Braking for Bloggers (Cedarville University's decision to cancel Shane Claiborne)

Christianity Astray (oops I mean Today) Online ^ | 2/11/08 | Katelyn Beaty

[Terriergal]

Cedarville University, a Baptist school in southwest Ohio, decided on January 30 to cancel a lecture from Christian social activist Shane Claiborne originally slated for tonight (Feb. 11) in the school's Dixon Ministry Center, after a small but vocal number of bloggers saw the lecture as a step toward liberal theology.

After Cedarville's public relations office announced on January 22 that Cedarville would be hosting "An Evening with Shane Claiborne," some blogs decried the decision to invite someone they labeled as belonging to the Emergent community. Links to the blogs were then e-mailed to alumni and pastors, some of whom called Cedarville administrators to complain.

[Terriergal]

Carl Ruby, Cedarville's vice president for student life, told CT that although there was "a high degree of receptivity on campus" to the Claiborne lecture, he decided to cancel the lecture to avoid risking conveying the wrong message about Cedarville's doctrinal beliefs.

Good for Cedarville. The kids can look at Shane talking about his Holy Loogies on youtube if they want to be 'challenged.' (funny how they can't put up with the 'challenge' of dealing with responsible adult leadership).

[Manfred the Wonder Dawg]

More here - http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=992&more=1&c=1

Cedarville had to be pushed and still has trouble brewing.

[GOPPachyderm]

Bloggers deserve credit. This guy is abominable. Glad the school reconsidered.

[Terriergal]

Yup that’s where I saw the original story. :-)

I had some guy on youtube try and start a ‘conversation’ with me about it when I commented negatively on the video that Christianresearchnetwork.com originally linked to. He thought I was ‘misunderstanding’ Shane.

What a joke!

[Terriergal]

yup!

[Cyrano]

"There's too much constructive work to do for the kingdom for us to spend our energies constantly reacting to every destructive voice, especially those who do not honor Jesus' admonition to speak directly to one another in love (Matthew 18)."

I've been accused (with some legitimacy, to my shame) of being more willing to talk than act in these situations, but I am really getting tired of Mt 18 being used as a hammer to squelch discussion by passive-aggressive people who don't think they're wrong anyway.

It's like how people in the Bible School I attended using 1 Cor 8 ("don't cause the weaker brother to stumble") as a club to force others to follow their social/cultural rules, by claiming to be the weaker brother. Ergh.