Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Christian College Faces Uproar
After Bolstering Its View on Evolution
By ALAN BLINDER
The New York Times, May 20, 2014
DAYTON, Tenn. — William Jennings Bryan earned a permanent place in
American history nearly nine decades ago in the Scopes trial, when he stood in
a courtroom here and successfully prosecuted a case under a state law that
banned the teaching of evolution in public schools.
While not quite “the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy
war,” as Time magazine put it,
that captivated the nation in 1925, a similar debate is again playing out in
Dayton, this time at an evangelical Christian college named for Bryan, which is
being sued as part of a controversy over its own stance on the origin of
humans.
The continuing debate at Bryan College and
beyond is a reminder how divisive the issues of the Scopes trial still are,
even splitting an institution whose motto is “Christ Above All.” Playing out at
a time when the teaching of evolution remains a cultural hot spot to a degree
that might have stunned its proponents in Bryan’s era, the debate also reflects
the problems many Christian colleges face as they try to balance religious
beliefs with secular education.
Since its founding in 1930, Bryan College’s statement of belief, which
professors have to sign as part of their employment contracts, included a
41-word section summing up the institution’s conservative views on creation and
evolution, including the statement: “The origin of man was by fiat of God.” But
in February, college officials decided that professors had to agree to an
additional clarification declaring that Adam and Eve “are historical persons
created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing
life-forms.”
For administrators and many members of the governing board at Bryan, the
new language is a buffer against what they see as a marked erosion of Christian
values and beliefs across the country. But for critics, the clarification
amounts to an assault on personal religious views, as well as on the college’s
history and sense of community.
“It makes Bryan a different place,” said Allison Baker, who graduated
this month and was the vice president of the student government, which raised
questions about the swift enactment of the clarification. “I would argue it
makes it a more narrow place.”
The consequences so far have been stark at a college where about
one-quarter of incoming students were home-schooled and whose alumni routinely
earn spots in graduate programs at secular institutions. Two longtime faculty
members this month sued the college, arguing that the Board of Trustees was
powerless under the college’s charter to change the statement of belief.Brian Eisenback, a biology professor and a Bryan
graduate whose parents met on campus, decided to move to another Christian
college.
Faculty members, spurred in part by the clarification, said they had no
confidence in Bryan’s president, Stephen D. Livesay.
And before the academic year ended this month, hundreds of students, on a
campus with an enrollment of more than 700, petitioned trustees in opposition
to the plan.
Dr. Livesay said the clarification was intended to reaffirm, not alter,
the institution’s traditional position. He said concerns had been building for
years that some employees had perhaps moved “away from the historical and
current position of the college.”
“We want to remain faithful to the historical charter of the school and
what we have always practiced through the years,” Dr. Livesay said. “There has
never been a need, up until today, to truly clarify and make explicit what has
been part of the school for 84 years.”
He added, “We want to make certain that we view culture through the eyes
of faith, that we don’t view our faith through the eyes of culture.”
Many Christian institutions of higher education require employees to
sign doctrinal statements as administrators seek to blend religious traditions
with academic standards.
“The struggle for Christian colleges is to try to define how a Christian
college is different from a Christian church,” said William C. Ringenberg, the
author of a book on the history of Protestant colleges in the United States.
“Is one different from the other?”
For Dr. Eisenback, whose contract expired last week and who is writing a
book with support from an organization that has called the college’s clarified
stance “scientifically untenable,” teaching an array of perspectives was an act
of faith in itself.
“Because of the culture war that is raging with Scripture and age of the
Earth and so on, I think it’s important for me to teach my students the same
material they would hear at any state university,” said Dr. Eisenback, who
accepted a job at Milligan College, also in Tennessee, amid the discord here.
“But then also, as a Christian who is teaching at a Christian liberal arts
college, I think it’s important that they be educated on the different ways
that people read relevant Scripture passages.” Others at Bryan insist that the
college’s doctrinal stances should take precedence.
“Academic freedom is not sacrosanct,”Kevin L. Clauson, a professor of politics and
justice, wrote in a letter to the
editor of The Bryan Triangle, a campus publication. “It too must submit to God
in a Christian college.”
Some question whether the new statement is consistent with school
policies outlined in a 2010 internal document for board members, which said
that because Bryan is a college, not a church, it does not set itself up as a
judge on ecclesiastical matters and does not attempt to prescribe what other
Christians do.
“The trustees do not legislate ‘stands’ for faculty or students,” said
the document, which was included in a court filing.
Bryan is not the first Christian college in recent years to deal with
internal strife.Shorter University,
a Southern Baptist institution in Georgia, was criticized in 2011 after it said
employees would have to “reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in
agreement with the Bible,” including premarital sex and homosexuality. AndCedarville University in Ohio, whose
administration was censured in 2009 by the American Association of University
Professors, has endured years of debate and litigation about academic freedom
and doctrinal standards.
Such debates often take place, Dr. Ringenberg said, as the colleges try
to fine-tune the balance of faith and education.
“Soon enough, the two of them will clash if you’re serious about
academics and serious about having a biblical view of Christianity,” he said.
Dr. Livesay said that Bryan’s leaders were determined to proceed with
the clarification.
“I don’t think you have to believe the Bryan way in order to be a strong
evangelical,” he said. “But this is Bryan College, and this is something that’s
important to us. It’s in our DNA. It’s who we are.”
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