Is the revival that seems once again to have started on Christian university campuses real, genuine, God-ordained, and will it ultimately make a spiritual impact?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #71 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Revival on college and university campuses are not new to American history. But in the current post-Christian culture one no longer expects it.
That said, revival services started this month at Asbury University, Wilmore, Kentucky. “Impromptu nonstop prayer meeting over the past week, drawing visitors from across the country, attracting millions of views on social media and fueling talk of a nationwide religious revival.”
Scripture reading, public prayers, confessions, arms raised, worship singing, some students being saved by making professions of faith in Christ.
“Personal testimonies have gone viral on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, racking up millions of views and inspiring carloads of visitors to descend on Wilmore, population 6,000, to share in what some are calling a movement.”
The movement has spread to other Christian institutions of higher learning: “Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee; Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio; Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky.” Also, revival has now been reported at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Kentucky.
“What is happening resembles the famous Asbury Revival of 1970…That revival shut down classes for a week, then went on for two more weeks with nightly services. Hundreds of students went out to share what happened with other schools. But what many don’t realize is that Asbury has an even more extensive history with revivals—including one that took place as early as 1905 and another as recent as 2006, when a student chapel led to four days of continuous worship, prayer and praise.”
The fact of these revivals seems to fly in the face of recent predictions suggesting Christian colleges and universities may soon be a thing of the past.
John Hawthorne, a retired Christian college sociology professor and administrator, said, “Denominations won’t budge, so colleges will need to lead the way. “Otherwise, they might not survive, because students are used to values far different from churches’ teachings.”
’Today’s college freshman was born in 2004, the year Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage,’ Hawthorne said, suggesting there might not be enough conservative students in the future for some of the universities to survive.
“The majority of Christian colleges and universities list “sexual orientation” in their nondiscrimination statements, and half also include “gender identity” – far more than did so in 2013,” according to Jonathan Coley, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University who maintains a Christian higher education database of policies toward LGBTQ students.
“At some evangelical schools, the argument has now moved from fighting over student's sexual and gender equality to fighting for LGBTQ diversity in faculty and staff hiring.”
“This year, Eastern University, located in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, and affiliated with American Baptist Churches USA, amended its policies to allow for the hiring of faculty in same-sex marriages.”
So, in this view, Christian colleges and universities who don’t “get on the right side of history” and alter or jettison their biblical beliefs about human sexuality are likely to fade into the sunset very soon. Meanwhile, God may have other things in mind.
“People and media have been converging on the (Asbury) campus to try and understand what is happening; what is God doing?...Among those who have attended, who are believers, there seems to be little doubt the hand of the Holy Spirit is at work. The revival began without any famous Christian leader or band being involved. It was not pre-promoted.”
William M. Wilson, president of Oral Roberts University, said, “The revival is helping fill a spiritual void among members of Generation Z.” In his view, “these young people are feeling in their life this spiritual vacuum, somewhat of an emptiness in the society they’re in and a real need for hope.”
“The mental health crisis in this generation is significant. The uncertainty of the times, the feeling of lostness, in a world of 8 billion people, who are they, in the midst of it, the desire for purpose. I think,” the ORU president said, “all of these are driving a generation to look beyond themselves for the answer.”
In 1 John 4, the Scripture says, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”
So, we need to ask questions even as we pray in hope regarding these revivals:
At Asbury, students are arriving from other universities: the University of Kentucky, Purdue University, Indiana Wesleyan University, Ohio Christian University, Transylvania University, Midway University, Georgetown College, Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, and many others.
After witnessing the revival for himself, an Asbury Theological Seminary theology professor said, “There is no pressure or hype. There is no manipulation. There is no high-pitched emotional fervor.
To the contrary, it has so far been mostly calm and serene. The mix of hope and joy and peace is indescribably strong and indeed almost palpable—a vivid and incredibly powerful sense of shalom. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is undeniably powerful but also so gentle.”
I do not know what God is doing at Asbury or these other universities, but I do believe God is working, that he is doing something powerful and far-reaching.
I pray that the Lord will send his Spirit upon the land beginning perhaps with the most spiritually bereft of places in America—not Hollywood or Broadway, not Bourbon Street—but the college and university campus.
Students coming of age in America have been sold a bill of goods. Our culture has taught youth to reject God, absolute truth, morality, even biological science. Instead, they’ve been taught skepticism and cynicism, that nothing deserves their faith, that nothing and no one is worthy of their trust, certainly not patriotism and not the USA. And sadly, a lot of adults have given youth good cause for their cynicism.
Youth are taught in school, in their music, in their celebrity worship, in their sexual confusion that nothing matters, that there is no purpose, just uncertainty, angst, disquietude.
And nothing has been put in place of this deconstruction of timeless verities. All young people have is nihilism – the idea life is absurd and meaningless.
Is it any wonder that there is an epidemic of mental health issues among America’s young people?
Nihilism—a philosophy that is irrational, false, wicked, and the face of death, destroys everything it touches, and now it is destroying the nation’s next generation, making them believe life—their lives—are meaningless.
Then the Spirit of God moves among some of his children, speaking in a whisper (I Kings 19:11-12). Perhaps God is whispering at Asbury University and other Christian colleges and universities eager to hear.
If the Lord sends revival across the youth generation, he will change the future of not only their lives but their families, the culture, and the country.
I encourage you to follow these revivals. Pray the Spirit of God will move. Pray God bless America.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2023
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
Can you remember a schoolteacher that made a special impact upon or contribution to your life? Did you know this kind of teacher is becoming increasingly rare?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #37 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Public education today, from kindergarten to graduate school is in serious trouble, and in many examples, moral free-fall.
Once a destination for international students the world over, due to the excellence in teaching, scholarship, and learning to be found there, now public institutions – in general, which is to say most of them – are hothouses of ideological discontent and sources of propaganda rather than truth, something many no longer even believe exists.
Public education today has been co-opted by the Left in ways I’m thinking the average person has no clue. And why would you?
Unless you have children or youth in school now, unless you take the time to investigate—which since the online schooling that occurred during the lockdowns, began to happen—parents, and even more-so those with no connections to education, just don’t know how fast and how far public education has fallen.
Allow me to take a moment to emphasize that I am not, most definitely not, impugning the integrity or values of every teacher or professor or staff person serving in public education. Far from it.
Among those who are standing firm for truth, critical thinking, First Amendment liberty, and morality, I think they are our new “First Responders.” These diligent teachers, professors, and staff members are the ones in positions to help children and youth before they are overwhelmed values contrary to science, history, religion, and common sense.
And not every school has surrendered its educational philosophy to the ideological Left to the extent of other schools. But the exceptions are an endangered species.
Public education from kindergarten to graduate school is now home to:
Honestly, it is so bad in many public universities that I find it sad and disconcerting when I can’t get excited at the announcement that a friend’s son or daughter has gained entrance at a certain Public U. Some of the big-name schools are better known for their football programs—a sport I enjoy—than their academic programs, many of which have succumbed to anti-Americanism, promotion of abortion on demand and unfettered sexual expression, the class conflicts of cultural Marxism, and the worship of race.
Liberal education in American education was once an engine of free civilization and economic development. But liberal education—a concept once defined as "a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a stronger sense of values, ethics, and civic engagement ... characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, and more a way of studying than a specific course or field of study” is now fast fading from the educational landscape.
Take this example: critical thinking was once a primary goal of liberal education. But now, in many public educational institutions, “critical thinking” really isn’t—or at least it isn’t what employers mean when they use the term. Organizations want people who can be objective and analytical, using logic and reason to solve problems.
That’s what the term ‘critical thinking’ means to them, and what it has meant to most of us for decades…”
“Today, however, that is not at all what colleges and universities mean—or perhaps I should say, what most professors mean. ‘Critical thinking,’ for them, is a Marxist exercise in ‘critique,’ what Marx himself called ‘the ruthless criticism of all that exists.’ It seeks not to solve problems but to break down, or ‘deconstruct,’ all aspects of society, beginning with but not limited to language.”
So, colleges and universities are teaching students to deconstruct, to tear down, to reject traditional values, to rely on emotion over reason or evidence, to be victims, to believe life and society are unfair though they are entitled, to be in a continual state of anxious anger. Logic, reason, dispassionate observation, hypothesizing, experimentation, problem solving, and a search for truth are all passe, out the window.
Take this second example of the decline of liberal education: debate has given way to “dialogue.” There was a time when evidence, reason, and logic mattered. So genuine debate could take place. “Not so with the new orthodoxy. Here disagreement is an intolerable personal affront. It is construed as a denial of others, of their experience of who they are. It is a blasphemous assault on that most high god, “My Identity.” Truth-as-identity is not appealable beyond the assertion of identity.”
The late Christian philosopher Francis A. Schaeffer pointed out this trend in the 1970s. He said, “’All A is A and all Non-A is Non-A and therefore A cannot be Non-A and Non-A cannot be A.’ This is the concept of thesis and antithesis. The concept that there is an absolute objective linear truth and that thesis and antithesis make a contrast.”
But the philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich “Hegel showed up and said that thesis and antithesis shouldn't equal contrast, they should equal synthesis.
In other words, there are no absolute truths, there is no "right" thesis, only many ideas that may result in synthesis.”
“The loss of antithesis in American culture led to what Dr. Schaeffer coined the ‘line of despair’ or giving up all hope of achieving a rational unified answer to knowledge and life.”
As Schaeffer saw it, “Thesis is met by antithesis, and instead of one having to be true and the other false, both are reconciled to develop a synthesis. ‘The conclusion is that all possible positions are relativized and leads to the concept that truth is to be sought in synthesis rather than antithesis.’”
So, debate, a search for truth based upon merits of an argument, long one of the building blocks of real education, is now no longer acceptable, only dialogue = endless discussion in search of consensus and some synthesized understanding of life. The problem with this is that it leads nowhere, only to power plays or despair.
Theologian Erwin Lutzer described the problem this way: “If we think we can fight against deceived culture by winning the war of ideas, we are mistaken. The best ideas do not win very often in a culture obsessed with empty utopian promises…The America we thought we knew is no more.”
This is the sad state of public education. It exists to educate but no longer remembers how, or why.
Again, to quote Lutzer: “In a time of universal deception, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
This is where the First Responders come in—teachers, professors, staff member, and yes, parents who have the courage of their convictions, who will stand for truth against ideological and intentional error. What’s at stake are the hearts and minds of our children and youth. What’s at stake is the soul of this country and the potential of its future.
I admire and salute public education First Responders who are standing in the face of a tsunami of philosophies intended to tear down rather than build up. Pray for and support these First Responders—public educators and staff members who know truth and still seek to make it known. They are standing in the gap for the future of our children and youth.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
In a secularizing culture, can Christian colleges and universities thrive? Can they even survive?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #30 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
During April 2007, just before my time as president at Cornerstone University concluded, the campus was visited by an uninvited group of gay and lesbian students, along with other supporters, who called themselves Soulforce.
Big money backers had recruited them and organized a national bus tour of Christian colleges and universities. Their intent, they said, was to protest and bring awareness to what was then called the Gay Rights movement. They lined the campus boundaries for a time, then spread out across campus walking into classrooms demanding access and dialogue. Clearly, the Soulforce students had been trained, and tried to force their way onto private property in the hopes of getting arrested and creating photo ops.
The next morning the group first disrupted, then basically tried to take over chapel. While I spoke with several Soulforce individuals, I had told their leaders the day before, “No thank you,” regarding their demand to enter our classrooms, and I got quoted that way in the local press. At the chapel, I walked to the front and dismissed everyone.
Other Christian colleges and universities at the time responded differently.
Some invited the group for discussions, some treated them to refreshments, others like us said, No thank you. In my role as president, I never criticized or demeaned the students, though I thought their moral views and their methods were wrong, and I also thought they were being used by sophisticated national gay politicos and donors.
In the aftermath, I received about 150 cards and letters, the most I’d ever received referencing any controversy. Some 98% supported our respectful “No thank you” approach. Of the about 2% who criticized my approach, I found it amazing that, almost invariably, somewhere in the missive they mentioned a family member who had come out and who they loved, hence their point of view.
LGBTQ+ is an issue—almost like no other—that seems to lead people to develop or even change their moral understanding or even their theology, not because they believe they hold a new insight to biblical interpretation, but because they love a family member or friend.
Looking back, this all seems rather tame, because Christian schools are now in serious trouble, or at least they are under considerable and mounting pressure.
Harvard University was the original Christian institution of higher learning in the new world, founded in 1636, but it long ago left its Christian moorings.
The same can be said for most of the colleges and universities east and many west of the Mississippi River, most of which were launched by religious organizations.
Now, among nearly 4,000 post-secondary institutions of higher learning functioning in the U.S., only about 140 present themselves as avowedly Christian and maintain membership in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, along with perhaps 9 others that have chosen to withdraw from the CCCU.
These are the colleges and universities now facing genuine threats to their survival. Why?
With the college age student pool declining year by year, competition becomes fiercer, costs of recruitment increases, and students place greater premiums upon perceived institutional prestige. None of this helps generally smaller, private Christian colleges and universities.
In 2020, Christian researcher George Barna found just 6% of American adults possess biblical worldview. And only 43% of them believe in absolute moral truth.
Among 18- to 29-year-olds, a mere 2% possess a biblical worldview. If you look at several other demographic subgroups, the percentage of individuals who deny the existence of absolute moral truth is much higher: LGBTQ adults (73%), political liberals (67%), Hispanics (65%), Blacks (63%), Democrats (63%), people under age 50 (62%).
If that is not enough, there’s more to this perfect storm.
While race politics, emphasizing diversity, equity, and inclusion, have created controversies for Christian colleges and universities, LGBTQ+ politics is the real point of the spear.
LGBTQ+ students, alumni, and associated activist organizations now have Christian colleges and universities in their crosshairs. They claim that Christian institution’s faith statements discriminate against them when such statements maintain biblical views considering homosexual behavior a sin and define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
LGBTQ+ students at Christian colleges and universities are increasing in number, forming campus organizations, becoming more open about their sexuality,
and pressuring the boards and administrations of Christian institutions to change their doctrinal statements, student lifestyle policies, and personnel employment policies, in their vocabulary, “accepting and affirming,” LGBTQ+ individuals.
In the CCCU, “Two member schools went on record to permit same-sex "marriage" couples on faculty and staff – Goshen College and Eastern Mennonite University,” which caused other schools in the CCCU to resign from the association.”
"Azusa Pacific University specifically removed language that barred LGBTQ relationships as part of a standing ban on pre-marital sex" from its student handbook, according to media reports.”
Protesting students at Seattle Pacific University recently handed a rainbow flag to the President as they marched across the platform to receive their diploma. This took place as students staged a sit-in in university facilities demanding the Board reverse its decision to maintain a commitment to biblical views of human sexuality.
The Christian Reformed Church recently affirmed its understanding of the Scripture and its creeds and doctrinal statements to mean a prohibition of homosexual activity and other sexual behavior outside the bonds of monogamous heterosexual marriage. Students at Calvin College and some personnel reacted with disappointment, suggesting the CRC’s and the school’s policies are homophobic and discriminatory.
In 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Bostock v Clayton County that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This means conservative religious institutions may be subject to legal challenge if they cannot show that they are entitled to a ministerial exception under the law.
“Thirty-three LGBTQ students are suing the Department of Education in a class-action lawsuit. The students allege that they faced discrimination at 25 federally funded Christian colleges and universities in 18 states,” including Liberty University. “The ultimate goal of the lawsuit is to strike down Title IX’s religious exemption.”
In 2021, Fresno Pacific University administration denied LGBTQ+ students the ability to form their own Pride club on campus. Students filed a formal Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation complaint against the school and called for a formal investigation to take place.
Regional and state accrediting agencies, without whose accreditation schools cannot offer recognized degrees, are putting increasing pressure upon Christian institutions to align their policies with LGBTQ orthodoxy, what is now considered the only acceptable narrative, embracing all expressions of sexual orientation.
“The Human Rights Campaign, America's largest and most powerful LGBT lobby organization, is pushing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to target Christian educational institutions, demanding that the Biden Administration strip colleges that adhere to rules and positions opposing homosexuality of their accreditation.” This activist group is pressuring President Biden to advance a proposal to eliminate nondiscrimination exemptions for religious colleges if the institutions support biblical definitions of marriage or fail to offer "scientific curriculum requirements."
In other words, LGBTQ+ demands, increasing cast by activists and the courts as civil rights issues, are now going head-to-head with First Amendment religious freedom guarantees.
And it’s not just Christian institutions.
A NY County Supreme Court judge recently handed down a ruling saying Yeshiva University, despite its Jewish religious convictions, must recognize an LGBTQ Pride club on campus.
So, it appears some Christian colleges or universities are changing, some would say capitulating, their moral views in an effort to survive, fearing possible loss of accreditation, tax-exempt status, and access to federal funds. Others are thus far standing firm.
No one knows where this is going. But it is certain the next five years are going to make or break some Christian colleges and universities.
What we are watching here is the frontlines of the now intensifying “Second American civil war,” a worldview war pitting an ascendant non-biblical worldview vs the Judeo-Christian values upon which this country was founded. It’s a battle for America’s soul and its future.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
Back in middle school, I remember Dad, a barber, trapping me in the barber chair ostensibly for a haircut while he talked to me about what we used to call the Facts of Life. Dad was a good man, but I sure don’t remember him telling me about Sex Week at the university.
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #3 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Some of us celebrate Valentine’s Day, and a few even Valentine’s Week, but on the campuses of colleges and universities across the country, Valentines has morphed into “Sex Week.”
Events include:
SEXtravaganza
Freaky Friday: A Beginner’s Guide to Pleasure
Condom Bingo
Sex Ed Quickie
Good Vibes and Pleasure
There’s even a “Genital Diversity Gallery” at Tulane University featuring anatomically correct displays of human genitalia, which ostensibly is intended to “destigmatize genitals and celebrate the diversity of bodies that exist.”
There are workshops on bondage, submission, sadism, dominance, masochism, fetish, foreplay, and use of various sex toys.
Other discussions center on polyamorous relationships and something labeled “ethical non-monogamy.”
An organization called The Newcomb Institute, which promotes gender equality, offers what it calls a “Wheel of Fornication,” listing statistics about sex and sexuality.
Many of these events are justified in the name of something called “Sexual Health Awareness,” or as the Ohio State University representative put it, a “deep and abiding commitment to free speech.” Apparently one event at OSU allows students to “thank abortion providers” for their perceived great service to the American people.
Believe it or not, I am holding back in this podcast, meaning I’m intentionally not repeating the most graphic, crude and lewd, examples of what is taking place. Needless to say, it’s a long way from the “Birds and the Bees.” And it would appear there’s a serious lack of discernment among the adults in the room.
That’s what this podcast is about, Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, look for us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends.
Yale University hosted the first identifiable “Sex Week” in 2002, and the idea’s popularity has grown steadily since, as has the eroticism, pornographic displays, lasciviousness, and wanton wickedness that apparently recognize no standards of decency.
It is ironic indeed to witness universities posturing sexual “freedom of speech,” while they simultaneously corral students in “free speech zones,” limit or even attempt to cancel expressions of religious or conservative ideas, propagate woke values that suppress Christian morality, issue mask or vaccine mandates, politicize sports, and racialize virtually everything in the name of inclusion. Differing point of views, please be silenced.
But Sex Week is not about sexual health. Not really. It’s about celebration of the self and the rejection of truth, God, responsibility, and accountability. It’s a contemporary, salacious bacchanalia.
You would think that the adults operating these Sex Week events, people who, like me, grew up in the 60s, would have figured out by now that “Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll” really is not a recipe for a long, healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. But alas, too many university adults are still looking for Mr. Goodbar themselves, adrift on a sea of cultural relativism they helped create, delusionally thinking they and their students can find fulfillment in a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrha.
I spent 35 years of my working life in academia, the last 19 in higher level administration. I loved every minute of it, even the hard times. And I still find ivied halls, oaken campuses, and glorious libraries compelling.
Even more, I loved the idea of learning, the pursuit of truth, free inquiry, discussion and debate, discovery. These were values rooted in my Christian faith back to the earliest European and American universities founded by people of faith. Oxford University’s motto, dating from the mid-16th Century, is Dominus Illuminatio Mea, meaning “'the Lord is my light.” Harvard University’s motto, adopted in 1692, is Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, meaning “Truth for Christ and the Church.”
But these values celebrating knowledge, light and wisdom, truth, capital-T Truth in Christ, and the calling of the Church are fast fading if not already gone, even on some Christian college and university campuses.
Today, much of American higher education is a woke-dominated caricature of what it once was, and Sex Week is simply further evidence.
Bible believing Christians are “people of the book.” Christians believe the Bible is what it claims that it is, the Word of God once delivered.
Since we are people of the book, and since we understand that Creation is a gift from God to be developed for his glory and our blessing,Christians have historically initiated, supported, promoted, and worked in and for education. We want people to be literate, to be able to think and discern what is best, to be able to care for the world and our families, even as we carry the message of hope in Jesus Christ.
Since centuries-past, Christians have founded schools and universities and energized them with a Christian worldview rooted in the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28, commissioning us to develop culture as unto the Lord.
That’s the vision we should still maintain for free and independent, nonpolitical, quality higher education. It’s “higher” not because it’s post-high school grades 13-16 but because it aspires to lofty values, the best of and the betterment of human civilization.
Sex Week is fools’ gold, false values that lead to the broad road to destruction. Higher education can do better. Our students deserve better.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
Well, another university succumbs. It was nice knowing you UNC-Chapel Hill.
American higher education today is in dire straits.
Once a bastion of free inquiry, reason, debate, the pursuit of knowledge, the preferred destination for bright ambitious Next Gen from around the world, much of academia is now afraid of its own students, captive to irrational ideology, political correctness, restrictions on free speech, cancel culture, racist ideas parading as anti-racism, sexual progressivism, irreligion, and jingoistic anti-Americanism.
UC Boulder is making holding the values of BLM a non-negotiable condition for enrollment. Another step in the death march of Western universities from places exalting academic freedom to places suppressing thought and speech in the name of inclusive ideology. This university, by the way, received millions in state funds.
Central Michigan University is forcing a good professor to retire because he spoke the “N-word” while reading from a court document in class. The university would rather be “woke” than defend academic freedom, common sense, and academic excellence.
Penn State is replacing binary words and pronouns in course descriptions. This will increase both quality teaching and student learning? Many other universities are wasting time and intellectual capital on the same pursuit of purist vocabulary, eliminating use of “offensive” words like “picnic” or phrases like “rule of thumb.”
Victor David Hanson says, “Today's universities and colleges bear little if any resemblance to postwar higher education. Even during the tumultuous 1960s, when campuses were plagued by radical protests and periodic violence, there was still institutionalized free speech. An empirical college curriculum mostly survived the chaos of the '60s. But it is gone now.”
“Imagine, Hanson notes, “a place where ‘diversity’ is the professed institutional ethos, while studies reveal that liberal faculty outnumber their conservative counterparts by over 10 to 1. Imagine a liberal place where in 2021 race can still be used as a criterion in selecting and rejecting applicants, choosing prospective dorm roommates, organizing segregated dorms and restricting access to special places on campus.”
Political activism now triumphs over empirical problem-solving.
The recently late, and great, professor Walter E. Williams said, “The bottom line is that more Americans need to pay attention to the miseducation of our youth and that miseducation is not limited to higher education.” He argued equity had replaced equality of opportunity and much of higher education today is little more than leftist brain washing.
Education and critical thinking are out. Indoctrination and victimhood are in.
It’s all-the-more disheartening because it was so preventable.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
American higher and now secondary and even elementary education are being swamped by “woke” people looking for things about which to be offended, claiming victimhood based upon race, gender, or class, and seeking to install their propaganda at the expense of liberal education.
Universities like Princeton, Cornell, Rutgers, Northwestern, to name a few, are trying to outdo one another in proclaiming their racism, abject apologies, and kowtowing to the new woke ideology. Their political correctness knows no limits. Even elementary schools are being required to embrace Black Lives Matter racist propaganda.
The more woke education becomes the more it declines, turns in on itself, and implodes. Education is no longer perceived as a place of free inquiry and exchange of ideas to advance knowledge but as a political battleground where the Left vies for the minds of America’s youth. It’s what one commentator called the “Great American Awokening.”
Leftists—not classical Liberals who actually believe in freedom—promote “wokeness,” to the point they don’t discuss but make demands, which turns them into tyrannical bullies. They attack and demean, destroy reputations, get people fired, and tear down history and tradition, offering racist solutions in the name of “anti-racism,” an ironic lack of self-awareness.
Woke education leftists are anti- intellectual. They believe misogyny, racism, and bigotry characterize all whites and American systems, which they say are ipso facto against women and non-binary people, affirm patriarchy, binary gender roles, and heteronormativity and thus further exclusivity, classism, racism. They argue these terrible discriminations are irredeemably embedded in all structures, systems, and institutions (which themselves are setting on “stolen land,” rooted in historic colonization and white supremacy), so they cannot be changed, repaired, reformed, or saved. So they must be “burned down.”
So in the end, woke education is about little more than destruction in the interest of power.
I spent 34 years in higher education. Loved every minute of it. I hold a Ph.D. in political science and to this day appreciate the critical thinking, energetic grad school seminars discussing world issues, the joy of learning, the feeling nothing was beyond our ability to comprehend, and the great camaraderie with other academics. But alas that campus culture is mostly gone and what’s left of it is fast disappearing.
This is an harbinger of worse to come, because what happens in the university does not stay there. It turns up in a few years in society and culture. This is what we are witnessing now, 20-somethings who’ve been sold a bill of goods, who despise their heritage, reject its gifts, and offer no better alternative. And worse, none of this makes them feel better. They are in fact full of anxiety, fragile, and ill-prepared for life.
Woke education is not just ill-advised. It is threatening, dangerous, damaging, and destructive.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
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