The Berlin Wall Falls
November 9, 1989, is a memorable date. That day, the Berlin Wall, a barrier that separated people for nearly 30 years, began to be dismantled by the crowds of Germans. On that day, my mind was focused on the wonder of the wall’s destruction. However, a few short years later, I began to ponder the historical turn of events with the collapse of Eastern Bloc Marxist states. At the same time, Marxism had already been encroaching on the West, especially on college campuses, including Christian college campuses, where an ideology, “cultural Marxism,” was provoking deep rifts and angry divisions, yes, even among people who professed to be one people in Christ Jesus.
Evangelical colleges and universities were entering a critical historical moment. Would they stand firm in the good news as it is in Christ Jesus, or would they submit to cultural-religious seduction that would hijack the gospel for its nefarious agenda? As always, the direction Christian academic institutions would take hung on the decisions their administrators would make. Were those administrators sufficiently knowledgeable and courageous to resist and counter the syncretistic blending of Marxism with Christianity? Would they seek the counsel of others whose knowledge of Scripture and of culture revealed an insightful understanding of the times? Thirty years later, the answer to these questions is that cultural Marxist ideology concerning racial and sexual matters safely resides on most Christian college campuses, protected by obsequious administrators against internal critiques.
Here is an account of cultural Marxism’s encroachment onto the campus of one Christian college in January 1993.
The Racist Impact of Supreme Court Decisions on Christian Colleges
In June 1978, within his stand-alone-written opinion concerning the Supreme Court decision, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Justice Lewis Powell imposed a new use of the word diversity. From that point forward, diversity took on a new and sacred coinage as a virtue-yielding social agenda, a restructuring to be engineered by college admissions offices. The Supreme Court’s decision called for preference to be granted to college applicants based on their “minority status” because of skin color. Thus, for more than a decade, the leaders of the Coalition of Christian Colleges (now the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities) observed the aggressive push to achieve diversity as a pursued virtuous outcome at non-Christian colleges and universities. Because they thought in bits and pieces rather than wholes, as Francis Schaeffer had frequently warned, they failed to realize that to show favoritism is to sin (James 2:9). Thus, they embraced uncritically the worldly admissions policy, even borrowing the principal argument for the practice: “Coalition schools failed to mirror the ethnic diversity of the surrounding culture.”1 So, in 1991, the directors of the Coalition of Christian Colleges launched the Racial/Ethnic Diversity Initiative on the member Christian college campuses. During the next few years, Christian college administrators who lacked either sufficient knowledge of or the will to resist the encroachment of the social engineering ideology in pursuit of diversity as an objective unwittingly and uncritically accepted the initiative and implemented it with its policies that called for member institutions to establish a campus Diversity Office with accompanying programs to promote the agenda.
A Supreme Court decision, Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1971), added reinforcement to the CCC’s directives to Christian college administrators. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that any policy or job qualification that results in a company’s disproportionate racial hiring is prima facie evidence of “racial discrimination.” No longer did alleged victims of discrimination have to identify specific policies or actions as discriminatory. Simple numerical imbalance in hiring was all the evidence of discrimination needed. So, the CCC’s Racial/Ethnic Diversity Initiative addressed hiring practices as well as admissions policies for students at member Christian colleges.
Tom Skinner’s “Ministry of Reconciliation” at Northwestern College
The CCC diversity agenda with its initiatives came to Christian Colleges through a variety of means. One direct means the CCC enforced implementation of the agenda was through sending CCC-endorsed black ministers to speak in college chapels, beginning in 1992-93. Some of these speakers spoke on college campuses under the auspices of the Staley Lecture Series. January 18-20, 1993, Tom Skinner spoke at Northwestern College as a Staley Lecturer during my first year as a member of the faculty. During his initial chapel message, he announced that he came to our campus as “a minister of reconciliation” based on 2 Corinthians 5:18. His message was the antithesis of reconciliation. For three days, he effectively laid the foundation for an ideological wall of animus and division by haranguing students, staff, faculty, and administrators for participating in a “racist institution.” To lay the foundation for that ideological barrier, Skinner asserted four dogmas: (1) Northwestern College did not proportionately represent its surrounding population; (2) Non-proportional representation is evidence of “institutional racism” that excludes “people of color,” even if not intentional; (3) Whites only, not blacks, can be racists because racism can be practiced only by those who have “majority power,” and (4) Members of Northwestern College need to repent of racism, even if they are not aware of any attitudinal or overt acts of racism, and commit themselves to make the institution look like God’s people will in the eternal kingdom as required by Revelation 5:9-10 and 7:9. Only by correcting these could “racial reconciliation” begin to take place at Northwestern College.
The Laying of the Ideological Dividing Wall at Northwestern College
Skinner’s incontrovertible assertions laid the foundation. Others, especially the Diversity Officers, with their compliant white allies eager to purge themselves of “white guilt,” built on that dogmatic foundation as they erected an unscalable wall of ideological hostility, all while claiming to be reconcilers, modeled after Skinner’s mission to Northwestern College.
With each of his four allegedly unarguable assertions, Skinner revealed that he had embraced a worldview mired in the Marxist swamp, a position already identified in the 1980s by some as “cultural Marxism” deriving from the Frankfurt School. His first presumed incontrovertible assertion erased personal responsibility for choices potential black students made for not attending our college. It was Northwestern College’s alleged default “white decisions,” not the choices potential black students made, at fault for the relatively low numbers of blacks admitted at that time. Skinner’s simplistic explanation for what he deemed the uncontestable explanation for Northwestern College’s alleged failure to show “proportional representation” of black students seemed to land a deep impression on his auditors.
With his second incontestable assertion, Skinner clearly exhibited his embrace of Justice Powell’s notion of “diversity” as an objective to be manipulated by preferential treatment based on skin color, biblically condemned as the sin of partiality (James 2:1-13). As indicated earlier, this social engineering policy that dominated admissions policies at state and non-Christian private universities for more than a decade became the model CCC leaders followed and imposed on CCC member institutions. Thus, even if Northwestern College admissions personnel did not intentionally exclude “students of color,” Skinner charged the whole college with “institutional racism.” Already, then, the charge of racism was defined as “systemic.” No actual racist actions or words were necessary to be charged with racism. So, racism was inescapable for white people because, even if they did not intentionally participate in racist acts, they were guilty by means of participating in a racist system. Lamentably, Skinner’s embrace of the culture’s clever redefining of “racism” as “institutional” or “systemic” seemed to escape the notice of most who heard him during those cold days of January 1993. Careful observation suggested that few who heard Skinner’s angry tirades were adequately informed culturally.
To his dogmatic embrace of the notion that “racism” is systemic, Skinner added a third undeniable assertion. He fully embraced the anti-biblical definition of what constitutes racism, the sin of partiality. He uncritically accepted the recasting of “affirmative action” as favoritism toward “people of color,” invigorated by Justice Powell’s coinage of “diversity” as an objective. So, as was the practice among race activists at the time, Skinner added the Marxist “power differential” to his definition of racism. Because only white people are members of the “majority culture,” they alone have the requisite power to be racists. Indeed, this charge prompted many listeners to wince, but because most thought in bits and pieces, they failed to recognize the Marxist source of Skinner’s dogma. Without understanding how his charge of “systemic racism” opposed what Scripture says concerning individual accountability, many came under his spell.
Thus, given these first three dogmatic claims, Skinner’s fourth indisputable assertion followed suit. His ministry of reconciliation required all white members of Northwestern College to repent of their racism, even if they have no awareness of either attitudinal or overt acts of racism. Because all were participants in a college that was guilty of “institutional racism,” all needed to repent. For good measure, Skinner baptized his assertions with Scripture, using the Apostle John’s vision of “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9 & 5:9-10) to rebuke all, as if white Christians at Northwestern College had no concern for the salvation of people who did not look like them. Again, Skinner’s crafty appeal to Scripture seemed to stymy most who heard him. Bits and pieces thinking was evident. Observant listeners could recognize the trajectory of Northwestern College unless the administrators took decisive actions to resist the CCC-imposed worldview.
The rage Skinner exhibited, and the anger he invoked was palpable. Faces were etched with a range of emotions—wonder, compliance, anger, guilt, dread, and fear. As students departed chapel sessions, one could hear hushed talk concerning what they had just heard. Even in private conversations among faculty and staff, it became dangerous to challenge or counter his assertions and reasoning. We professors knew that student conversations were often fixated on the issues they were hearing in the chapel during those three January days. Some brave students ventured to ask necessary and even insightful questions in classes. Nevertheless, only fools would risk being subjected to the charge, “Racist!” I was such a fool.
After Skinner’s second lecture, I walked with a colleague from another academic department while returning to my office. Properly vexed with what we had just heard, I rhetorically observed, “Do you know who is the most racist individual on campus this week? It is Tom Skinner.” My friend stopped in his tracks and turned to hush me, saying, “It’s extremely dangerous to say such things on campus. You need to watch out lest you get fired for being a racist.” Fright had gripped my colleague. Of course, prudence governed where and with whom I voiced disagreements with Tom Skinner’s race-based agenda. Nevertheless, the weight of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ obligated me to oppose this subversion of the good news as it is in Jesus. The classroom, where I could supervise the conversation, was the principal realm in which I prudently exposed the numerous errors of Skinner’s divisive proclamations. More on this will follow in subsequent blog entries.
The Ideological Dividing Wall Is Electrified
Much has transpired in thirty years since Tom Skinner stirred deep animosity and division at Northwestern College. Because administrators complied with the CCC Racial/Ethnic Initiative and its enforcement that came with Tom Skinner’s berating, the college has followed the trajectory insightful individuals warrantably anticipated. Thirty years later, that ideological wall of hostility still stands on the foundation Skinner laid at what is now the University of Northwestern—St. Paul. Worse than unscalable and impenetrable, that wall has been electrified. Like the legendary “third rail” in politics, the wall is highly charged and untouchable. Fragile peace and harmony persist as long as no one is foolish enough to openly dispute the ideology that is affirmed as indisputable. Anyone who expresses disagreement with Skinner’s asserted incontrovertible truisms, now deeply embedded in the college’s culture, reinforced by past and current Diversity Officers, racial activist students, and compliant white allies, runs the risk of electrocution, otherwise known as “cancelation,” including termination. I have received jolts on numerous occasions by venturing too close to the electrified ideological wall with my biblically grounded objections and teaching. Despite high-level animus, even rage, thanks to Christian attorneys who provided defense, I endured the administration’s authorized cancelation culture by surviving termination, unlike some. More in subsequent blog entries on my ventures in contesting the poisonous ideology that ascended to the rank of incontestability.
Footnotes:
1 James A. Patterson, Shining Lights: A History of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 93.