership includes some very reputable, academically rigorous institutions and some pretty wacky, nominally accredited, and avowedly fundamentalist degree mills.  But at this point, the CCCU's silence is deafening.  One prominent evangelical blogger, noting problems at several institutions (CCCU and otherwise) more eloquently characterized the current collective problem as an "Evangelical Inquisition."

It's well and good that Ed Blews was smiling and joking around with Messiah College President and CCCU Board Chair Kim Phipps at his inauguration last month in Washington.  But it's time to get serious about fundamentalist encroachment and oppose this inquisition.  It recently hit close to home for Dr. Phipps (incidentally one of the handful of female CCCU college presidents), as one of Messiah's professors is under fire for a blog post that challenged unthinking, literal interpretations of Scripture.  The CCCU requires its members to "be supportive of other Christian colleges."  Well, we at OBU, Cedarville, Shorter, Louisiana College and a host of other member institutions need to feel that support.

We need it now more than ever.

P.S. I live in Washington, so I am willing to meet with senior CCCU staff to strategize about how we can all work together to protect academic freedom and ensure ethical administration at our beloved Christian colleges.

P.P.S. The hymn "Forward Through the Ages" was sung at Mr. Blews's inauguration service.  It's one of his favorites and it's one of mine, too.  I hope it calls to mind the unity and determination we need to protect and preserve the traditions and values we hold dear.

1. Forward through the ages, in unbroken line, 
 move the faithful spirits at the call divine; 
 gifts in differing measure, hearts of one accord, 
 manifold the service, one the sure reward. 

Refrain:
 Forward through the ages, in unbroken line, 
 move the faithful spirits at the call divine. 

2. Wider grows the kingdom, reign of love and light; 
 for it we must labor, till our faith is sight. 
 Prophets have proclaimed it, martyrs testified, 
 poets sung its glory, heroes for it died.
 (Refrain) 

3. Not alone we conquer, not alone we fall; 
 in each loss or triumph lose or triumph all. 
 Bound by God's far purpose in one living whole,
 move we on together to the shining goal. 
 (Refrain) 

OBU Evolving on Women in Ministry?

In the past, we've expressed some disappointment and dismay at the blatant and not-so-blatant sexism in the OBU universe.  I took a crack at the topic early on in the Save OBU era.  Veronica followed up with a post on the plight of two specifically disadvantaged classes of women at OBU: administrators and students pursuing a ministry vocation.  Veronica also did a great post on women at CCCU universities, pointing out that if you're a female administrator in Christian higher education, it's best if you're at an institution that isn't "intentionally Christ-centered," because they are significantly less likely to have female presidents  I also took a light-hearted look at a book on "biblical womanhood" by an SBC seminary president's wife.

Yet this week's Bison had two stories of interest to the subject of women in ministry.  Briefly, the first story really surprised me (page 9).  It was about a female United Methodist minister and her life of service.  I grew up in the UM Church, and had an absolutely gifted female pastor from 1988-1992, during which time I made my Confirmation.  The UMC has been ordaining women since 1956.  I was pleased that the Bison article focused on this clergywoman's ministry and took as a given the authenticity of her call.  Most SBC pastors and almost all SBC elites disparage women's calls to pastoral ministry.  W.A. Criswell, when asked about a woman who believes God called her to be a Southern Baptist pastor, said, "She is mistaken.  God never called her.  Her own personal ambition, or longing for recognition, or a thousand other things led her into that persuasion."

The second story (on page 10) describes a new course being offered on women in ministry.  Naturally, most people expected this class to be the typically restrictive "So ladies, do you want to be an organist or a children's director?  You could marry a pastor..."  But the article indicates that the class is actually much more than that.

There are two required texts, according to the Tree of Life bookstore.  One is The Feminine Mystique, which I would be amused to see on the shelves at Tree of Life.  The other is a 20-year old evangelical takedown of feminism.  Well, takedown is too strong a term.  Presumably there are other readings.  And the class no doubt includes a lot of discussion of the issues raised.

I don't know what perspective the (adjunct?) instructor is coming from, and, contrary to what some of Save OBU's critics believe, I don't really care.  The news account indicates that the course is going well.  Students at least have the option to come away affirming that God calls women to  be pastors, bishops, professors of theology, and any number of ministerial vocations that the SBC and much of Christendom has obsessively restricted women from entering.

This new ministry class is happening in the context of other issues and events that suggest that OBU is relatively more progressive on gender than most Baptist institutions.  A number of female OBU graduates are admirably serving as ordained pastors.  On OBU's Facebook page over the last year, I've seen at least a couple women preaching in the Raley Chapel pulpit.

Perhaps most significantly, President Whitlock may not be nearly as retrograde in his views on this subject as his BGCO and SBC elite friends would like.  Most of the H.R. problems regarding women originated in the provost's office, not the president's.  And, significantly, multiple sources report that Whitlock told a group of laypeople at First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City that he didn't see anything wrong with women deacons.

The context of this admission was a speaking engagement at OKC, First shortly after OBU put Herschel Hobbs's name on the religion and ministry department.  Showing his relative ignorance of Baptist politics, Whitlock asked, "Why have people been upset in the past with FBC?"  Of course, anyone who knows anything about this subject knows that FBC has for decades been relatively moderate and virulently hated by the BGCO.  It elected women deacons for at least a few years in the 1970s and early 1980s.  This prompted the Capital Baptist Association to refuse to seat FBC's messengers at its annual meeting.  FBC also had a few relatively liberal pastors since that time.  Whitlock is on record as affirming "complimentarianism," so all in the conversation were shocked that he would affirm women deacons.  He would never utter such blasphemy in the presence of, say, Rev. Dr. Anthony Jordan.

I'll be the first to admit that I've perceived OBU to be quite backwards in its attitude toward gender.  I've thought this from the first days I spent on Bison Hill until now.  But maybe things are changing.  If David Whitlock isn't a sworn fundamentalist who wants to send women back to the kitchen, he may yet be a great leader as OBU evolves on this issue.  From women deacons to the Baptist World Alliance to allowing a course for students to explore the issue of women in ministry, Whitlock is proving to be quite the moderate.

To which we say: Come on in, the water's fine!

2012 Forbes Data (Part 2): OBU's Decline in Context

Earlier this week, I reported that OBU had fallen to #390 in the Forbes college rankings.  While Forbes (methodology here) has improved on U.S. News & World Report (which dominated the college rankings game for many years), I would be the first to admit that these rankings are imperfect and it is impossible to perfectly quantify the experience/quality/outcome these magazines are trying to rank.

Still, these rankings are enough to reveal all kinds of problems with the current direction of OBU and in Baptist higher education across the board.

First, the ugly picture:

The defenders of OBU's new fundamentalist regime really can't argue with this.  The best they can do is say, "Hey, the rankings go from 1 to 650!  By only showing 100 to 400 on the y axis, Jacob is making the slope of the line look worse than it actually is."

Fair enough.  But is this really any better?

When you consider that the 400s and 500s are populated by schools like Oral Roberts and Liberty, this shouldn't make you feel any better.  This is a stunning decline.

How are other Baptist schools faring?  I wondered the same thing.  The chart below shows OBU's decline in bold along with the rankings of several other state convention-affiliated schools.  Some of these peers are relatively fundamentalist, while others are relatively moderate.  But it's clear that OBU's decline is unique, even among Baptist peers:

Samford dipped but is doing alright and Baylor is on a clear upward trajectory.  Ouachita and Union are holding their own.  Southwest Baptist University has never been ranked.  (For what it's worth, Southwest Baptist is also the school from which David Whitlock came to OBU.  Coming to OBU was a huge professional leap and the opportunity of a lifetime for Whitlock, as I'm sure he would be the first to acknowledge.)

The picture above presents a different narrative about what was going on in 2008 and 2009 than what we usually hear.  We were in an enrollment crisis!  We had to make tough financial decisions!  Maybe so.  But for all the hand wringing, it turns out that OBU was actually in much better shape at the end of the Brister presidency and during the Parrish interim than it is today.  Remember, as opposed to U.S. News, Forbes is trying to measure quality and outcomes, not just reputation.  One can only wonder how much better off we'd be if Whitlock, Norman, and McClellan had never come to Bison Hill.  Or if President Whitlock had made it clear from the beginning that he would not abide a fundamentalist takeover instead of letting it happen with his blessing.

I don't know exactly how Whitlock can undo the damage his hatchet men have already done.  But I'm afraid it will take more than a capital campaign, a football team, and a few new degree programs.  He could start by apologizing for past missteps (why is that so hard for people to do?), urging his friend the provost (who long ago lost the faculty's confidence, if he ever actually had it) to find another job, and doing more to address faculty concerns about past and present problems than having an occasional lunch with a few faculty leaders.  Some search committees have been able to bring top-rate junior professors to OBU.  But in other departments (Theology and Ministry being the most egregious but perhaps not the only example), the process is a joke and the administrators bring in whoever they want without even consulting relevant faculty colleagues.  Speaking of jokes, the bookstore restricts access to all books not produced by Tree of Life's approved list of fundamentalist publishing houses.  The list of books you can't find in OBU's bookstore is mind-boggling.

Anyway, back to the rankings.

Later in the week, I'll speak specifically to how OBU is faring with respect to other evangelical colleges, as well as institutions that were formerly affiliated with Baptist state conventions.  Also, if I have time, I might build a data set that includes the Forbes rankings of every CCCU institution.  I have a feeling that doing so might provide a compelling visualization of the fact that maintaining a Christian identity does not have to mean sacrificing quality.  It might also help reveal the fact that Christian institutions that are controlled by fundamentalists are destined for mediocrity (if not outright ruin), while those run by moderates (or at least people who are sensitive to the importance of rigor, quality, and ethical/professional standards) can continue to achieve excellence.

More on all that later in the week.  Please keep your friends, classmates, and interested colleagues informed about the work we are doing here at Save OBU.

CCCU Selects a New President

The Council for Conservative Christian Colleges and Universities, a trade organization that includes many evangelical colleges and some that are inching toward fundamentalism, has selected a successor to retiring President Paul Corts.

The CCCU's Board of Directors announced this week that it has selected Dr. Ed Blews as the council's sixth president.  I don't know whether Blews insists on being called "doctor" (I doubt it), but most people I know with law degrees and honorary doctorates but no earned doctorate tend not to go by "doctor."  Yet the CCCU wants us to know that "Dr. Ed Blews" is its new leader.

We've written about the CCCU before.  Veronica did some impressive research showing that female professors and administrators fare much worse at CCCU institutions, which should come as no surprise given that many of the member schools are affiliated with sexist denominations or organizations.  The CCCU purports to represent "intentionally Christ-centered" institutions.  Of the more than 900 religiously affiliated colleges and universities in the U.S., the CCCU would have you believe that only its members are intentionally Christ-centered.  By implication, most of the rest are just nominally Christian or somehow lacking when it comes to Christian commitment.  I know of hundreds of Catholic and mainline Protestant schools that would beg to differ, but the CCCU continues in its arrogant role of being the arbiter of which schools are intentionally Christ-centered.

The CCCU publishes a newsletter, sponsors conferences, and coordinates its cash cow -- student programs.  Its more than five dozen full-time employees include a government affairs staffer (lobbyist?) who monitors federal legislation and regulations.  Though ostensibly nonpartisan, the CCCU has a decidedly pro-Republican bent (though not as blatant as, say, the Southern Baptist Convention).  Of course, this reflects the increasingly rightward shift of the religious and cultural elites who serve as presidents of the CCCU's member institutions.  Blews himself has donated over $5,500 to many Republican candidates and committees at the federal level over the years (and, in fairness, $200 to one Democrat 22 years ago).


The good news is that Dr. Blews does not appear to be a Baptist or have any background with Southern Baptist higher education.  He attended CCCU member institution Seattle Pacific University and the controversial Thomas Cooley Law School.  Since then, he has spent most of his career running the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Michigan.  So he probably doesn't see himself as having a dog in the fight over the fundamentalist takeover of the remaining Southern Baptist-affiliated institutions.


If anything, I would expect Blew and the CCCU to side with us and our friends at other Baptist schools.  There are two reasons why they should.  First and most obviously, the path the fundamentalists are on will eventually take all our schools down a road that leads to diminished standards, loss of accreditation, and ultimately financial problems -- all of which will disqualify them from CCCU membership.  CCCU dues are not overly expensive, averaging a little over $11,000 per institution per year (though dues probably vary depending on member schools' enrollments).  But the CCCU would not want to lose its Baptist schools -- or their money.  Second, the CCCU has a number of schools that are "intentionally Christ-centered" without being operated by pesky, meddling, and often amateurish state convention elites and convention-elected trustees who are wont to run these schools in the ground (see: Georgia Baptist Convention).  So there is nothing about state convention control that would make Baptist schools better bets for membership and active participation in the CCCU.  Frankly, I bet people in the CCCU's Washington, D.C. headquarters who know anything about the Baptist battles see state convention control as more of a liability than an asset for these schools.


Now, personally I'm no fan of the CCCU.  The claim to extra-special holiness (only its member schools are "intentionally Christ-centered") is offensive, blatantly anti-Catholic, judgmental, and factually untrue.  But the CCCU has a few member schools who have built stellar academic reputations and remained faithful to their mission (Christian liberal arts education) without trampling all over academic freedom.  We've discussed this issue before here and here.  So we actually are much better off following the lead of CCCU colleges like Gordon, Wheaton, and Whitworth than the post-Takeover SBC seminaries and state convention-related schools that are going down the fundamentalist path.


My personal misgivings about the entire CCCU enterprise aside, Ed Blews has an impressive record of service that prepares him well for this new venture.  We here at Save OBU hope that in the years to come, the Council will not be shy about supporting Baptist schools that need to break away from their state conventions in order to remain faithful to their missions and to norms like academic freedom and independent governance.  Certainly the calls for separation (represented now by groups like Save OBU and Save Our Shorter) will grow louder, stronger, and more unified in the years to come.  Hopefully, the CCCU will be a resource for intentionally Christ-centered Baptist institutions that need to alter their relationships with their state conventions in order to fully realize their missions and potential.


In any event, we wish Ed Blews all the best in his stewardship of the CCCU.

Provost Stan Norman Undergoes Evaluations

Finally.

We have some very good news to report-- perhaps our first tangible victory. We have had several small victories, don't get me wrong. But this is the first time that we are happy to report a concession from those who wish to pander to the fundamentalists to the side of the reasonable.

When we began this blog, one of the most important issues we kept highlighting was the borderline hostile nature of the current faculty/administration relationship. One of the major problems was that Provost Stan Norman, after taking a job created for him, a creation which involved demoting a longtime favored and loyal (female) administrator, did not have to undergo any sort of faculty evaluation.

But no longer.

David Whitlock finally agreed that Stan Norman would have to undergo evaluation through a process developed by the CCCU. And we are happy to report that the president has kept his word and those reviews have been recently completed.

If I were Stan Norman, I would be terrified.

Because it turns out that he picked the wrong school to come and enforce the fundamentalist agenda. And those opposed have not simply laid down and died. No. We have demanded that he be put through the same accountability as any other administrator-- and now the faculty have spoken.

A faculty member tells us that these reviews will be terrible, just as, I'm sure, we all suspected. As one source puts it,

 "The message on the provost should be loud and clear. If the president doesn't act, he will at least have a sobering set of evaluations to consider, and perhaps both he and his provost will continue to tread softly.  He should know, from the comment sections, that a number of [faculty] want the provost gone."

Very well, indeed. 


Before anything else, let me say I am proud of the faculty for their fearless honesty. It would be easy to cower in the face of the administration who has already fired two beloved colleagues. But honest evaluations are really an issue of justice. If they do not reflect the truth of the situation then there is no hope. So kudos to the brave who stand for all that we here at Save OBU hold dear. It cannot be easy and we cannot do what only you can.


However, I think it would be foolish for us to rejoice too much over this victory. It is indeed our first tangible sign of moving forward, but it does not guarantee any results. Do not think that President Whitlock is going to fire Provost Norman over one bad set of evaluations. First of all, they are best friends. Second, he's already managed to get a job he shouldn't have (as evidenced by his being sent to Union to learn how to be a provost) and stay through two botched dismissals and other needless meddling. What is a little codified unrest?


But as our source says, there is now record of how unhappy everyone is with Norman.


Mostly, this puts the president in a terrible spot. And as much as I have made clear my disdain for the man who does not respect students and has weird temper issues, I do think that perhaps without this particular provost by his side he would be a little more reasonable. 


So now he must choose. How will he navigate the open hostility between his provost and the faculty? We will watch and keep all of our readers informed.


EDIT: 5/21/12 5:55 p.m. Comments have been disabled for this post due to untrue anonymous rumors and accusations.

Women in the CCCU

This week, I'm going to do a 3-series post on gender issues at OBU. I have been accused of being a feminist by some of our critics (something I do not deny), but that is not my motivation for writing this series. My motivation comes from a few things which have already been mentioned on the blog.

First, we have already discussed that some of the most blatant discrepancies in the new OBU have been discriminating against women. There is the fact that a man was hired instead of a woman for a theology position despite unanimous support for the female candidate among the faculty search committee. In order to hire the new provost, a female administrator was, basically, demoted from a position as vice-president.

Furthermore, one of the major reasons Jacob asked me to collaborate on this blog is that I bring a female perspective which he does not have.

And finally, our first post about women at OBU is one of our most popular posts.

But before I talk specifically about the experience of women at OBU, I would like to contextualize it with some stats about women in the CCCU.

The CCCU is the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities-- of which OBU is a member. The CCCU describes itself as an "association of intentionally Christian colleges and universities." When describing their membership the CCCU website states:

"According to the U.S. Department of Education, there are over 4,000 degree-granting institutions of higher education in the United States. These include 1,600 private, nonprofit campuses, about 900 of which define themselves as religiously affiliated. However, only 116 intentionally Christ-centered institutions in the U.S. have qualified for membership in the Council for Christian College & Universities."

So what does this intentionally Christ-centeredness mean for women?

As far as leadership goes, currently only 6% of CCCU institutions have female presidents. (That's if you include Toccoa Falls College which has no president, but the current provost who is acting as president is female.) Although it is true that all universities are more likely to have male presidents, 6% is quite lower than the 26% of colleges total in America. In fact, 6% of CCCU schools in 2012 is less than the 10% of all schools in America in 1986.

So for women who want to lead, the odds are a lot better if your school isn't intentionally Christian.

CCCU schools have less female faculty than other schools (30.5% vs. 42%).

Female faculty at CCCU schools are less likely than male faculty to feel like male and female faculty are treated equally (54.3% vs. 76.7%).

Female faculty are also less likely than male faculty to feel that female and male students are treated equally (69.9% vs. 87.4%).

Female students, likewise, are less likely than male students to "strongly agree" that female and male students are treated equally (51.9% vs. 62.8%).

So what do all of these stats have to do with OBU and the BGCO? It shows that OBU is not alone in their struggles as far as women are concerned. Further, it seems to be that one of the dominant factors in this struggle is what kind of Christian values we are going to uphold and exhibit.

While OBU still has to cater to the politics of the BGCO, it will be less likely to lift up the kinds of Christianity which will not marginalize the majority (57%) of OBU students.

Again, who are we valuing? To whom are we listening as we interpret the scriptures and craft policies?



Sources: http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2012/03/13/study-describes-college-presidents/

Samuel Joeckel, Thomas Chesnes, and editors, The Christian College Phenomenon: Inside America's Fastest Growing Institutions of Higher Learning (Abilene, Tex.: Abilene Christian University Press, 2012), 268-9, 282-3.

An Evangelical Renaissance in Academe?

Several of our readers pointed us to an essay that appeared last week on the Inside Higher Ed blog.  The essay pointed out the need for evangelical scholars to reclaim Christian thought from fundamentalism.  I commend the entire piece for your consideration, but want to comment on some of the relevant points in light of OBU's history and present problems.


The context of this essay is the opening of a new Center for Christian Thought at Biola University in California.  The authors, Gordon College Professors Thomas Albert Howard and Karl W. Giberson, explore some of the reasons why serious Christian engagement with philosophy and culture at a conservative evangelical institution might be problematic (or at least difficult) in light of the fundamentalist resurgence of the past 30 years.


Howard and Giberson tell a story that is familiar to those of us who have studied, lived, and worked in the 20th century's Christian war between modernists and fundamentalists.  But today's OBU students may not realize that there is a noble Christian academic tradition outside of fundamentalism.

Stung by ridicule after the Scopes trial, Fundamentalists retreated to the sidelines of American culture.  There they nurtured a parallel universe of publishing houses, magazines, journals, radio stations, and, not least, colleges and universities to combat the threat of secularism from without and the threat of theological modernism from within. 

Fundamentalists carried into exile many core tenets of Christian orthodoxy -- the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement -- shared by Catholic and Orthodox Christians as well.  But they also carried dubious novelties, such as newfangled teachings on biblical inerrancy and speculations about the End Times.  What is more, they became pointedly hostile toward American culture and disengaged from serious intellectual pursuits, convinced that Christianity was almost exclusively about “the world to come,” with only negligible concern for the here-and-now.

For OBU, at least, we can see the fault lines forming.  Will we continue to be a locus for serious, honest, and searching Christian engagement with the scientific, economic, political, philosophical, artistic, and ethical concerns of the modern world?  Or are we we retreating into the "parallel universe" of fundamentalism to "combat the threat of secularism without and the threat of theological modernism from within?"


The administration's moves over the past two years seem to be a headlong descent into that parallel universe: turning our bookstore into a purveyor of fundamentalist pulp, firing conservative-to-moderate evangelicals who do not toe the party line, welcoming new faculty on the basis of doctrinal agreement rather than academic merit, and cozying up to the fundamentalists who run the BGCO and the SBC.  In the religion department alone, this fundamentalist "parallel universe" exists in the apologetics/"worldview" curriculum and the professional societies new faculty belong to.


This parallel universe attempts to imitate academic rigor and respectability, but the fundamentalist attachments are so bizarre and anti-intellectual as to make the whole enterprise suspect.  Back to the new Biola center:

But beyond the problem of Mr. Worldly Wiseman is the problem of Biola itself.  The problem of Biola, however, is not the problem of Biola alone; it is shared by a number of the more than 115 evangelical schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), the largest umbrella network of evangelical institutions of higher learning.  The problem is, quite simply, lingering attachment to some of the more dubious certainties and habits derived from Fundamentalism and hardened by the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversies of the 20th century. 

I'm glad Howard and Giberson pointed out the CCCU (Council for Conservative Christian College and Universities), of which OBU is a member.  As badly as the D.C.-based CCCU wants to seem like a uniquely faithful coalition of colleges, the evidence seems to suggest it is just another part of the parallel universe.  It's not a total joke/sham like the Association for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), which "accredits" fundamentalist Bible academies that could never attain accreditation through an actual accrediting body.  But the CCCU just isn't as special as it thinks it is.  And frankly, I'm not sure why OBU (or any college) is a member.  The CCCU does provide one service you'll be pleased to learn about: Supposedly whenever Dr. Norman actually has to undergo a performance evaluation that includes input from faculty, Dr. Whitlock has proposed to use an instrument developed by the CCCU.  Isn't that reassuring?


We've entered a new world at OBU -- one in which you can't even find the classics of the Christian faith (or any decent new research, either) in the college bookstore, but you can find reassurance in apologetics and "worldview" classes.  While plenty of other conservative Christian colleges are also facing hostile takeovers, some are not.  Some are continuing ahead on the path of enlightened Christian liberal arts education -- the path we would still be on if not for the fact that our leaders have to appease the BGCO.  As schools like Gordon, Wheaton, Biola, Whitworth, and others forge on, OBU and other Southern Baptist schools have to fight against our fundamentalist overlords.  (True fact: Wheaton just hired an amazing professor OBU rejected in order to hire someone from Liberty University.  I'm sorry, but whoever made that decision has absolutely no business in Christian higher education.)

What is more, many old-guard defenders of the status quo, convinced that the residue of fundamentalism is simply “what the Bible plainly teaches,” are not in short supply among donors, board members and vocal alumni.  They would likely perceive some changes such as admitting Catholic faculty, constructively engaging evolution, or modifying statements of faith away from simplistic biblicism as greasing the slippery slope toward perdition.

As fundamentalism faded from view in the middle of the last century, OBU built a proud reputation for an academically rigorous, unapologetically Christian, and unashamedly Baptist brand of higher education.  Yet today, resurgent fundamentalists seem intent on destroying everything we built.  And unless we stand up and fight, they will win.