Anti-Christian Bigotry on Campus

There used to be a time when universities were known for being bastions of freedom of speech in which openness to ideas and genuine intellectual inquiry were affirmed. But that is no longer the case at many Western campuses. Instead a stifling political correctness is curtailing open debate and unfettered learning.

More and more we find the major universities have now become a hot house for secular left ideology. Christians and conservatives have a difficult time making a go of things at such places, and many are now becoming the target of official campaigns of anti-Christian bigotry.

There has been a lot of documentation on this, with full-length treatments available for some time now. Back in 1991 Dinesh D’Souza wrote, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. The stranglehold of political correctness and leftwing ideology was well in place by then, and case after depressing case of this are documented by D’Souza.

He makes clear that this radical transformation of the universities is having serious repercussions: “instead of liberal education, what American students are getting is its diametrical opposite, an education in closed-mindedness and intolerance, which is to say, illiberal education.”

Plenty of other writers have spoken to this issue. Other volumes worth mentioning include:

-Jim Nelson Black, Freefall of the American University: How Our Colleges Are Corrupting the Minds and Morals of the Next Generation (Thomas Nelson, 2004).
-Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education (HarperCollins, 1990).
-Alan Charles Kors, The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America’s Campuses (Harper Paperbacks, 1999).
-Ben Shapiro, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth (Thomas Nelson, 2004).

David Horowitz, himself a former Marxist, has written a number of books on this topic. In 2007 for example he wrote The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery) in which he examines in detail some of these radicals in academia.

And in 2009 he penned One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy (Crown Forum). In it he examines twelve major US universities, and how academic standards have been brushed aside for the advancement of radical social and political agendas.

So when we find cases of ridiculous PC or leftist tyranny on campus, we should not be surprised. But still, surprises can and do occur. Just yesterday a new example of this PC idiocy made the light of day. It concerns the University of California at Davis.

They have a document entitled “The Principles of Community.” In it we find this definition of “Religious/Spiritual Discrimination”: “The loss of power and privilege to those who do not practice the dominant culture’s religion. In the United States, this is institutionalized oppressions toward those who are not Christian.”

There you have it folks. According to the intellectualoids at UCD, Christianity is an oppressive religion, and is guilty of gross discrimination simply for being the majority religion in the US. Well I am glad we have that settled. Good to know who the real bullies are.

Evidently Christianity was singled out as a discriminatory oppressor group. So what about other religious groups in the US, like Muslims? Is UCD telling us they are oppressed victims of Christian discrimination? So to be fair, if UC opened an extension campus in Saudi Arabia, would they be telling us Islam is a discriminatory oppressor religion? Somehow I just don’t think so.

What we have here is discrimination all right. But it is discrimination against Christians by a loony left secular university. They are the ones who are being discriminatory. They are the ones engaging in oppression. They are the ones who make clear their contempt of opposing viewpoints.

So much for academic freedom. So much for freedom of speech. So much for free inquiry and open minds. The funny thing is, the secular left, in its hatred of the Judeo-Christian worldview, is lopping off the very branch it is sitting on. Modern education is in many ways the result of the Judeo-Christian worldview.

The secular lefties are enjoying the fruits of the very worldview they wish to censure and discredit. The Judeo-Christian heritage which they so despise is the very thing which made the West possible in the first place. But such a disconnect does not seem to faze these folks too much.

But I suppose the only remaining question worth asking is this: Today Christianity is branded as a discriminatory and oppressive institution, so how much longer before Christians are banished from these secular campuses altogether?

These institutions of higher learning used to be about open-mindedness. But judging by today’s standards, it seems that many of these open minds need to be closed for repairs. And the sooner the better.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/16/university-defines-christians-oppressors/

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26 Replies to “Anti-Christian Bigotry on Campus”

  1. Ben Stein’s excellent 2008 movie,’ Expelled: No Intelligence Required’ also covered the bigotry of those in academia who oppose, attack and abuse peers (and students) who hold to a Judeo-Christian Biblical worldview, particularly in relation to the Intelligent Design movement.

    Many Christian academics were sacked, were not published or were denied positions, just because they were Christian.

    Shalom.
    Michael Evans

  2. “…so how much longer before Christians are banished from these secular campuses altogether?”

    The sooner the better.

    John Angelico

  3. How many of these secular antireligious Liberals, Leftist, call them what you like realize that the university was an invention of the Church that they despise so much? Bill it’s gone past the point that I can no longer tolerate these people.
    Carl Strehlow

  4. I think that this is the price we pay for politicians controlling universities. Universities need to become totally private and charge fees. That way the bad ones will fade away.
    Greg Byrne

  5. Anti-Christian bigotry is endemic in the universities, but it’s by no means confined to the groves of academe. Wherever we find intellectuals who either run institutions or give advice to humanity on how to manage its affairs, we are likely to encounter anti-Christian sentiment. The learned professions, the bureaucracy, and the mass media are obvious culprits; but sometimes it’s possible to include the “liberals” in the church itself among the critics of Christianity.

    This repudiation – and that’s often what it amounts to – of the Judeo-Christian heritage of the Western world takes some explaining. And it will take some extraordinary event(s) to restore the culture with its virtues intact, because the enemy within is always more dangerous than the barbarian at the gates.

    What isn’t clear to me at all is what political expedients will restore the freedoms we are losing, and how relatively small numbers of people doing what’s right can get the upper hand (with God’s help).

    Alex Anderson

  6. Well, folks, Christian believers have abandoned the lower level educational institutions and have oped to home school, cyber school, private school. Now we click our tongues at what is happening. No longer is there any salt and light there. We have let the devil have a heyday with the minds of our young people. Christians who are thinkers need to become teachers, board members, leaders in the academic world.
    Wanda Knapp

  7. Is John Angelico kidding? I fear not. The left cries for tolerance and tolerates only themselves.
    Karen Nepstad

  8. Yes, the DVD “Expelled: no intelligence allowed” is excellent.

    Also, I recommend Dr Jerry Bergman’s book “Slaughter of the Dissidents, Vol-I; The shocking truth about killing the careers of Darwin Doubters.” A review on Amazon starts off:

    “There is no question that those who doubt Darwinian orthodoxy are subject to personal discrimination in academe. Dissenters from any orthodoxy are rarely treated well, but in the case of those who doubt Darwinian conclusions about the development of life on earth, this discrimination is systematic and comprehensive. In this extended book, the first of a projected 3 volume set, Dr. Bergman highlights how this discrimination occurs, who is behind it, and provides a substantive discussion of the promising careers that were lost to science because of this systematic discrimination.”

    And that is where John Angelico is not kidding! Banishing Christians from secular education should result in Christians setting up proper Christian education in Christian institutions so that science can progress faster via committed Christians who are not held back by anti-Christian bullying.

    Peter Newland

  9. Thanks Bill.
    You are spot on. I work in Melbourne University, and I know that the pressure is on.

    I began a course a couple of years ago in Old English, i.e. that of Anglo-Saxon times, but the lecturer spared nothing to tell the class how regressive, violent, and debased the Bible was, because many of the texts we were reading were excerpts from the works of Alfred the Great or the Wessex Gospels or whatever. It was relentless, but interesting how the mode of attack has changed. In my undergraduate days it was Biblical criticism – the JEDP hypothesis, the unreliability of Bible history, etc. Now it is all about what a violent and thoroughly evil book the Bible is, how debased its ethics are, and why no respectable person would ever consider adherence to it. In the end I gave the course away. You can criticise me for that, but it was affecting my spiritual life adversely.

    At the modern university you are not really allowed to give any indication that the Bible may be right and true, or to vindicate its teaching. That is a rule, albeit unstated. I can still get away with it by mentioning anecdotes of language or history which are also in the Bible, e.g. the Hebraisms in the Amarna Letters, Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah, or the prophet Nahum’s prediction of the fall of Nineveh. But truly our universities have become bastions of post-modernism and political correctness, and are factories for leftist ideologues of the most blatant kind.

    One other thing:
    Wanda, the teaching of Matt.5:13-16, to which you seem to refer, is addressed to adults firm in the faith; not to young and impressionable children who need grounding before they embark into an evil and adulterous generation. As to the need for teachers, the crying need is for Christian-based teachers’ colleges where they learn a Christian world and life view based on Scripture. At present the teachers have to go through the secular-left colleges, where they are turned out a good little PC humanists, despite their best intentions. I have remarked on this to Christian teachers over the years, even when the Christian school movement first got going back in the 1970s: unless we can establish a Christian teachers’ college, the Christian school movement will last one generation. After that it is doomed.

    Murray R. Adamthwaite

  10. I think Wanda has got it pretty right. But its a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I don’t know too many Christian parents who send their kids to State schools if they can avoid it. But then, I was at Sydney Uni in the 60’s and I recall it not being particularly friendly to Christians. Although at least most of the lefties were kept busy protesting the Vietnam war.
    John Bradford

  11. I believe a lot of academics have come unstuck, continually looking for a “smarter than thou” answer to problems, which would be solved in 10 seconds flat by those “common old” blue collar workers, housewives and farmers. Many intellectuals have ditched the ten commandments, have no moral values, but won’t admit to any of these charges. Consequently, they feel they must prove they do have some “wiser than thou” standards, so they have instituted their own ten commandments, which critics have labelled “Political Correctness”. The first of their commandments is against the “vice” of racism, even when it doesn’t exist. That weapon will win lots of their arguments for them. For example, it is very difficult to have any letter published in some newspapers, criticising Obama for his multitude of shortcomings. You’d be labebelled a racist for even attempting to put forth such a view. Also, don’t dare say a cross word about Muslims, that privilege of attacking anyone, is reserved for them alone.The charge of racism has stifled criticism of “multiculturism” which I believe has been designed to destroy local culture and eventually Christianity. Germany and the UK have learned their lessons far too late. Now much of the above has been taken on board by the bright sparks at universities, eager to indoctrinate impressionable children with their poison.
    Frank Bellet, Petrie Qld

  12. My girls, whom I homeschooled for their last few years of schooling have degrees. One is a degree for High School teaching and the other has a Business Degree. They attended Christian Heritage College in Mansfield, Queensland. The web page is: http://www.chc.edu.au/ for anyone who would like to check it out. We knew that the secular universities would be against our Christian beliefs.
    Jillian Lister

  13. I can understand everyone’s frustration with these people, I feel the same. Therefore, it is a challenge to “love our enemies”? Hard to do and impossible without God’s help, but I always get exited in times like this because this is the time show the grace of God by “loving our enemies” while continuing to speak the truth about the falseness of their position. Is it not that God loved us while we were still his enemies?
    I agree with the “salt and light” quote not applying to children and 2 separate systems of education might well be a tool to show the difference between the light and the darkness. If adult Christians who come out brainwashed after they have been through teachers college, what hope do our children have in public schools?
    But I believe there is good news. I remember reading that many years ago an African nation, after the communists destroyed it, eventually the churches were asked to rebuild the nation. This has and will happen everywhere, also in the universities. Those who hate God can go only so far in their destruction until they attack the very air they breath and the ground they walk on, for God made those too.
    Many blessings,
    Ursula Bennett

  14. Wanda on 18.2.11 / 9am you said:

    Well, folks, Christian believers have abandoned the lower level educational institutions and have oped to home school, cyber school, private school. Now we click our tongues at what is happening. No longer is there any salt and light there. We have let the devil have a heyday with the minds of our young people. Christians who are thinkers need to become teachers, board members, leaders in the academic world.

    Yes, we certainly need thinking Christians to become all those things. But they won’t become Christian thinkers unless we deal with the problem of polluted university teaching.

    We have dealt somewhat with the problem at compulsory schooling levels, but our students go to Uni at the most vulnerable time and are assailed by a strong anti-Christian mindset, reinforcing a strongly humanist curriculum in almost every discipline.

    They can’t be salt and light if they lose their faith.

    We could
    a) defer attending Uni until our students are past 21-24 age range and are surer in their faith and stronger in their convictions – THEN they can be salt and light
    or
    b) find alternatives
    or
    c) forget the whole silly idea: Uni degrees are not essential to that many careers – even law, engineering, accounting; particularly politics.

    Karen N, if Christians are not tolerated, why waste our students’ best years having their faith knocked out of them?

    And watching the various disciplines come under fire for moral failings (Climategate, medical failures, bridges collapsing, tax avoidance), people ask the question: “what are they teaching them in their Uni training?”

    We are watching the humanists undermine the very institution they captured.

    John Angelico

  15. I recommend the small group program “The Truth Project” produced by Focus on the Family. It is an excellent and in-depth series which exposes the lies of the “Secular World View” and explains the Truth of the “Christian World View.”
    Atwood Brooks

  16. I once held the idealistic view that our children should not withdraw from public schools because they were the salt and light there. However after sacrificing my 3 oldest children to them, I felt they had made them like ‘lambs to the slaughter’. I felt so bad, but friends at the church just said we had no right to expect our children to follow our lead, they would make their own choices, we had done all we could. The church people really had no idea what was going on at school. My daughter in yr 7, had to stand in class and say why she went to church and was told she didn’t have to go because her parents went, she was her own person. My son got into smoking, to be accepted, although he had always spoken out of the harm it causes. He was put on Level 1 of the Disciplinary code and we got a note to say we could come up and see the teacher about it if we wanted to. The class teacher asked me what was I worried about, he was a good student who always did the right thing, but until I wouldn’t let him smoke or drink or have sex at home, I had a problem. I came home very shaken. I believe my children along with other christian children were a target for the very atheistic teachers in that (and many other) schools. My eldest son was a strong christian and leader in the School Christian Fellowship, I was shocked at the overtly sexual and immoral book he was set to read in Yr 7. When questioned the English teacher said she set out to shock them and make them grow up. She didn’t have to choose that book, but she did on purpose. I could go on, but all I can say is, don’t be ignorant of what your children will be up against. Mine were too afraid to tell me at the time all that was happening – they were shielding us! We sent our last child some distance to a newly commenced Christian School in Yr 6 and he thanked us wholeheartedly. The pressure was at last off him!
    Lesley Kadwell

  17. I attended uni as a mature age student. I was there from the age of 49 to 56 and loved every minute of it. The radical left tried to put me in my place and it proved the biggest mistake they made as they had controlled the Student Union for 26 years so I mustered the troops and took it and the student newspaper off them. They were like stunned mullets.

    During this time, apart from a handful who supported me, I could not help notice how the so called Christian clubs operated as little bless me organisations. They were more concerned about correct doctrine than reaching out to the lost.

    I asked the head of my department who was a homosexual if he would like to debate me as to what the Bible said about homosexuality. He freaked out and ran away.

    The unis are ripe for evangelism. All you need is to be full of the Spirit, a holy boldness, and a willingness to educate yourself about the atheist worldview.

    I have suggested a one year gap course to bible colleges for students who are christians to prepare them for spiritual warfare on campus, but they are not interested.

    Roger Marks

  18. Just a light-hearted contribution. The primary teacher who was an atheist was a keen evangelist. She asked her class if they were atheists. Always wanting to please, everyone put their hand up except one child.

    “So, if you are not an atheist Zoe, what are you?” asked the teacher.

    “I am a christian Ms” came the reply.

    “Why is that Zoe?”

    “Because my parents are christians.”

    “So if your parents were morons, would that make you a moron?”

    “No Ms, it would make me an atheist.”

    Roger Marks

  19. I have 6 neighbors on my lane and I am practicing an old Amish/Mennonite approach to them It’s called ‘shunning’! I completely avoid any contact and no discourse. They wanted a Kenyan for president and they got him. They are victims of the MSM (mainstream media). You know what? I don’t miss them at all…
    William Martin, US

  20. Dear Bill

    I am having serious problems with something here and it centres on what has been referred to as “Lying for Jesus”.

    Your site continuously slams the main-stream media (as it rightly should) for biased and misleading reporting. The problem I have is this; is shoddy reporting wrong when it supports a view different from our own, but OK when it supports our own worldview?

    You have endorsed here the documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”….

    David Williams

  21. Thanks David

    Sorry, but I am not going down your chosen path, and I am cutting you off short, for several reasons. First, it is a no-brainer to realise that anyone arguing for any sort of creation or intelligent design will be mercilessly attacked by atheists and evolutionists. So of course they hate Expelled and anything like it. They will throw all the mud they can at anything that runs counter to their own reductionist worldview. And the makers of Expelled have dealt with these objections plenty of times, so I am not about to waste more time running with these tedious attacks. It is easy enough to get answers to these attacks if you are really open, and don’t have your mind already made up.

    But you have made it clear in past comments that you are a true believer when it comes to evolution. If it came down to choosing between Christians and creation, or atheists and evolution, it seems you will side with the latter every time. As I say in my commenting rules, those pushing an agenda can do so elsewhere.

    Finally, this article is not about Expelled, but about anti-Christian bigotry on campus. So I advise you to take your evolution crusade elsewhere thanks.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  22. Hi Bill,
    I heard that Universities like Harvard, Princeton and Yale all used to be seminaries. Not sure if that is fact.
    As a current Uni student, it is true that there are leftist groups getting more power at Uni’s all across Australia.But praise be to God for AFES and the great ministry that is going on within Universities to proclaim Jesus to other students.
    Please continue to pray for this ministry in Australia and all over the world.
    Duan Ziegelaar

  23. Thanks Duan

    Yes many of these schools were originally set up to train Christian ministers and missionaries. But no longer. Yes keep up the good work. We need Christian ministries on campus.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

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