Victory!

“This site is a parody of SAFE. Even so, no lies, personal attacks, or intimidation are allowed.”

Hurrah!

Erskine has drifted doctrinally; Barthians and Neo-Barthians run rampant, as do evolutionists and non-inerrantists. Next year we’ll see a Neo-Neo-Barthian for sure. Chuck Wilson told me people at Erskine were “evil,” “terrorists,” “liars,” “intimidators,” and “mutinous thieves.” And some students told me their faith was threatened by an English professor telling them that evolution was true. This is how I knew change was needed.

[Each sentence is a separate link to an article or resource discussing it. Please freely add your own in the comments section].

Ever since that Chalking Incident where a few verbose students cried out for help against persecution and cops were sent to hammer down innocent Christian voices but ignore other students, we knew change was needed. Real change. This “Baal Cult” of Erskine has existed far too long and now “promotes unbelief.” Shocking! We need to “’man up,’ and crush this rebellion against the Kingdom of Christ” in the words of one minister of God.

We blasted Ruble. We blasted O’Cain. We blasted Crenshaw. We blasted Cheney. We blasted the Board. We blasted Alston. We blasted Robyn Agnew, then pretended we didn’t. Heck, we even blasted Jay West, and he doesn’t even work at the school anymore. We made a list and checked all our facts very, very carefully. We all know who’s naughty and nice. Publically. Very, very publically.

I am told a story about Erskine, which I have verified to be true. Students a year ago demanded answers from the administration to various questions. They organized a meeting and asked the administration to show up. And you know what? They did! There were more administrators and faculty in that room than students by a wide, wide margin. People who work for a living spent an hour and a half speaking with any students who would listen. And I mean these guys were grilled – and they knew they would be. Where on earth can you find a college where every single administrator of significance – President, all the directors, Student Services, etc – met together at the behest of students to be grilled by students? I imagine nowhere else. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say these administrators cared.

Of course they’re a bunch of liars. A big problem? The new marketing slogan wasn’t “Christian” enough. And this should be self-evident: “Christ” is the third word. Just days later, SAFE formed.

We told that darned Board what to do but they just wouldn’t compromise about anything in the face of our suggestions. But we were never forceful. There were no consequences if they didn’t listen. Then somebody or other got the idea to reconstitute the Board because it was too large, though nobody is quite sure how each new member was chosen. Blind chance I guess (0.00000069% to be precise).

We wanted to reclaim the school from doctrinal drift and change campus life at Erskine. Er, actually we wanted to subtly modify the governance structure of Erskine. Er, whatever deWitt says, unless he’s saying something else. We hoped to make Erskine safe for Christians – so sue us! (oww, actually, that’s a sore subject). It was the right thing to do. The obvious answer is to kick out the Board members who won’t obey. So sue us! (oops, I’ve got to stop saying that).

And why not? We own Erskine, I repeat we own Erskine, let me say again we own Erskine, again we certainly own Erskine, I’ll clarify: we have a mother-and-child relationship to Erskine.

God calls us to never surrender His principles or allow the cancer of error to spread, even when it means firing people without just cause and breaking civil laws. What are these petty concerns when the teaching of Creationism is at stake?

All we wanted was for the truth to come out. Tell us what you think! We’ll listen! Please, students of all opinions, talk to us. We want our conclusions to represent what students and faculty actually think.

Why stand against us? We fight for the “bright future that is possible” with Erskine, says one Commissioner. We support Erskine – intellectually, of course, and time-wise. The Other Side uses their pocketbooks, but thank goodness we aren’t so debased as to try to “buy” Erskine! Now that we control Erskine’s future, I’m sure our donation patterns will change.

Our Interim Board was harmless – it just existed to change the bylaws of Erskine College, and eh, what the heck, maybe appoint a new President.

And then the lawsuit. Oh, the travesty of Christians suing Christians! You tried to justify the lawsuit by saying Synod cannot be impartial to judge actions that Synod has done! Fool! Of course Synod is impartial. Had you brought your complaint, the ARP Church would have impartially rejected it. This is how things are supposed to work. We were right the first time; we’ll be right the second.

Our own Rev. Phillips said it best why the plaintiffs should be ecclesiastically judged: “That they did not submit to the higher court (General Synod) is beyond dispute [because of the lawsuit].” Well said! How could they be so silly as to challenge our God-given authority to break the civil law, Rev. Phillips? Wonders never cease! Lots of people called for their repentance. Phillips cited “eternal consequences” for each of them. I fear for Young and Hering on Judgment Day!

Christians do not sue Christians! How many times do I need to repeat that? Christians do not sue Christians.

Except, of course, when such lawsuits are justified, in which case a lawsuit is just fine. Thank you, Moderator deWitt and Moderator-elect Maye, for unilaterally protecting us with an appeal, without seeking advice, without seeking permission, and without telling anybody what you were doing! Speed was essential – minutes counted. “I find it a little difficult to know how to respond to your question.” Indeed! Don’t ask questions – we’re busy fighting the dregs of Erskine! Lawsuits may be unbiblical, but justified appeals are not. Indeed, The End Justifies The Means!

We were assailed at every turn, muscled by moneyed interests and worldly passions, and hounded by internet blogs and nameless foes calling us all sorts of names. I am still outraged at their “un-Christlike” attitude and language, but am constantly reminded of the piety, and gentleness, and rationality, and toleration (yes, again I say toleration, and once more toleration) of other viewpoints by those who support us. Truly Men of God! You were courteous to those who opposed you, thankful for their service no matter how imperfect, and were publicly decent to a coworker for his achievement. Best of all, you shunned the polarizing rhetoric of men like Chuck Wilson. Bravo!

What of the “Other Side?” You said it best, Daniel, by quoting scripture in their faces. “Abusive” indeed. “Proud.” “Arrogant.” “Quarrelsome.” Commissioner Mulner was absolutely right: “hate-speech.” Yes, those questions to the Commissioners were hate-speech. We were the Righteous Persecuted.

But nobody has the right to challenge the integrity of men of the church. Nobody! You might point out a direct lie, or another lie by our Moderator, but we never investigated. Even when “Maximus” broke Matthew 18 by publically telling everybody what Dr. Crenshaw had done instead of speaking with him privately first, we weren’t concerned.

Through it all we kept our professionalism and independence. We critically examined a few professors at Erskine, judged his or her commitment to our vision of integrated faith and learning, and inferred the existence of a culture of corruption and intimidation at Erskine by the actions of a few. We united for the peace and purity of the church. We set up a school where Christians are not challenged by other Christians over the specifics of their faith.

We remained unbiased in the face of relentless attack by students and alumni who think Erskine is excellent. Our focus never left those few SAFE students who signed that petition which said, “As evangelicals we are a minority in the classroom, on the campus, and in committee meetings, and so our appeals at Erskine for greater faithfulness to its mission have not been answered.”

Evangelicals are a minority at Erskine. This is hard to understand, but true. Not only that, their identities were secret because of the “personal risk many of us, especially as students, are making by signing this letter,” to protect them from “retribution or adverse treatment on campus” by administrators. We’ve never heard any examples about this – strange, given the unbelievable publicity around incident one and incident two of the “Culture of Intimidation.” (Yes, little Virginia, two contested incidents does a culture make.) Where are all the examples? Doesn’t matter – we know they exist. We didn’t need the fact-finding Commission to tell us either. Recommendations were enough. Since members, like Paul Mulner, had never started public blogs espousing pre-conceived opinions about Erskine’s direction, they were entirely unbiased.

Through it all we blamed everybody else for Erskine’s problems – the Board, the administrators, the faculty, heck, probably even the students. We even claimed firing half the Board was not to blame for Erskine’s financial and accreditation problems now. Now that we have won so tremendously, you might think Erskine’s future is in our hands – that any future setbacks, budget deficits, low student and faculty retention rates, and accreditation issues will be our fault starting today. But you’d be wrong. These are all the fault of those who destroyed Erskine for so many years! I’m pretty sure we’ll never be to blame no matter how far in the future these disasters occur.

Rev. deWitt truly did a wonderful job as Moderator. The ARP denomination is not larger than when he took office. It is not stronger. It is not more unified. It is not richer. It is not growing. But it still exists; this alone was quite an accomplishment.

This is the end. Our war is over. The Board won’t stand against us. We believe we’ve done a wonderful thing at Erskine – we think we’ve upheld Christianity from those “secularists,” I guess. Time will tell what Erskine becomes. We’ve opened Pandora’s Box, my friends. Behold the glory within!

I never did read the Other Side’s point of view about Erskine, but “I can’t imagine it being any clearer.”

These are my thoughts.

Signed,

a SAFE student scared of the vindictive and intimidating Administration