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.

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) 

2012 Forbes Data (Part 3): More Comparisons

When the 2012 Forbes colleges rankings came out last month, we noted that OBU declined from #299 to #390.  Later, we compiled some data on state convention-affiliated colleges that OBU considers peer institutions.  OBU's decline stood in stark contrast to other Southern Baptist colleges that are holding steady and even increasing their reputations and profiles.

We want to make a few points.  First, OBU's decline was NOT inevitable.  Conscious decisions were made that adversely affected OBU's performance on the metrics that Forbes uses to compile its rankings.  Second, there is nothing about being distinctively Baptist that impedes our ability to stand out among Christian and secular institutions.  Some other Baptist schools are doing just fine.  Third, many intentionally Christ-centered (to use the CCCU's definition) institutions rank exceptionally well, as OBU did before the current administration came to power.  And fourth, it should come as no surprise that schools that have severed ties with Baptist state conventions excel in the rankings.  The charts below illustrate these latter two points.

As recently as 2009, OBU was undisputedly one of the finest Christian colleges in the United States.  A lot of our detractors try to argue, "Well, who cares about rankings? We're being faithful to the gospel."  There are so many things wrong with that argument.  First, fidelity to the gospel does not require unethical and unprecedented H.R. practices.  Were OBU Presidents Raley, Scales, Cothen, Tanner, Hall, Agee, and Brister and their academic officers being unfaithful to the gospel when they abided by Faculty Handbook provisions and sought and valued faculty search committee input in hiring decisions?  Of course not!  Are schools like Union and Ouachita, not to mention Wheaton, Gordon, and Calvin unfaithful to the gospel because they are not precipitously declining in national rankings?  There is no inherent conflict between Christian identity and excellence.  

With the formerly Baptist schools, the situation is more complicated.  On the one hand, there's absolutely no chance that Wake Forest, Furman, and Richmond would have become some of the best colleges in America if fundamentalists were still meddling in their affairs.  But you could argue that those schools' Christian (and Baptist) identities are less explicit now.  Still, I'd rather OBU take the path of William Jewell College or Stetson than end up like some of the Georgia Baptist Convention colleges that are on the brink of losing their accreditation.  For a long time (the Agee years), OBU was able to keep fundamentalists out, attain excellence, and survive without the OBU-BGCO relationship breaking down.

But those days are over.  The battle lines are clearly drawn.  Fundamentalists don't share power very well.  All they know is total control.  And they don't mind wrecking institutions along the way.  So as long as OBU has meddlers in Thurmond (or the Baptist Building), we need to be constantly vigilant.

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.

OBU's Peers: Nondenominational Colleges?

OBU's Peers Series:
Intro: Who's In the Same Boat?
OBU's Peers: Nondenominational Colleges?
OBU's Peers: Nearby Baptist Colleges (Ouachita and Southwest Baptist)?
OBU's Peers: Texas Baptist Colleges?
OBU's Peers: Union University?

This week, we're looking for OBU's sister schools that have had to negotiate the balance between "doctrinal accountability" and academic freedom.  Yesterday, we pointed out that neither the Furman/Stetson model nor the Brewton-Parker/Truett-McConnell model fits OBU's situation very well.  The former are no longer intentionally Baptist/evangelical and the latter are so fundamentalist that if we ever became like them, we would not be a legitimate liberal arts university so none of this would even matter.

Today, we look outside Baptist life for signs of flourishing (or trouble) among non-denominational Christian universities.  Forbes Magazine, in whose rankings OBU has plummeted in the past two years, gives us a starting place by listing the Top Ten Christian colleges in the U.S.  For the moment, we'll overlook the highly problematic fact that Forbes equates "Christian" with membership in the Council for Conservative Christian Colleges and Universities.  (According to the CCCU's accounting and blatant right-wing bias, only 116 of the hundreds of Christian colleges are actually Christian.)

Let's take a quick look at the top 10:

#59. Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) - Nondenominational

#81. Westmont college (Santa Barbara, CA) - Nondenominational

#134. George Fox University (Newberg, OR) - Quaker

#142. Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA) - Churches of Christ

#160. Gordon College (Wenham, MA) - Nondenominational

#179. Covenant College (Lookout Mountain, GA) - Presbyterian (PCA)

#209. Whitworth University (Spokane, WA) - Presbyterian (PCUSA)

#213. Houghton College (Houghton, NY) - Wesleyan Church

**#233. Oklahoma Baptist University (Shawnee, OK) - Southern Baptist

#235. College of the Ozarks (Point Lookout, MO) - Nondenominational

**In 2009, we were #109 on this list, literally just a few places behind Duke, Cornell, and Georgetown.

The astute observer will quickly note that none of these schools is Catholic and only one is from a mainline Protestant tradition (PCUSA, one of the denominations whose members Dr. Norman would like to exclude from consideration for faculty positions at OBU).  But again, putting the CCCU's blatant and ignorant biases aside, let's assume for the sake of discussion that this is a representative (though not exhaustive) list of some of the better evangelical Christian colleges in the U.S.

Opponents of BGCO separation have said that without the convention to "hold OBU accountable," that the university would inevitably drift off into secularism.  That's ridiculous!  Four of these ten colleges have managed to retain their "intentionally Christ-centered" ethos without a denomination to keep the secularists out.  Never mind the fact that 30 years ago, many of the top Christian colleges in the U.S. were Baptist and today hardly any of them are.  If anything, affiliation with a Baptist state convention since the early 1990s degrades the academic quality of an institution over time.

While Baptists schools have left their conventions or regressed into fundamentalism, evangelical schools from other denominations (and those without a denomination) have flourished, a point we highlighted in our recent discussion of the "Evangelical Renaissance" in academe.

Does anyone really think the trustees or faculty at Wheaton, Gordon, or Biola -- even though no one is obsessing about their church affiliation or doctrinal purity -- are about to let those schools' religious character erode?  The mere suggestion is completely stupid.  These colleges may not have a dedicated funding stream from a denomination, but it hasn't stopped them from being excellent.  If anything, their options for hiring, recruiting students, and soliciting donors are greatly expanded without the burden of the denominational attachment.  Given that that OBU gets less than 5% of its annual operating budget from the BGCO (down from 25% 30 years ago), it's reasonable to at least ask the question of whether we would be better off without the affiliation.

Sure, administrators at Wheaton and Gordon are giving up a measure of control by welcoming trustees from a variety of Protestant denominational families.  The BGCO thinks it is doing OBU a favor and somehow protecting it from corruption by selecting its trustees, who in turn elect the president and sign off on many of his(/her -- ha!) decisions.  But the truth is, even though we have some great trustees, we are hurting OBU in the long run by excluding men and women whose gifts and expertise would be a great asset to OBU governance, even if they are not clergy and laity in BGCO congregations.  These excellent nondenominational schools assemble their boards from across the country, because they want to have a national reach.  It's an idea OBU should consider.

One of the reasons nondenominational colleges are eclipsing Baptist ones in Christian higher education is that the Wheatons and Gordons of the world are not distracted by and obsessed with appeasing fundamentalists.  Unfortunately, we are hindered in many ways by our unhelpful attachment to the BGCO.  I'm certainly grateful to the men and women who have supported OBU over the years.  And given how awful the situation is in other state conventions, I'm happy that the problems we've had seem to originate in the provost's office (which is an easy fix) rather than the BGCO Nominating Committee (which would be a sign of major, perhaps intractable, problems).

But looking at Southern Baptist life broadly, its degradation of educational institutions over the past 20-25 years does not bode well for the future of OBU as long as it is in the BGCO's hands.  Because while other, dare I say better, Christian colleges are forging ahead, secure in the knowledge that they have Christian faculty and governing bodies committed to a Christian ethos, that is not enough at OBU.  Our hires now have to hold the right social views (or be the right gender).  And the narrow circle of people of people the BGCO deems fit to be OBU trustees and the narrowing circle of people Provost Norman deems fit to teach at OBU will eventually limit our pool of prospective students and donors, as well.  I wonder how many OBU trustees would be opposed to having a few non-Baptists or non-Oklahomans who love OBU and are passionate about Christian higher education on the Board.  I bet not many, but they don't get to make that choice, unfortunately.

As much as some people might like to believe otherwise, these fine nondenominational colleges are not really our peers in any meaningful ways.  Though OBU and Wheaton are comparably selective in admissions, OBU's 75th percentile SAT score is about the same as Wheaton's 25th percentile.  Aside from the doctrinal rigidity and appeasement the BGCO expects from OBU (in return for a proportionally dwindling annual subsidy), the relationship imposes a set of constraints on the university that limits our reach and our profile.  Without such constraints, nondenominational colleges and seminaries have left Baptist ones in the dust.  Even so, we welcome their support in our efforts to rejoin the top echelon of Christian colleges in America.

Save OBU Outreach: Good Non-denominational Colleges

This week, we've made efforts to reach out to people other than our core constituency of students, parents, faculty, and alumni.  We brought attention to how OBU's devolution into a fundamentalist Bible academy would hurt the Shawnee community.  And we looked beyond OBU to the tragic story of how the Fundamentalist Takeover of the SBC so dramatically degraded the quality and rigor of Baptist higher education.  Though every school's story is a little different, other Baptist colleges are going through different versions of the same problems that we've seen at our beloved OBU.

Seminaries

Today we want to speak to another group: non-denominational Christian colleges.  in a very real sense, these institutions have benefitted from the decline of Baptist higher education.  Take the seminaries, for example.  There was a time not to long ago when some of the SBC seminaries were recognized throughout American Protestantism as quite good.  Today, the SBC seminaries have been purged of what few liberals ever existed there, as well as all moderates.  Some of them are led by loud-mouthed fundamentalist culture warriors.  As mainline Protestant seminaries have continued to occupy the moderate-to-liberal end of the spectrum, the decline of SBC seminaries has left a huge gap in evangelical theological education.  Seminaries like Fuller, Gordon-Conwell, and Asbury have stepped into that gap and picked up where Southern Baptists abandoned ideologically diverse, intellectually rigorous graduate theological education.

Colleges

At the undergraduate level, the decline has been just as spectacular.  As I looked at the SBC's list of affiliated colleges yesterday, it occurred to me just how dramatically the Southern Baptists have fallen when it comes to colleges an universities.  Barely over 20 years ago, that list would have included many of the finest private universities in the South.  Today, it's actually pretty embarrassing.    Thankfully, OBU is one of the best Baptist schools by any objective measure.  But perhaps the most tragic consequence of the Fundamentalist Takeover has been the absolute degradation of Baptist academia.

As with the SBC seminaries' decline, independent colleges have stepped in to fill the massive vacuum in Baptist higher education left by the exodus of Furman, Wake Forest, Mercer, Stetson, etc. and the fundamentalists' attack on on the remaining educational institutions.  Schools like Wheaton, Biola, Whitworth, and Gordon have emerged as the standard bearers in evangelical higher education as more and more Baptist colleges have descended into outright fundamentalism.

A few weeks ago, we talked about a recent op-ed piece by two Gordon College professors about a "renaissance" in evangelical higher education.  Though they do not take up this distinction in their essay, the comparison between non-denominational colleges' renaissance and Baptist colleges' decline is stark.

Why has one subset of conservative Protestant schools flourished while another has floundered?  The answer is complicated.  But it's undeniable that the Fundamentalist Takeover of the SBC in the 1980s and the state conventions in the 1990s is a big part of the story.  The SBC seminaries fell quickly, and many of the better SBC colleges left their state conventions.  Those that remained, like OBU, endured varying degrees of Baptist battles in the 1990s and 2000s.  Fortunately, OBU Presidents Agee and Brister generally protected OBU from fundamentalism.  The current administration seems much more accommodating.

While Baptist universities have had to deal with fundamentalist convention-elected trustees (particularly in the seminaries) and appease fundamentalist convention leaders, the non-denominational colleges have been able to pursue excellence in Christian higher education without such distractions.

We applaud our brothers and sisters at these schools for the very fine work they've done.  Admittedly they have outpaced us, given the retrenchment toward fundamentalism in many Baptist colleges.  We envy their freedom and independence.  We hope they realize that our students, faculty, and alumni long for academic freedom and fearless inquiry.

Denominationalism is dying in American Christianity.  While some media and scholarly commentators believe this dynamic is limited to Mainline Protestantism, we see it in evangelicalism as well.  Southern Baptist leaders are well aware that their "brand" has become irrevocably associated with fundamentalist theology, partisan politics, and anti-intellectualism.  At the same time, evangelical institutions without denominational shackles have flourished, from local churches all the way to universities.

Rather than trying to shed its Baptist identity, we want OBU to embrace it -- but in a classical sense, not in the narrow way today's fundamentalist SBC and BGCO leaders have defined it.  But given the past 20-30 years in Baptist life, we can't help but envy evangelical institutions' progress in evangelical theological education and look forward to joining that top tier as soon as we are free from our burdensome imprisonment to the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

Progress Report on Save OBU Updates and Changes

So much has been happening at Save OBU, it's hard to keep track of it all.  About two weeks ago, I announced some changes to the blog designed to give voice to a new generation of OBU alumni.  Today I'll briefly report on some new initiatives and lay out a sketch of our vision going forward into the spring.

New Contributing Editor

After researching and writing 72 blog posts and generating more than 12,000 pageviews on the website, I invited Veronica Pistone ('11) to join me as a Contributing Editor.  Already, Veronica has impressed our readers with her knowledge, insight, and clarity.  She has not shied away from difficult topics, and her commitment to Baptist freedom and her love of OBU shines through in every post.

Veronica receiving an award for outstanding academic

achievement from SCS Dean Mark McClellan in 2011

Guest Bloggers

On Sunday, we ran our first in a series of occasional guest blog posts.  Caitlin Dacus ('11) shared an informative and passionately written essay on early Baptist hero John Leland.  Her connections to OBU's current situation show how far our alma mater has fallen.  Tomorrow and Friday, I am pleased to welcome Clayton Mauritzen ('06) as he shares his OBU story.  Look for more guest posts in the weeks and months to come.  If you have a perspective or story and would like to be considered for publication here, be sure to email us at SaveOBU@gmail.com.  Remember, our focus is on protecting academic freedom at OBU and advocating for independence from the BGCO.

Spotlight on Recent OBU Disasters

In giving voice to a younger generation of OBU alumni, we are hearing from people who had a front row seat for the Norman-Whitlock administration's authoritarianism, new fundamentalist-inspired direction, and assaults on Baptist freedom.  If you missed it last week, take a look at our three part series on administration at OBU.

A Broad View of Evangelical Academia

Initially, I invested a lot of time in learning about other Southern Baptist colleges that parted company with their state conventions.  As inspiring as those stories are, OBU's situation is unique in that the convention literally owns the university.  The BGCO has OBU in a legal straitjacket from which we cannot easily escape.  That's why they are able to advocate for a fundamentalist agenda with such impunity -- we really have no recourse (which is why our protests must be loud, passionate, and unyielding).  For now, we just have to hope and pray that current leaders will not do any more damage to OBU and its reputation than they already have.

But it occurs to me that while many Baptist schools were fighting battles from which Joe Ingram, Bill Tanner, and Bob Agee wisely and deftly shielded OBU during the Fundamentalist Takeover era, OBU quietly established itself as one of the premier evangelical colleges in the U.S.  Sadly, we are losing ground to other fine colleges like Wheaton, Gordon, Biola, and Whitworth -- institutions that do not have to kowtow to fundamentalists like OBU unfortunately does.  Some are suggesting that we are witnessing an "evangelical renaissance" in academia.  Not only is OBU not taking part, we are actually regressing.  In fact, we just received word that Wheaton hired an outstanding young New Testament professor that OBU passed over for a job in 2009 in spite of her being unanimously recommended by the search committee.

Next Steps

Now that I have help with the daily blogging duties, I am going to start assembling an advisory board for Save OBU.  I'm looking for a handful of people with ties to SBC churches (both BGCO and CBFO) in Oklahoma.

Then, we'll work on compiling a dossier of issues that we can submit to OBU trustees later this spring.

One idea that seems fun and might be effective is to hold a Save OBU rally in Shawnee sometime this year or next.

And we'll begin investigating the politics and processes involved in trustee selection.  With luck and extensive planning, we'll be able to influence trustee election at the BGCO meeting in November.  Given all the student, faculty, alumni, and retired faculty protests, Anthony Jordan is not going to let any non-fundamentalists on the Board from now on.  We need to make sure OBU continues to have good trustees who understand Baptist freedom, academic freedom, and the importance of not ruining an institution's hard-earned and well-deserved reputation for excellence just to satisfy a few Baptist power brokers in OKC and Nashville.

A Word of Thanks
We have received invaluable support and encouragement from Bill Jones ('73) of Texas Baptists Committed.  Bill featured Save OBU on the TBC blog yesterday and we really appreciate all he's done.

And, of course, thank to all of you for your kind words and assistance in spreading the word.

God bless OBU!

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.