They're Only Evangelicals
This week, I have the honor of presenting two papers at a conference that will also include presentations by Mark Noll and George Marsden. Noll and Marsden are two of the superstars in the field of History. It is humbling to present alongside them. They are also Christians who do work on the role of evangelical scholarship in universities.
This reminds me of a year ago. During a faculty meeting for my school (the School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies in ASU’s New College, so you know what school to avoid), a faculty member made a point about GCU and said, “They’re not real scholars; they’re just evangelicals.” I looked around the room. No one else was troubled by his bigotry.
And that is what stood out to me the most about the situation. This faculty member has used our faculty meetings to try and organize Democrat political rallies and support BLM. However, I expected others to at least say, “Hey, let’s be careful now not to be such a bigot in public.” Nothing. I asked the Dean and the Director about it and they thought it was perfectly fine to insult Evangelicals. “It’s free speech,” except ASU bylaws don’t protect discrimination. We all know how the faculty would have reacted if any other group was spoken of this way.
At the following faculty meeting, this professor doubled down. It would have been so simple to say, “I misspoke, and I didn’t mean to insult an entire religion; I’ll be more careful.” But that’s too obvious and humble. Instead, the professor blamed me for being sensitive. I thought we weren’t supposed to blame the victim.
Christians, this is how professors in ASU’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies view you. They can say whatever they want when they are trying to recruit you to their programs. But when you aren’t around, they speak condescendingly of you and your beliefs. And when they are called on it they don’t apologize they keep going.
If Christian students want to be treated with respect, they will need to look at a different school.