Are Christian Colleges Fully Biblical?

Are Christian Colleges fully biblical?

Though every Christian college, university and seminary in the country will be insulted by my answer, all are biblical flawed, severely so.  Here is my documentation.

As a student, I was educated in Christian colleges.  As a teacher, I taught at Christian colleges.  In my retirement (1994-2010), as a volunteer teacher, I taught at the Perkins Center located in West Jackson, Mississippi where I interacted with numerous mission teams from across the country, many from Christian colleges.

There are, of course, many good things about a Christian college education, but in this blog I will focus on some glaring and disturbing deficiencies.

1.  While I was not a history major, I had a brother-in-law who was, the history I was taught was not distinctly Christian; it was essentially a secular history taught by Christians.  Only later, through self-education, did I slowly develop a biblical perspective on American history.  I will share one key book which revolutionized my thinking.  The book:  The Wars of America: Christian views.

Around 1980, eight professional Christian historians, each an expert on one of America's many wars, described each war, why we fought, what values drove us into war, why most of our wars were not just wars, why most wars were imperialistic and oppressive.

The American Revolution was analyzed by George Marsden.  Marsden concluded that British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violent revolution.  I agree.  Here is my further interpretation and application.

The Declaration of Independence was written to justify a violent revolution---independence from British tyranny.  But there was also a second unwritten declaration---freedom for the founding fathers to continue their American tyranny over Indians and slaves.  This founding father tyranny was far worse than the British tyranny.  This was so glaring that John Wesley saw it and therefore opposed the American Revolution.  The demonic social evil of slavery was essentially sanctified by our founding fathers.

The Wars of America should be required reading for all Christian college students; I have seen little evidence that it has been widely read.

2.  I taught sociology and slowly tried to develop a distinctively Christian sociology or a sociotheology.  During the 1980s and early 90s, each June sociologists who taught at Christian colleges would gather to present papers and discuss ideas.  I was the only sociologist who thought Christian sociologists could and should develop a distinctly biblical sociology.  All others opposed the idea.  For them, sociology was an empirical, a scientific, discipline where as theology was a value oriented discipline.  The two could not be combined.

Essentially, all these Christian sociologists were teaching a secular discipline; in reality, they were more secular than biblical.

3.  From 1994, I was a volunteer at the Perkins Center.  Many mission teams from Christian colleges, churches, pastors, seminaries came to learn about Christian Community Development from John Perkins.  I asked many of them to write down a one-sentence of the kingdom of God.  In my opinion almost all definitions were shallow and superficial; seldom were they present and social definitions.  The teams represented the cream of the crop from the American church, but they were biblically ignorant about the essence and purpose of the kingdom of God here on earth.

My definition:   The kingdom of God is all about justice, a justice that releases the oppressed (Matthew 6:33 and Luke 4:18-19).

I found the same biblical shallowness about oppression.   One spring three mission teams from three different Christian colleges visited the Perkins Center.  None of the 40 students had been taught about oppression---the 555 OT references to oppression, that oppression smashes the body and crushes the spirit.

The same could be said about justice.

These Christian colleges are biblically shallow on social problems.