(Tim, w/thanks to Dave) Last week, a friend in Florida wrote to call my attention to an article detailing the results of a political survey of the faculty at Covenant College, the school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America. (Students were polled, also.)
Conducted by the school's Director of Institutional Research, Kevin Eames, the survey received responses from 47 faculty members. Here's what Covenant's administration wants prospective students and their parents to know about these faculty members:
Eighty-eight percent of Covenant's faculty have doctorates or terminal degrees, earned from such institutions as Oxford, Stanford, Yale, and the University of Chicago. Our professors regularly involve students in their research activities. In fact, many students actually help edit books that their professors are writing.
The administration goes on to describe faculty members as "passionate about teaching and sharing their Reformed faith in a setting that sharpens the intellect and encourages increased awe of our sovereign God." Then, by way of reassurance, Oxford and passion are anchored by the declaration that "all faculty members subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith."
So, what might doctorates from Yale and Stanford, combined with a passion for the reformed faith and the Westminster Standards, lead these men and women to profess to our children about Christ's dominion in these United States and our own confession of that faith in this election year?
Asked, "Do you believe John McCain is a Christian," 33 of the 47 faculty members responding said either "No" or "Not sure." This seems safe since I read just last night that Senator McCain has never received Christian baptism. Likely not one of those faculty members questioning Senator McCain's Christian faith knew that, though.
Still, my concern is certainly not to prove Senator McCain's Christian faith, to get others to agree that he's sincere in his Christian profession, or leastwise to write this post to the end that even one reader will decide to vote for him or the Republican party. Such concerns have not entered my mind.
But on to Senator Obama. Different candidate, same question: "Do you believe Barack Obama is a Christian?" Twenty-one faculty members are definite in their response with five answering "No" and sixteen "Yes."
What ocular disease has led sixteen of our best and brightest to say for the record among students they are paid to lead into a greater knowledge of Christ's Lordship over all the earth that a man who unabashedly promotes baby-slaughter and sodomite marriage is certainly a Christian? If Senator Obama is a Christian, Robert Mugabe is born again and Jean Paul Sartre was a strict subscriptionist Presbyterian pastor.
Or, put another way...
if Senator Obama is a Christian, the Word of God is meaningless when it declares this concerning those who will never enter Heaven:
But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8)
Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying. (Revelation 22:15)
Also, note that whereas fourteen faculty members are sure of Senator McCain's faith, sixteen are sure of the Christian faith of Senator Obama. Not to put too fine a point on it, but more Covenant faculty members are certain that a promoter of baby-slaughter and sodomite marriage is a Christian than a man who opposes baby-slaughter and sodomite marriage.
What about their votes?
After the above, no one will be shocked to find out thirty-five percent of Covenant's faculty members say they're likely to vote for Senator Obama. That's one third of the faculty supporting the presidential candidacy of the most radically pro-baby slaughter politician in Washington D.C.
Over the years, I've voted for George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagen, and George Bush, but I've never been politically partisan. My calling is the church so I rarely address politics, particularly in light of the unconstitutional government and two-party farce we've had in the US for many years, now. As Johnson puts it, all schemes of political improvement are laughable things.
Nevertheless, our president has a tremendous impact on pursuing justice for the oppressed around the world as death tolls due to warfare, systemic poverty, AIDS, hunger, and global warning mount higher each day. For this reason, Covenant's faculty was asked to rate "issues for their importance in selecting a (presidential) candidate," and among those listed were "campaign finance reform," "education," "global warming," "health care," and "social justice." And yes, "abortion" was there, but no mention of sodomy or sodomite marriage.
Interestingly, only half the faculty members considered "abortion" to be "Very important" in their selection in their anticipated vote for a presidential candidate. This means half of the faculty members made a conscious decision to respond that abortion was not "Very important." What got a higher rating than abortion?
"Social justice." Abortion had a rating average of 3.23 whereas "Social justice" won with 3.40. (Ten faculty members responded that abortion was either "Not important" (2) or only "Somewhat important" (8), but only one faculty member responded that social justice was "Not important" and just two that it was only "Somewhat important."
For the top rating, "Very important," three issues tied in the faculty's vote: "Abortion," "Health care," and "Social justice," with "Social justice" taking the honors.
Covenant's president, Niel Nielson, might suggest the school's chaplain invite Submergent (they themselves call it Emergent) Church leader, Donald Miller, to visit the campus and preach in chapel along the theme of his mini-sermon given as a bendiction to the Democratic National Convention in Denver last month. In fine Balaam (Numbers 22-24) form, he declaimed:
Please join me for the next few moments in our Benediction.
Father God, This week, as the world looks on, help the leaders in this room create a civil dialogue about our future. We need you, God, as individuals and also as a nation. We need you to protect us from our enemies, but also from ourselves, because we are easily tempted toward apathy.
Give us a passion to advance opportunities for the least of these, for widows and orphans, for single moms and children whose fathers have left. Give us the eyes to see them, and the ears to hear them, and hands willing to serve them.
Help us serve people, not just causes. And stand up to specific injustices rather than vague notions.
Give those in this room who have power, along with those who will meet next week, the courage to work together to finally provide health care to those who don’t have any, and a living wage so families can thrive rather than struggle.
Help us figure out how to pay teachers what they deserve and give children an equal opportunity to get a college education. Help us figure out the balance between economic opportunity and corporate gluttony. We have tried to solve these problems ourselves but they are still there. We need your help.
Father, will you restore our moral standing in the world? A lot of people don’t like us but that’s because they don’t know the heart of the average American. Will you give us favor and forgiveness, along with our allies around the world? Help us be an example of humility and strength once again.
Lastly, father, unify us. Even in our diversity help us see how much we have in common.
And unify us not just in our ideas and in our sentiments—but in our actions, as we look around and figure out something we can do to help create an America even greater than the one we have come to cherish.God we know that you are good.
Thank you for blessing us in so many ways as Americans.
I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice.
Let Him be our example.
Amen.
Certainly Covenant faculty members aren't alone in their support for Senator Obama's presidential aspirations. Lots and lots of "Christians" were pleased as punch to join Miller in his prayer. But, get this: Before the watching world, Miller was using the Glorious Name of Jesus Christ to call down our Heavenly Father's blessing on the party that believes in, and has a mandatory plank in its platform advocating the slaughter of 1,300,000 unborn children each year who are tenderly nestled in their mothers' wombs by the providence of God.
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. (Democratic Party Platform, August 2008)
Although of far less magnitude than baby-slaughter, it should also be noted that the Democrats are the sodomy and sodomite marriage party, also.
And this charlatan has the audacity to use the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ as He calls down God's blessing on this immorality and child-slaughter! What a tragedy no donkey rebuked or stopped him.
Our nation is filled with lemmings who think soft thoughts and call them prophetic. But they're absolutely predictable, born in the sentiments passing as reason and thought found in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christianity Today, and the list goes on...
But where is righteousness, where is social justice when no one utters a word in defense of the millions of babies slaughtered each year around the world--over 75,000,000 per year by World Health Organization estimates?
Back at Covenant, one third of the faculty join MIller in claiming the Name of Christ for supporting the party drowning in the sea of blood of little children sacrificed to Molech while they chatter on about AIDS and hunger and malaria and nationalized health care and social justice.
They claim to care about "Social injustice," but refuse to mark "Abortion" as "Very important?" This is on the level of German Christians during the Third Reich claiming to be concerned about the social stigma faced by Jews in some parts of their nation. Undoubtedly many of them viewed their faith as highly evolved; prophetic even.
Undoubtedly, many also thought Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the godly believers a part of the Confessing Church weren't sufficiently progressive. That they were incapable of sustaining a rational argument. That they were blinkered, philistine, and pig-ignorant. Surely they warned their students against them and pointed out how no official respectable means of communication saw fit to publish them. Probably called them "pamphleteers" with a sneer.
Shall we point out the obvious? The bloodshed of abortion absolutely dwarfs the injustices and any bloodshed these progressive self-described "Christians" claim to be concerned about.
But are they aware of this simple fact?
No, of course not; and neither were Third Reich Lutherans aware of the millions of Christians and Jews their next-door neighbors were herding into the showers and shoveling out of the furnaces.
Let's be specific. Here are accurate estimates of the death toll, each year, caused by things we may be able to influence by our national policies regardless of the countries we live in. In other words, I'm not including cancer, heart disease, etc. because these will be hard to assign blame concerning.
So what are the annual totals, worldwide, of the things we may be able significantly to influence with political action?
Malaria: 1.5 million
TB: 2.6 million
AIDS: 5.2 million
Diarrheal diseases: 3.1 million
Childhood cluster diseases: 1.9 million
Nutritional deficiencies: 800,000
Traffic accidents: 2.0 million
Violence: 948,000
War: 240,000
GRAND TOTAL: 18,500,000
SLAUGHTER OF BABIES: 78,000,000
Add to the slaughter of babies, the slaughter of the elderly by starvation and medical intervention with morphine and such life-suppressants, the slaughter of the newborn defective, and the total is absolutely staggering.
All as Donald Miller and Covenant College faculty members chatter on about national health care and social justice, promising their vote to Senator Barack Obama.
Really, although God cares mightily about the slaughter of the innocents (He does, after all, tell us He's the father of orphans and widows in their distress), these Christians couldn't care less. So they drone on about economic justice and parity and world trade and a civil discussion and a better reputation around the world for the US and blather, blather, blather. But it all adds up to nothing more than desiring to avoid the shame of the Cross.
I understand foreigners being deluded about American politics, but Donald Miller and confessionally reformed professors holding Ph.D.s from Yale, Oxford, and Stanford while subscribing to the Westminster Confession and claiming to be passionate about the Reformed Christian faith?
Oh my, these men are slick! Like Balaam, they know precisely what they're doing.
Donald Miller stands in solidarity with the party whose chief distinguishing mark in American politics is their aggressive advocacy of more bloodshed of babies, and whose second most distinguishing mark is advocacy of sodomy, and he blesses them in the Name of Jesus!
Meditating on the Judgment Seat of Almighy God, will he explain to us why he said nothing about the sodomites who are dying of AIDS here in the United States with no protection from our government--no quarantines such as our public health laws have enforced in other national health emergencies like polio or TB? Will he explain to us why he didn't mention the little babies being slaughtered across our fair land as he preached to the Democratic National Convention? Will our Covenant College professors explain to us precisely why they made a conscious choice not to mark the slaughter of 78,000,000 unborn children around the world each year as "Very important?"
Normally, I'd be proud of a pastor who actually dared to pray explicitly in Jesus' Name at any public function outside the privacy of a church, but in this case I believe it was blasphemy.
Fellow presbytery members, members of WIC, stated clerks of sessions, ruling elders, deacons, Titus 2 women, and parents of the Presbyterian Church in America, consider carefully where you send your money and precious children. Yes, of course there are excellent and godly trustees, adminstrators, and faculty members at Covenant. Who's ever said otherwise?
However, in the care of souls, who among us would knowingly place someone we loved in a lottery where beforehand we knew our loved one had about a thirty-three percent chance of coming under the authority and influence of a professor who wouldn't agree that abortion was "very important" in his selection of a presidential candidate, and who publicly acknowledged he intended to cast his ballot for a man who believed the protection sodomites needed was affirmative action and marriage?
About a decade ago, our eldest son, Joseph, narrowed his college choices down to Vanderbilt and Covenant, but couldn't make up his mind between the two. It came to the final day for him to notify the school where he would matriculate. His mother and I didn't know what he'd choose.
We got up the next morning and asked him what he'd decided?
He said he was going to Vanderbilt.
"How did you make your decision," we asked?
"Well, I was thinking that one of my weaknesses is that I tend to trust people too easily. And as I thought about it, I realized this meant at Covenant I'd trust everyone, including people I should not trust. But at Vanderbilt I'd be on guard from the beginning."
About right, isn't it? Mary Lee and I are so happy Joseph went to Vanderbilt rather than Covenant. If a child of mine is going to be corrupted by idols waiting for destruction, I want his infection to come from honest pagans--not dishonest men who claim to be Christians and spend their lives (and my money) explaining how someone passionate about the Reformed Christian faith who holds to the Westminster Standards has made his peace, and is able to encourage his students to vote for a man for president of these United States who unabashedly defends the shedding of the blood of 1,300,000 unborn children across our nation each year.
For twenty-five years or so, my own Dad worked on college campuses across our country with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. While he and Mud had graduated from Wheaton, most campuses where he spoke to students were entirely secular. He and Mud began in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as I-V staff for all the schoools in the Boston area. Years later, he supervised I-V's eastern seaboard, edited I-V's national magazine, His, and was the publisher of Inter-Varsity Press. What advice did he regularly give concerning the selection of a college for covenant children?
"If you go to a Christian college, you'll never know who the enemy is. At a secular school, though, it will be very clear."
