From Daily Kos via Science and Politics comes the following scary advice from an older college student to a freshman, overheard at a Starbuck's in Nashville.
The only trouble with David Lipscomb is that old man Lipscomb apparently didn't like football. So we don't have a football team, but we have a great faculty.
But you do have to be careful about one thing. My professor—I have this great professor—told me that you have to be careful not to get too much education, because you could lose your foundation, your core values.
If you get a bachelors, you'll probably be okay. But my professor said that when you get a master's, and definitely if you go beyond that, you can lose your values. He said that college students have to be watchful because if you get too much education, you could turn liberal. He's seen it happen to a lot of good Christians.
Even at Lipscomb, you have to be careful what you pay attention to. My professor said that a few faculty members might lead you astray without meaning to, by bringing in ideas that aren't biblical. He said that if you're ever taught anything that sounds questionable, you should talk about it with your minister to see if it's right.
My first reaction is “Well, come on, what do you expect from people who think Starbucks is good coffee?” Even in Nashville, there are much better places to get one's daily caffeine fix.
A college professor advising his students to avoid "too much eduction" is hypocritical. The mistaken belief that liberalism is inconsistent with Christianity is depressing. But sadly, I don't find either of these particularly surprising. I grew up in and near Nashville. David Libscomb is that bible college that we drove by every day on the way to my high school. It's where the ultra-religious evangelical Middle Tennessee parents send their kids to get a college degree, without having to worry about them straying from the fold. Lipscomb is not the sort of university one attends to experience the unfettered expression of dangerous ideas; if anything, it's the opposite.
At least, that's how it appeared to me growing up.
It might surprise some of these skittish students, faculty, and parents to learn that David Lipscomb esposed a few liberal, perhaps even multicultural, ideas himself (however attenuated by his condescending turn-of-the-20th-century southern racism and sexism).
It has been the besetting sin of Christians, when they start out to oppose a wrong, to commit another wrong to oppose this.
I published what I did to show that the best sentiment of the people is not in harmony with the narrow and bitter prejudices of many against the negro, with the hope that the knowledge of this would soften their prejudices and feelings against him. The bitter feeling against the negro is not found among those who know him best. Those who know him best know his weaknesses and shortcomings. They learn to make allowances for and bear with these, and recognize and cultivate his good points. Then all should recognize that there is much of the brutal in all classes and races, and that the negro is much like the whites in this, and can be benefited and uplifted by kindness and attention.
This is my judgment as to the line between the permissable and prohibited. But there are difficulties in drawing this line, and for one man to say I draw the line here, and if you do not come exactly to by standard, I will withdraw from you - is to show himself a bigot and to declare his utter unfitness for ruling the church of God. They are not to lord it over God's heritage, but they are to rule in love and by fidelity, in example and precept to the teachings of the Master[.]
Update: As usual, Teresa Lhotka hits the nail squarely on the head.
I guess it is not surprising that such an idea; that ignorance is Godly, is promoted by people who are ignorant enough to misperceive what scholars mean when they describe that moment of pure possibility. I guess it makes sense that those with a fragile faith would teach others that faith is too fragile to withstand the power of knowledge.
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