My last blog entry offers a brief historical review of factors that shaped my early thinking concerning social-cultural-political issues. Here, I continue those reflections during my college years, early ministry years, and graduate studies.
Stunted Christian Thinking without Proper Worldview Development
Among academic regrets from my youthful days in college, one stands out. During my sophomore year, I took a course in philosophy taught by a professor who was much less than capable of managing the subject. Surprisingly, the professor introduced the class to Francis Schaeffer by having us read the newly published Escape from Reason (1968). Nevertheless, because our professor was hardly a worldview thinker, he was inadequate in translating Schaeffer’s important concepts for us. This course, along with several others, convinced me that I had chosen poorly. The institution was not at all academically rigorous. I made another poor choice. When I transferred to Bryan College, credits for that course satisfied the general requirements for my academic major. I lacked the wisdom to realize that I should not have allowed those credits to transfer. During my junior year as a history major, I learned that the philosophy professor, R. Allen Killen, engaged his class with a thorough critique of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory with its popular influence on the culture by its proponents: Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse.
As I recall, I encountered something about the Frankfurt School while reading Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951) for another course. Hoffer’s work exposes Marxism’s exploitation of workers for its totalitarian agenda. I thought about relinquishing my transferred philosophy credits to take the course during my senior year, but Dr. Killen left the college to join the faculty at Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS). So, whatever knowledge I was to acquire concerning the Frankfurt School’s impact on our society would have to come from my leisure reading. That learning was largely suspended during the next several years while I attended graduate school.
Developing Christian Worldview Thinking as a Pastor-Scholar
Following the acquisition of the M.Div. and Th.M., I accepted an internship followed by various church ministry opportunities, including the preaching pastoral role in two churches, prior to returning to graduate studies for the Ph.D. in Theological Studies. If a college course introduced me to Francis Schaeffer and another connected me with C. S. Lewis, my seminary studies introduced me to Cornelius Van Til, whose works in epistemology and apologetics shaped my Christian worldview deeply. I happily confess that the crispness and poignancy of thinking manifest in all my writing and speaking is indebted to him.
Vernard Eller’s small book—The Language of Canaan and the Grammar of Feminism—caught my attention, sparked my imagination, and launched me onto various reading rabbit trails that greatly enriched my thinking and expanded the horizons of my Christian worldview. Schlossberg’s Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American Society was published a year later. Its breadth and depth called for extended reflective pondering. Throughout my church ministry years, I read much. I became greatly influenced by unhurried critical thinkers. Besides acquiring much wisdom and insight from numerous Christian thinkers, I gained much from thinkers who did not present themselves as Christians but whose cultural thinking borrowed heavily from Christendom.
Then, studying toward a Ph.D. at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School exposed me to voluminous literature across the spectrum of academic disciplines. Given my focus on the biblical text, especially the New Testament, I did extensive reading and research in the philosophy of language and linguistics, adding reading proficiency in French and German. Given my early curiosity about how languages function, this research piqued a deepening interest in language and culture, especially because our American English language was undergoing rapid changes concurrent with the rapid cultural changes. It became apparent to me that without setting out to do so, I was developing “a theology of language” while resisting jargon, slang, and the engineered manipulation of language by (1) radical feminists, (2) advocates of same-sex relations, and (3) those engendering racial hatred, animosity, and division. My passion concerning language became increasingly evident when I returned to the classroom as a professor of New Testament and Greek.
Deepened Christian Worldview Thinking: A Career Change and Cultural Shifts Coincide
Upon completing my studies for a Ph.D., I first taught at my alma mater, Grace Theological Seminary, as Visiting Professor of New Testament & Greek, thanks to the invitation by my friend and fellow seminary student, Gary Meadors, the Chair of the New Testament Department. Effective Christian teaching obligates one to develop an expansive worldview. Sharp students test how comprehensive a professor’s knowledge is. Teaching a course on the Gospel of John, as I did, requires more from a professor than knowledge of one’s specialization. Successful teaching draws students into the world of the text, which routinely collides with the world they inhabit, prompting numerous questions. Thus, as I entered my teaching career, I promptly discovered that besides my extensive academic preparations, two other factors prepared me well: (1) serving Christ’s church as a pastor with the full array of responsibilities that come with that office, and (2) diving deeply into critical thinking concerning our increasingly God-despising culture.
Two major events took place during my one-year appointment at my alma mater, one in the fall and a second in the following spring. First, in the fall of 1991, Democrat U.S. Senators tried desperately to defame and destroy the reputation of Clarence Thomas, President George H. W. Bush’s nominee to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States. The second occurred in the spring of 1992 when vicious rioters took over Los Angeles, California after four L.A. police officers were acquitted of alleged crimes committed when arresting Rodney King, an intoxicated, convicted felon who obviously resisted arrest.
1. Racially Motivated Democrat Senators’ Opposition to Clarence Thomas’s Nomination to the Supreme Court
In 1991, when Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement from the Supreme Court after 34 years, it might have seemed President George W. Bush made it easy for the U.S. Senate to confirm his replacement by nominating Clarence Thomas, a black justice, to replace another. That was the naïve reasoning of folks who failed to comprehend the sheer duplicity of Democrats for whom one’s dark skin color warrants preferential treatment only if the person’s ideology matches their Leftism. Hence, the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Joe Biden, began its confirmation hearings on September 10, 1991, and continued for ten days. A week later, on September 27, after the Judiciary Committee’s 7 to 7 vote failed to attain a favorable recommendation following an extended debate, the committee voted 13-1 to pass Thomas’s nomination to the full Senate but without recommendation.
What the racially motivated Democrats in the Senate did to Clarence Thomas foreshadowed their malice toward Brett Kavanaugh twenty-seven years later. After Nina Totenberg, in an NPR broadcast, calculatedly leaked rumored information from the Judiciary Committee designed to torpedo Thomas’s confirmation with Anita Hill’s fabrication of sexual harassment allegations, Senator Biden postponed the final Senate vote on Thomas and reopened the confirmation hearings on October 11 for four days of national embarrassment as he led a last-ditch effort to discredit President Bush’s nominee. The Democrats’ efforts to ruin Thomas’s reputation played out on C-SPAN and radio before a watching nation. On October 15, 1991, the Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Thomas as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings confirmed how endemic racism is to the Democratic Party. Senator Biden’s transparent efforts to block Clarence Thomas’s confirmation showed the Democratic Party’s resolve to retain mastery over America’s blacks, keeping them in check by rewarding all who are willing to accept victimhood as power and by punishing all who, like Justice Thomas, embrace freedom.
2. Racial Marauders Assault, Murder, Maim, and Burn in Los Angeles
A major event took place in the spring of 1992 while I was teaching at my alma mater. Television sets available for students and staff were on to view the events and the accompanying commentary, much of which was banal. We who, amidst our duties, paused to view, watched with shock and awe. On April 29, four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of alleged crimes committed when arresting Rodney King, an intoxicated, convicted felon who obviously resisted arrest. For people my age, this was reminiscent of the race riots of the 1960s and 70s, but for my students, the depth of rage that vented this violence was not previously observed. The display of pent-up, bitter racial anger and hatred that terrorized a city for six days signaled a historical turning point concerning race relations in America. Los Angeles plunged into chaos. On the third day of violence, a camera and microphone focused on Rodney King, who haltingly asked, “Can we all get along?” For three more days, rioters and looters answered with an emphatic, resounding reply, “No!”
The progress that had been made since the burning of black churches in the 1960s and the accompanying race riots seemed to evaporate before our watching eyes. For six days, racially triggered rioting, looting, assaulting, and arson dominated the city, resulting in 63 human lives perishing, 2,383 human bodies injured (perhaps the worst, Reginald Denny), more than 12,000 arrests, and property damage of more than $1 billion. The violence came to an end only after the National Guard, U.S. military, and federal law enforcement agencies deployed 10,000 agents.
With Understanding the Times 4.0—A Christian Cultural Critic in Action, I will begin to tell of my direct encounters with the victimhood ideology as a college professor bringing the Christian worldview to bear upon the burgeoning antithetical worldview of “multiculturalism and diversity” that not so surreptitiously sneaked onto our campus, gaining a favorable reception, receiving its own generous budget, and ensconcing itself as a permanent fixture with its own office and officers who prevailed, not by the strength of evidence and argument but by sheer ideological force, dismissing all challengers as racists.