Evangel university was the very first Pentecostal liberal arts institution in America. However, as the popularity of Christianity now fades in the public eye, even some evangelical colleges are compromising core beliefs for greater acceptance and academic respect from mainstream educational and political circles. Evangel will not join that parade nor march to the drumbeat of a culture that follows these whims and atheistic tendencies. Evangel must continue strengthening and integrating our Spirit-driven faith into the undergraduate and graduate experience.
My argument comes from the interrelation and interdisciplinarity of each branch of learning on this tree of knowledge. To omit God from a student’s education is an ideological compromise to indoctrinate atheistic core values into education just before students start into the workplace. Any Christian parent or philanthropist can see how, in a few short years, America truly does become godless. This must not be allowed to continue, and I want to thank culture for helping make the case for the critical role Evangel and other Christ-centered, Spirit-driven institutions play in God’s plan for humanity.
At Evangel, every degree reveals something amazing and beautiful and thought-provoking about God! Our world-class faculty all teach and mentor within their disciplines from a biblical worldview.
Is there a place on the Christian higher education landscape for a relevant and academically rigorous Spirit-driven university? My emphatic “Yes!” has everything to do with academic integrity, historicity, and plain old honesty. The fact that some accrediting bodies are falling into this post-structuralist era agenda, tripping up on redefining words and history is hugely disappointing. As culture points its finger at followers of Jesus and says, “Your fossilized faith is ancient and has no place in the sophisticated and scientific world,” I retort with, “Isn’t all education about the past?”
Innovation is about the future; this we know. However, each professor at any institution is teaching only what has come previously. Most are lecturing from the notes their professors gave them, those professors from their professors decades earlier, and so on. The argument to nullify faith as ancient and outdated is ludicrous, as education is about passing down knowledge from the past. Should we now throw out biology, art history, and European literature as fossilized?
That’s postmodernism in a nutshell: what’s good for the goose does not go for the gander! There is too much at stake to sit back and let the system aggressively indoctrinate atheistic core values into the students’ education, whether there is intent or not, without at least pointing to it.