Posted on 07/30/2014 7:07:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, a professor recently argued that Wheaton College’s accreditation, as well as that of several other religious colleges, should be revoked on the grounds that the schools’ required statements of faith violate academic freedom. I write not merely to defend Wheaton’s right to exist, but to express my gratitude that it does exist.
Wheaton is an Evangelical Christian college in Illinois that houses the C. S. Lewis papers. I went there recently for a dialogue on C. S. Lewis and reading carefully, even reverently. While I am neither specifically Evangelical, like Wheaton, nor a Christian of any denomination, I joined a community of such scholars and leaders there to explore what it would take to cultivate deep reading in our educational institutions and culture. I knew how much my own Jewish upbringing had contributed to my sense that reading carefully can open up worlds of thought and spirit.
C. S. Lewis’s beautiful short book An Experiment in Criticism presents reading well as an achievement not only of the mind but of character: of discipline and self-restraint. When describing what careful examination of a work of art or of a text requires, he writes: “We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all our own preconceptions, interests, and associations. . . . We must look, and go on looking till we have certainly seen exactly what is there. . . . The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.”
Reading well is at once a powerful and a fragile practice. In our time, the technology of interruption has outpaced the technology of concentration.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Excuse me if I’m being ignorant...
But doesn’t our CONSTITUTION say we have FREEDOM OF RELIGION??
I don’t recall it say anything about ACADEMIC FREEDOM.
Am I just wrong??
We CANNOT let this crap continue to stand without a fight.
What does accreditation have to do with academic freedom?
Totalitarians at their finest
The better choice would be to fire this “professor” and all other like-minded idiots
PFL
RE: But doesn’t our CONSTITUTION say we have FREEDOM OF RELIGION??
I think the question is WHO is doing the accrediting? Is it a government body or a private institution.
If it is the former, yes, then we have a constitutional problem.
If it is the latter, well, they can make their own rules (freedom of Association applies). And Wheaton can give them the proverbial finger and seek a different private accrediting body.
BTW, Wheaton is the alma mater of the Rev. Billy Graham, former speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert, and Senator Dan Coats among others.
I’ll agree if and only if we also agree to remove the accredidation from any college granting degrees in womyn’s studies, sexual studies, diversity studies, political “science”, sociology, etc. After all, those are the areas in which the substandard performers go to get their cereal box degrees.
And any university that 1) admitted the Obajmadork and 2) allowed him to graduate should have every credential they own removed, burned, and cast into the sewer pit that is progressivism.
It is important to note that the first universities were religious institutions.
A few years ago, Wheaton College bowed to PC crowd and dropped “Crusaders” as their mascot. Looks like that didn’t cut any ice at all with the Left.
M4L
“We CANNOT let this crap continue to stand without a fight.”
If we don’t fight it, Christian university graduates will eventually find themselves effectively blocked from advancement in most choice fields. Many graduate programs and professional licenses will be out-of-reach for them. There can be no compromise here. We can’t make nice with the world. Christians must be wise and understand the forces of Satan will stop at nothing to ghettoize believers and stop the proclamation of His name and the gospel.
Merely because a school has the collection of C.S. Lewis, really matters not, if they no longer stand on the statement of faith.
A local school had the complete works of Spurgeon - in their basement - but accepted gays as professors, so it had no problem allowing Spurgeon's works to go to a seminary that held them in high esteem!
Whomever graduated from Wheaton, matters not, if they are no longer standing on the same statement of faith.
Harvard was established to prepare men for the ministry and complete study of the bible - look at it now!
RE: A few years ago, Wheaton College bowed to PC crowd and dropped “Crusaders” as their mascot.
So, did Campus Crusade for Christ change their name as well?
It's already happened for social workers, but I am unsure whether that qualifies as a choice field. Graduates from Franciscan are now held to be unqualified for social worker positions.
They are putting down your school. Let them have it.
Interesting that the critic would take on Wheaton. While it is an elite academic institution, as it compares philosophically to other evangelical schools, Wheaton leans rather liberal on biblical issues.
My brother teaches classical Greek there. DOn’t know if it’s liberal. Billy Graham graduated from there I think.
They did. It's now called "Cru"--whatever that means.
Occidental College was founded as a Presbyterian school and remained so for decades. But things have changed. A few years ago, the cross was removed from the chapel because it supposedly offended non-Christians.
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