Thursday, June 1, 2023

Christian University Under Fire For Taking A Stand Against Pronouns

BY ROB SCHWARZWALDER/THE WASHINGTON STAND MAY 26, 2023

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Houghton University sits amidst the rural farmland of south-central New York State. A school of about 1,000 students, it has been affiliated with the Wesleyan Church since its founding in 1883.

For 140 years, Houghton has "been providing an academically challenging, Christ-centered education in the liberal arts and sciences to students." As its website proclaims, Houghton remains "focused on preparing and equipping students to serve God fully and faithfully... as scholar-servants in a changing world."

In recent days, this commitment has been put to a test, one that has drawn national attention. From The New York Times to Fox News, Houghton is now a hot media topic. The reason, as readers of The Washington Stand might well expect, has to do with the unyielding demands of sexual radicalism.

Residence Hall directors Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot added "she/her" and "he/him" to their email signatures. When they refused to remove these needless qualifiers, the university fired them.

According to Michael Blankenship, a spokesman for the school, "Over the past years, we've required anything extraneous be removed from email signatures, including Scripture quotes." My own school, Regent University, requires the same thing. The reason is pretty simple: a desire to ensure consistency and good taste in our public communications to all students, parents, staff, and alumni.

Of course, it goes deeper than this in the case of Zelaya and Wilmot. Their refusal to remove their "preferred" pronouns from their email signature blocs was more than an act of administrative defiance. Wilmot, for example, calls his stance a matter of upholding "truth and justice at the expense of a job" and implied that Houghton was trying to compel him "to do something unjust and unethical."

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Following the firings, more than 600 Houghton alumni wrote a letter to the school's president, Dr. Wayne D. Lewis, Jr., arguing that "the employees' firings is part of a seemingly broader turn against multiculturalism at the school." In response, Dr. Lewis was courteous but did not back down.

In a response addressing a number of matters raised in the alumni letter, he wrote that Houghton "requires as a condition of employment that all employees be respectful of the positions, doctrine, and beliefs of the university ... Houghton unapologetically privileges an orthodox Christian worldview, rooted in the Wesleyan theological tradition. At the time of their appointment and again annually, every Houghton employee affirms his or her understanding of and agreement to these commitments."

He continued his unbending stance with these telling words: "Students have many options to choose from for higher education. Very few of those options provide an educational experience through a decidedly orthodox Christian lens. Houghton is one of those institutions."

As a side but significant note, Dr. Lewis is African American. I doubt he needs lectures about "multiculturalism." Having previously served as commissioner of Education in Kentucky and as a black man who was born and raised in the deep South, he could speak eloquently about such things as racial justice and human dignity.

However, he has made clear that his racial heritage does not define who he is. Upon his inauguration as Houghton's president, Dr. Lewis commented, "There is nothing more fundamental to who I am and my identity than my Christian faith. It influences my worldview, how I live my life, my decision-making, and my leadership."

On Houghton's homepage, the school's president has posted a moving essay on the necessity of moral courage. "For American Christians, this is a radically different time -- not only different from the time of my youth but, frankly, radically different than even ten years ago. Being an American Christian demands a degree of boldness that was not necessary just a few years ago."

He continues that God's "direction to us to be courageous is not based on his confidence in our abilities, regardless of how able we are. ... When God directs us to be strong, to be courageous, to be fearless, it is because ... He will never forsake us."

It is not surprising that many Houghton alumni and, probably, other evangelicals are dismayed by Dr. Lewis's commitment to truth. Never popular, the union of courage and truth (often simply called character) are under assault in the believing church. In the name of compassion, we affirm things the God we claim to serve will never countenance. This is arrogance masquerading as sensitivity, the elevation of human desire above the good commands of a gracious Redeemer.

It is mystifying to many in our time that there are those who will not let the culture dictate their conviction. It is also so very pleasing to God that there are those of His people for whom eternity matters a great deal more than man's empty praise.

Originally published at The Washington Stand - reposted with permission.

Why Do American Evangelicals Care So Much About The Jewish People?..BY ROB SCHWARZWALDER/THE WASHINGTON STAND JUNE 01, 2023 Share this article:

Why Do American Evangelicals Care So Much About The Jewish People?

BY ROB SCHWARZWALDER/THE WASHINGTON STAND JUNE 01, 2023

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A while back, a friend told me he believes evangelicals are inherently anti-Semitic. I was pained to read this, and tried to explain why this belief is far from the truth.

However, his remark has haunted me. I believe he made it because followers of Jesus want to see all people, including Jews, come to know Him. Paul the apostle wrote that he would be willing to be "accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my countrymen ... who are Israelites" (Romans 9:3-4). Paul would have been glad to lose his salvation if the Jewish people would repent and believe in their Messiah.

It is due to this same burden for their eternal salvation that some accuse Christians of loving the Jews only because they want to win them to faith in Jesus. While there is no way to prove this is not true of some evangelicals, it does not reflect the more thoughtful approach orthodox Protestants take to our relationships with Jews individually or corporately.

First, evangelical Protestants care deeply about the Jews because within living memory, nearly six million of them were slaughtered in a meticulously planned genocide. In many communities in the United States, aging survivors of the Holocaust can display the tattooed numbers on their arms, used by the Nazis to catalog human beings like so many cattle.

The brutality experienced by the Jewish people outrages the innate sense of justice embedded within every person. "The work of the [moral] law is written on the heart," Paul writes (Romans 2:15). The moral conviction common to all people can be hardened, but unimpeded by purposeful rejection it weighs heavily as one considers the horrors suffered by Jews in mid-20th century Europe.

In other words, evangelicals are like every decent person who is sickened by Nazism's attempted obliteration of the children of Abraham. We want to stand with the Jewish people (and with Israel) because not to do so is to deny not only their humanity but our own.

Second, evangelicals recognize -- as do all who are honest about contemporary affairs -- that the Jewish people remain a target of hate in many quarters in the world. Recently, my family and I attended the Bar Mitzvah of the son of some dear friends and former neighbors. As we entered the synagogue, an armed policeman sat at a desk, scrutinizing the guests as they came in.

He was there because of the threats received against that synagogue and also the synagogue attacks of the past few years. As people commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, how can we do other than to stand with those who risk insult and even death simply by being what God made them -- Jews?

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Third, evangelicals owe the Jewish people a debt that can never be repaid. To them, Paul reminds us, "theirs is the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants the giving of the Law, the Temple service, and the promises." Supremely, he writes, Jesus was Jewish "according to the flesh, Who is over all, God blessed forever" (Romans 9:4-5). God was incarnated as a Jew; this alone should encourage Jesus's followers to love the Jewish people. For evangelicals not to support the Jewish people would be to abandon the very foundation of the faith we profess. Rabbi Jesus would be ashamed should we fail in this regard.

Fourth, the relentless and pervasive attacks on the State of Israel demonstrate that anti-Semitism is far from dead. A homeland for a people for centuries attacked, dispersed, denigrated, and murdered is not too much to ask. Occupying about 8% of the land mass of the Middle East in a country about the size of New Jersey, Israel has both a moral and political right to exist as a Jewish nation.

Evangelicals and, I hope, the American people as a whole view Israel not as another country in the U.N. alphabet of nations but as a place of protection, hope, and opportunity for a people so long driven from almost everywhere they have tried to take root.

Fifth, and back to the original point, evangelicals believe that "all men everywhere" (Acts 16:30) should enter into an everlasting relationship with their Redeemer. This is as true for the Ibo people of Nigeria and the Moro people of the Philippines as it is for the Jews. "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23) for all -- Jew and Gentile who place their trust in Him alone for forgiveness.

Finally, anyone suggesting that the Jewish people are uniquely implicated in the murder of Jesus is willfully ignorant of what the Bible teaches. The libelous charge that all Jews are somehow accountable for Jesus's crucifixion because some member of the Jewish religious leadership told Pilate they would accept responsibility for his murder (Matthew 27:24-25) has brought unimaginable suffering to Jews throughout the ages.

The idea that this statement, one those making it had no authority to make, justifies the oppression of a race makes as much sense as someone telling the federal government, "Go ahead and spend! I'll take full responsibility for the entire federal debt!"

Pilate was a Gentile. The Roman legionaries, including those who flagellated Jesus and pierced His side with a spear, were Gentiles. In a word, all of humanity was represented at the trial of the Savior and on Calvary. And all of our sins put the Lord of glory on the cross.

Evangelical Protestantism is not anti-Semitic. It is, and should always be, philo-Semitic, composed of people who love and advocate for those of whom Scripture says, "the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29) -- those to whom we owe our whole identity as the people of God, the Jews.

Originally published at The Washington Stand - reposted with permission.