Analysis: Moore Replaces Land as ERLC President

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

The Reverend Dr. Russell Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can OBU Avoid SBC Seminaries' Influence?

As most of you know, the SBC's six seminaries have changed dramatically over the past 25 years.  Fundamentalists typically believe that the seminaries had been adrift, promoting liberal theology and even secularism, steering Baptists away from a plain, literal reading of Scripture.  The "Conservative Resurgence" helped return the institutions to their sound Biblical roots.  They are now among the best seminaries in the world.  Moderates typically believe that the seminaries were among the best, until the "Fundamentalist Takeover" used political tactics to oust all moderates, end academic freedom, institutionalize creedalism, authoritarianism, and fundamentalism, and turn the seminaries into indoctrination camps for aspiring preacher boys.

We're not going to settle that debate today.  Although I do hope to find guest writers who can do a series of posts describing how each seminary went through the change.  Who knows, there may be important parallels to the Baptist colleges' experiences with fundamentalist takeovers.

The point for today is this: When it comes to circling the wagons, deciding who's in and who's out, excluding moderates, insisting that being on the "right" side of once-secondary disagreements is now primary, exercising power, wielding influence, engaging with the media and the public, and eroding historic Baptist distinctives, the SBC seminaries have been absolutely central.  What's worse, I'm afraid that as the victorious SBC fundamentalists flexed their muscles in the 1990s and 2000s, they looked to the state conventions and Baptist colleges and said to themselves, "We've taken over the largest Protestant denomination in America.  I wonder what else we can conquer."

There's plenty of evidence that some of today's leaders in Baptist higher education actually see the post-Takeover seminaries as models.  In Georgia, college presidents Don Dowless, Emir Caner, and Mike Simoneaux have all instituted policies requiring all faculty (and in some cases, staff) to sign various faith statements.  This practice has long been a hallmark of post-Takeover SBC seminary administration.  I recently found out that Southern Seminary actually has a solemn ceremony every time a new professor signs its Abstract of Principles.  Everyone sits around and watches the guy sign a piece of paper and applauds when he's done.

A new SBTS professor signing the school's

"Abstract of Principles" in a public ceremony

Fortunately, very little of the Georgia Baptist craziness has taken root at OBU.  And even though OBU's academic reputation is presently in decline, we are far ahead of the GBC schools, which aren't really even pretending to be legitimate liberal arts colleges where professors are free to teach and students are free to learn.  They've all been bought and paid for and are now just feathers in the fundamentalists' cap -- a resume line for college presidents aspiring to a higher rung on the ladder of SBC politics.

Still, it's relevant to note where SBC seminary influences are present at OBU -- and where they are absent.

President
I've already commented that it's a tremendous blessing that we have a president who did not attend a SBC seminary.  Given the alternative -- someone who spent close to a decade (M.Div. + Ph.D.) being formed in a post-Takeover SBC seminary -- this is one case where nothing is definitely better than something.  Now, you can't necessarily tell a lot about a person by where they went to school -- neither Dowless or Caner hold SBC seminary Ph.D.'s -- but I'd say we definitely dodged a bullet here.  Things could be so much worse.  We could have a true-believer, cultural warrior, lifelong SBC climber in the executive suite.

Religion Department
Well, it's not really correct to refer to OBU's "religion department."  For good or ill (or perhaps some of both), the religion and philosophy faculty have been together with the ministerial preparation faculty for two decades.  Some of OBU's newer religion professors have come from SBC seminaries and some have not.  Fortunately, there does not seem to be excessive fondness for the SBC seminaries in the department.  I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth, but it seems that most people realize a vastly superior graduate theological education can be had elsewhere.

In the case of the Hobbs College of Theology and Ministry, I'm actually less interested in where the faculty earned their degrees than where OBU graduates go on to earn theirs.  For aspiring pastors, missionaries, and youth ministry directors, there's a pretty strong pipeline to the SBC seminaries, particularly Southwestern in Fort Worth.  This makes sense and is to be expected.  In terms of OBU graduates who want to do graduate work in theology or biblical studies, however, I'm not sure that any of them go to SBC seminaries.  Why would they?

OBU actually produces a number of graduates who do well at a variety of very fine seminaries and divinity schools.  When I was there, we were sending several top students to Princeton Theological Seminary.  I went to Boston University School of Theology, having been rejected from Harvard Divinity School.  But I know we sent students to Harvard, Duke, Notre Dame and Wheaton in those years.  In the past couple years, I know of students who have gone to these schools and others, including some in the U.K.  I also know that students -- including some of the very best students -- preparing for parish ministry have eschewed the SBC seminaries, choosing instead places like Fuller, Gordon-Conwell, and Brite (TCU).

I would absolutely love to see data on where OBU religion, ministry, and philosophy (or "apologetics")  students go for grad school.  But OBU could never release the data because it would make the BGCO's head explode.  Even in its new incarnation where moderates are an endangered species, the Hobbs College faculty is not exactly a SBC Seminary Fan Club.

Elsewhere
The new library dean came to OBU after working at Southern Seminary.  So far, we've heard only good things about him, but it's a little early to tell.  Just remember, that statue of James Ralph Scales has eyes in the back of his head, and he's watching!

Back in the day, when churches had organs and choirs and the like, I'm told the SBC seminaries had great sacred music programs.  I know the current and former fine arts deans had experience with SBC seminary sacred music programs.  Though I'm told they're as different as night and day when it comes to how to run a Christian college fine arts program.  Another story for another day...

Which Direction Does the Pipeline Run?
While it seems generally fair to say that the SBC seminaries influence OBU less than they probably influence a lot of other Baptist colleges, things could be changing.  The normal pattern used to be that Baptist college professors in certain areas (religion, sacred music) would have earned their degrees at SBC seminaries, but would teach their whole careers at the college level.  A few would return to the seminaries to teach later in their careers.

At OBU, we're seeing an influx of recent hires who, whether they attended SBC seminaries or not (most did), they are coming to Bison Hill after having worked at the seminaries.  This is true of the fine arts and library deans, Provost Norman, and the newest religion professor.  As we get more of these kinds of people, we need to watch out.  Whereas most of us think academic freedom is normal and forcing university professors to sign creeds is not normal, these people have been in the ever-more insular world of SBC seminaries.  In that world, it's perfectly normal to force people to sign faith statements.  Academic freedom is not just a novel idea, it's a dangerous one.  Everyone agrees on almost everything.  They think the same, believe the same, and vote the same.  Now, I hope each of these people has something positive to bring to Bison Hill.  My concern is that the more people we get from the SBC seminaries, the less resistance we will muster when administrators decide that a Shorter-style purge is what God wants for OBU.

The Downward Spiral: Activism Thwarts Imminent Disaster at OBU

This weekend, we'll examine what the incremental devolution of a Christian liberal arts university looks like.  I like the way Veronica has organized her posts into brief, topical series (see posts on administration here, here, and here; students' experiences under the new regime here, here, here, here, and here; gender here, here, and here; and diversity here, here, here, and here).  I'm going to follow that pattern this weekend as we look at schools that have been taken over and are in various stages of destruction at the hands of state convention power brokers and their lakeys in university administration.

But before we turn to our attention to Baptist colleges that fundamentalists are presently wrecking, I think we've finally earned the right to brag a little.  In the midst of all the sinking ships and in the context of non-denominational colleges supplanting Baptist ones as leaders in Christian higher education, OBU refuses to lay down and die the death that all six SBC seminaries and many Baptist colleges suffered at the hands of the Takeover architects and their henchmen.

Activism On Many Fronts
Here's how it all started.  When a very accomplished, well-loved, and exceedingly devoted Christian philosopher was forced out of his position at OBU (the administration offered him a steaming pile of crap instead of the contract he deserved according to basic fairness and the Faculty Handbook), the faculty quickly realized something was badly amiss.  About a year ago, once it became clear that the administration wanted to scale back philosophy (a core discipline in the liberal arts) and replace it with "Christian apologetics," a group of concerned students started an underground newspaper to raise awareness of this unprecedented new direction and to protest the negative changes.  After another professor was unjustly forced out, faculty anger intensified.  An alumni petition circulated, further raising awareness about OBU's alarming and unprecedented new direction.  Retired faculty documented the administration's abuses and stood up for their friends and former colleagues.  Only after all that did Save OBU emerge.

Eight or nine months ago, OBU's path to becoming just another marginally accredited preacher boy camp and teacher/nurse vo-tech looked like a sure thing.  It would take time, of course, but the wheels were in motion.  Today, that march has slowed almost to a halt.  Sure, the provost might still be screening applicants with his theological, social, and political litmus tests.  Apparently the new policy is mainline Protestants need not apply.  He's still the chief academic officer, but now literally thousands of OBU stakeholders know how grossly he overestimated his mandate, such as it was.  His zeal for waging ideological warfare is most unwelcome at OBU, and  he has definitely backed down for now (faculty report that he barely spoke in a recent meeting for fear of being "misinterpreted" later).

Claiming a Victory in the Battle, but the War Rages On
There will be no ideologically-motivated firings this summer.  Too many people are paying attention now.  I seriously doubt they will override any faculty search committees this year, either.  Dr. Norman's wholesale disregard for faculty committees' expertise and judgment has created a huge embarrassment for the university and an impediment to maintaining an excellent faculty over the long term.  We will closely monitor the process this year.  Even amid the excitement (distraction?) of adding programs and conducting a capital campaign, administrators have had to focus more deliberately on their relationships with students and faculty -- relationships they took for granted and carelessly sacrificed in order to please people in the BGCO who have long had it out for the OBU religion department which, in spite of being thoroughly conservative by any objective standard, just isn't conservative enough for today's post-Takeover BGCO.  President Whitlock has endured a "brutal" trustees' executive session and has had to abandon other plans in order to demonstrate that he is on campus showing leadership and proving that he understands the difference between a liberal arts college and a Bible academy.  Just as President Brister once complained, "Anthony thinks he's my boss," we trust that President Whitlock now knows that there are a lot of people not named Rev. Dr. Anthony Jordan whose opinions also matter.

So yes, we're claiming a victory, albeit a tentative one.  As we'll see over the next few days, it's nothing short of remarkable that we've disrupted the fundamentalists' agenda for OBU.  But the way we've done it is just as remarkable.  We have no staff and no budget.  A few writers have shared their time and skills.  A few people have donated $30 for Facebook and Google ad campaigns.  And hundreds of stakeholders have shared information, expressed interest and support through Facebook and Twitter, and spread the word to classmates, colleagues, and friends.  Also, there are so many things we could have done but haven't.  We have not sought any media attention.  We have not encouraged the wrongfully dismissed professors to seek legal recourse or financial damages against OBU for their shameful treatment.  We have not contacted major donors or encouraged anyone to stop giving to OBU.  We remain hopeful that providing information, offering commentary/analysis, and slowly building a movement are superior to hardball tactics.

The Bad News: Things Will Get Worse
Just because we don't expect any firings this year does not mean we are out of the woods.  The provost's office still seems intent on incrementally remaking the faculty in the image of the post-Takeover SBC and BGCO.  We still face a dramatically limited faculty applicant pool and the constant threat that OBU will hire based on ideological purity rather than accomplishment or academic promise.  We will continue not to have a legitimate bookstore on campus.  Whether President Whitlock continues to give his blessing to Dr. Norman's war on OBU and his weapons for waging it remains to be seen.  But it will be impossible to drive a wedge between those two.

The only thing keeping OBU from going down the path of schools we'll discuss over the next few days is YOU.  Our network of concerned stakeholders is large and growing -- and we are ever on alert.  We're confident that the trustees would not abide another unethical dismissal by the administration.  But mainly we're confident that if administrators forced someone else out, they will awaken a sleeping giant.  The Bison Nation is not prepared to sit idly by while their beloved OBU is destroyed from the inside, its legacy of excellence in Christian liberal arts education dismantled piece by piece.

The moment we let up -- the moment we think we've won -- the agenda we're opposing will start moving again.  This will continue indefinitely as long as the BGCO is in charge.  As we'll see over the next few days, the pressure to make Baptist colleges fundamentalist always originates within the state convention.  After we see how badly some of these schools have suffered, we trust that our argument for independence from the BGCO will be more persuasive than ever.

But for now -- maybe for today only -- celebrate!  You have truly made a difference.  Tomorrow, we get back to work.

Graduate Education after OBU

This week, Save OBU has been exploring the wider world that OBU is involved in -- the Shawnee community as well as the worlds of Southern Baptist and Christian non-denominational higher education.  So let's get down to brass tacks.  While I believe deeply in the ideals of a liberal arts education and theological training for all, by and large colleges and universities are measured by their ability (1) to prepare students for the job world and (2) to get their students into noteworthy graduate institutions.

I was both a philosophy and biblical languages major who went on to seminary and a practicing youth minister while at OBU.  Therefore, today and tomorrow, I will be talking about how OBU prepared me for graduate school and for ministry--both expressed purposes of (what was then) the School of Christian Service.  Through each of these aspects of my time at OBU, I engaged the Shawnee community and Christian higher education.

When I left Shawnee in August of 2006, I visited my parents briefly in Texas before moving to New Jersey to attend Princeton Theological Seminary.  I was neither the first OBU graduate to take this route nor the last.  Another student from my class went with me (he is now pursuing a Ph.D. at Notre Dame), and a second colleague came after a couple of years later.  In fact, one reason my application was so well received was that OBU had been sending a steady stream of students to Princeton for several years.

What is most remarkable about my time at PTS is how fluid my transition from undergraduate to graduate education was.  In the first week on campus, I took tests to determine whether or not I would be exempt from Greek and Hebrew language courses.  Thanks to OBU, I was the only student that year to pass both tests.  One of the biggest shocks to new graduate students is the amount of reading they are expected to complete in a week.  Thanks to OBU, I found out that the reading was less than I expected and sometimes less than the religion and philosophy professors had required.  Seminary students often come from academic backgrounds other than religion, and much of their degree is taken up with introductory courses in theology and church history.  Thanks to OBU, I was exempted from nearly all of my introductory classes.  In fact, about two-thirds of my graduate coursework were electives, so long as I took the required number of hours for each area of study.

To say that OBU prepared me for work at this level would be an understatement.  I stepped immediately into Greek and Hebrew exegesis courses with second- and third-year students.  Yet, under the guidance of OBU professors, I had already read much of the New Testament in the original Greek and dabbled in the Septuagint.  I engaged the foundational theological and philosophical questions of the nature of God, evil, and human knowledge.  Still, these were not new to me.  I dug deep into the religious history of the United States, learning from one of the preeminent scholars in the nation.  But before I left OBU, I had already won the Mercer Baptist Heritage Award--open to both undergraduate and graduate students.  (The previous two winners were both OBU alumni who were studying at Princeton.)

More importantly, in all these accomplishments, I was not unique.  I was simply another graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University.

My time at OBU was the defining experience of my academic life.  Looking at my résumé, most would assume that the diploma that I am most proud of would have "Scholæ Theologicæ Princetoniensis" boldly written across it in Latin.  Actually, I keep that diploma in a drawer of my desk in a cardboard tube.  The lessons that I learned at OBU are what I carried to graduate school and what I still carry with me today.  Certainly, I learned a lot at Princeton, but that learning clarified and built upon what OBU taught me.

Where does that leave us, then, especially in regards to Save OBU's mission?  There are a couple of takeaways from my experience that I would like to leave with you:

For one, I intentionally chose not to attend a Southern Baptist seminary.  Frankly, I was not alone as most of my classmates in the religion and philosophy departments made similar decisions.  When I graduated in 2006, the SBC seminaries had long been under the influence of fundamentalism.  My original goal after OBU was to earn a Ph.D.  Southwestern, Southern, New Orleans, and Southeastern seminaries simply were not options if I wanted to be respected among Christian academics.  Whereas these were once vibrant schools (with Southwestern and Southern widely recognized for excellence), fundamentalism and ideologically-centered education were the new norms.  The professors whose teaching still defines my life had studied there (mostly before the fundamentalist takeover was complete), but if I wanted to pursue a career like theirs, I would have to look elsewhere.

The same fundamentalism that has befallen the Southern Baptist seminaries is knocking at OBU's door.  If the school hopes to remain vital and relevant to Christian higher education, separation from the BGCO is essential.  As OBU loses academic relevance, it will also lose the quality of students it has become accustomed to.  Let us be clear, OBU earned its reputation in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.  OBU will also earn its reputation if it continues down the path towards fundamentalism and chooses ideology over scholarship.  (Already, the two forced dismissals and the faculty's mistrust of administration are becoming widely known.  So is the fact that Wheaton just hired a Princeton New Testament Ph.D. (and OBU alumna) that OBU passed over in favor of a more conservative [male] candidate against the wishes of the entire religion/philosophy faculty.)

My preparation for graduate education was equal to the best that is offered in the nation.  Many of my classmates, both in the School of Christian Service and in the other colleges, have taken advantage of that education and gone on to prestigious academic institutions in medicine, law, divinity, and other fields.  I pray and work in the hope that future OBU students are offered the same quality that we were.

Note:  Clayton graduated in 2009 with a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently earning a Master of Education through Montana State University.