Conservatives lose battles because they give into liberal demands an inch here and an inch there hoping against hope that a minor compromise won’t have a long-term impact. This is especially true in the area of education. Harvard started out as a Christian college. The following is from the “Rules and Precepts that are Observed in the College” as they were published in New England’s First Fruits in 1643:
Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let everyone seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him. Prov. 2, 3.
In time, Harvard began to compromise in small ways. The inch-by-inch concessions took their toll, so much so that a new college was founded to counteract the wayward direction of Harvard.
Yale College, founded in 1701 as the “Collegiate School” in the colony of Connecticut, started in the same way as Harvard, that “every student shall consider the main end of his study to wit to know God in Jesus Christ and answerably to lead a Godly, sober life.” Yale eventually went the way of Harvard.
Shorter University is a Christian university located in Rome, Georgia. Seeing the moral direction of the nation, it is requiring that its employees, including faculty, sign a “personal lifestyle statement” that includes the following: “I reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible, including, but not limited to, premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality.”
There are also prohibitions against drinking alcohol ((While there’s no prohibition against alcohol in the Bible, nevertheless, the school still has a right to prohibit its use for people it employs.)) and requires that employees “are expected to be active members of a local church.” As you can imagine, some students and faculty are miffed. “We have a right to hire only Christians,” President Don Dowless stated. “While we hate to lose members of our community, we wish them well.”
After reading some of the statements from professors, the house cleaning couldn’t come fast enough. Consider this statement from one of the school’s tenured professors: “Lest anyone think I am ‘promoting’ homosexuality, please know that I am not,” Professor Sherri Weiler wrote in the Rome News-Tribune_. “_I am simply not going to judge anyone who expresses his/her sexuality in this way." Good riddance.
Protests have taken place at the university against the policies. Students and faculty have protested with signs that read “Dowless is a born again bigot” and “Jesus loves me. Why can’t you?” One student made it clear that he had imbibed the relativistic cultural standard when he stated, “I don’t think they should care about what you do in your personal life as long as it doesn’t affect your work.” This is a Christian who doesn’t get it.
So far, Dowless is sticking to his guns: “It’s really unreasonable not to expect a Christian university to promote Christian values.”
If you are looking for employment at a Christian university in beautiful Rome, Georgia, here’s the contact information: http://www.shorter.edu/about/hr_employment.htm Looks like there’s going to be lots of job openings.