Joe Carter of evangelicaloutpost has added a number of "sideblogs" to World's main blog. Included is zeitgeist, a blog that seems to simply be smart people opining about whatever strikes their fancy (isn't that just most of blogging?).
Biola's own contribution is (of course) Dr. John Mark Reynolds, who has been less busy at his own blog but extremely busy at zeitgeist. His thoughts on Christian colleges are interesting. Most surprising, however, was this forthright condemnation by fellow commenter Tim Bayly:
While on Wheaton's campus a couple months ago, I walked through the bookstore and, among other things, noted the preponderance of feminist tracts. This confirmed (were I to need the slightest confirmation) my daughter-in-law's calm comment after graduating from Wheaton to the effect that Wheaton is a union shop of feminist ideology.
And after similar walks through other bookstores I ask myself why Christian fathers and mothers pay good money--lots of it--to men who turn around and rob their precious children of Biblical Faith? Certainly there are good profs at Wheaton and Taylor, but the academic culture is poison and even the good profs rarely have the heart to seek the expulsion of their evil colleagues--it's a collegial atmosphere, don't you know?
Ironically or tragically, for the past couple of decades the Bible department has been the center of Wheaton's problems, and recent changes there do not bode well for her future. Thankfully, at my own denomination's Covenant Covenant it's (only) the English department that holds that position.
It wasn't surprising because I hadn't heard this before--I have even thought it (and said it) a time or two, mostly after intensly difficult, frustrating conversations with extremely bright students who had adopted postmodern theories of interpretation and truth. But to make a ringing condemnation of this sort is a bold challenge--I wonder what Wheaton would say to address it. Then again, there is no "Wheaton blog" to my knowledge, so we'll probably never know.
Matthew Lee Anderson
Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.
