Diversity: The Façade of our Intolerant Institutions

 

 How much diversity do we find in the media and the university? Although we claim that we value diversity as the necessary condition for free-thinking, it has become an endangered commodity, perhaps even secretly detested. Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine, cites one evidence of our antipathy towards diversity:

• Our academic high places are hives of the left. The Daily Princetonian says 155 members of Princeton University faculty or staff donated to Barack Obama, and only two (one visiting lecturer in engineering, and one janitor) to Mitt Romney. I’ve seen similar stats from other schools. When taxpayers and parents pay tens of thousands of dollars to require students to listen to leftist propaganda from generally persuasive individuals, should we be surprised that young people vote left? (Dec. 1, 2012, 80)

The greater tragedy is that our young people, taken captive by this ubiquitous and uncontested radical message, leave the church as a consequence, while others remain but with a highly compromised faith.

Meanwhile, our secular institutions, while extolling their unshakable commitment to diversity, deny that there is any bias. However, it has become obvious to anyone with eyes, that these institutions have become instruments of brainwashing – propaganda mills, secretly maintained through discriminatory hiring practices. “Social activists” are now the censors for the radical left whose mostly lofty goal is the tarring of any speakers who fail to conform to their politically correct agenda.

They have converted institutions that had been safe-havens for the exploration of ideas, even unpopular ones, into restrictive, intolerant single-thought pep-rallies. This problem is so ubiquitous - and accreditation agencies serve this narrow secular agenda - that Christian colleges hire faculty imbued with the worldview of the secular university. It is therefore, not at all surprising to find concerned Christians issuing warnings:

• You’ve probably heard the statistics, that 50% of Christians abandon their faith during college. It would seem that many Christian students are not prepared to enter the liberal environment of a secular college classroom, where more than half of all professors view Christians with hostility and take every opportunity to belittle them. One study showed that private colleges with a religious history – but have cast aside those roots – were most detrimental to students maintaining their Christian faith; up to two-thirds of Christian students give up their relationship with God at these institutions. Sadly, even many so-called “Christian” colleges are entering into apostasy (turning away from Christ). Just because a school calls itself a Christian college does not always mean that the teaching provided is Biblical. 

Secularism exercises a strangle-hold on public discourse, although there seems to be one media outlet – Fox News - that provides an economic and political alternative to the mainline medias, most forms of counter-left thinking are given little or no expression. There is no mention of the supportive reasoning for traditional marriage, pro-life, sexual abstinence, objective moral absolutes intelligent design and many other conservative issues. In fact, many have been fired and denied tenure for even quietly holding such beliefs.

Today’s secularists ironically regard themselves “free-thinkers.” However, the facts – their obvious intolerance for other ideas, failing school systems and falling SAT scores – speak loudly against their hubris.

Christians have no Right to Speak

My Response to a Respondent Critical of the Christian Message Regarding Homosexuality:

I am glad that we can agree that it is wrong to prevent others from seeking help for their unwanted behaviors or desires. However, I think that you have characterized Christians in a needlessly negative and pejorative way. Personally, I can’t blame you. Western secularism surrounds us with the message that Christians are “bigoted,” “homophobic” and just generally intolerant. (Perhaps instead, it is the prevailing secular culture which is intolerant of Christians!) It’s hard to escape these characterizations. Even many of those raised in the church are now turning away or at least attempting to radically change the church into a form that might be more acceptable to society.

I also feel that pressure. However, as a Christian, my first calling is faithfulness to God and His revelation, even if it means loosing friends and social approval. Primarily, this means that I feel the responsibility to make a defense for the now widely despised faith, and to challenge those ideas that are now competing for the hearts and minds of our youth.

Although you probably genuinely believe what you’ve written, please understand that I have to challenge your characterizations:

• “Yet the fact remains that Christians (or a certain species of Christian) seems overly interested in the sexuality and sex lives of others and often spread slander and malice – in addition to a good deal of self-righteousness – condemning homosexual people.”

I don’t know of any true Christians “condemning homosexual people.” We are all sinners whose only hope is in the mercy of God. Consequently, we realize that we are in no position to look down on others. Therefore, our mandate to love includes all people, despite their sexual orientation or behavior.

In fact, the Christian faith does more to dignify the marginalized than does any other religion, even secularism. We acknowledge that the gay person is beloved of God and created in His image. In our view, he is, before all else, a precious human being and not someone to be defined by his sexual behavior or SSA.

In contrast to the image that materialistic secular humanism has carefully promoted for itself, it lacks any basis for valuing others beyond the material. The material world has no other basis for evaluation but the superficial and material – a person’s physical appearance, productivity, viability, and contributions to society.

Also, in the physical world, there is only inequality. There are the stronger and the weaker, the smarter and the duller, the educated and the uneducated, the upstanding and the criminal. Consequently, the secular plea for equality and human rights is both insupportable and hypocritical. While they base their claims on human rights, they really have no basis to believe in them. In the secular world, everything is alienable and changeable – merely a matter of molecules-in-motion.

You claim that “Christians seems overly interested in the sexuality and sex lives of others.” This is a charge commonly made against Christians. Instead, of dealing with the issues – and these never seem to find their way into the secular media – secularists find it more convenient, however illegitimately, to attack the person rather than the ideas. (I think that this is a poignant reflection of where secular morality is taking us.)

On another level, shouldn’t we defend ourselves against such charges? When we are called “hate-mongers” and the Bible is called “hate-speech,” shouldn’t we reply? And if we fail to do so, wouldn’t this silence be interpreted as agreement? Wouldn’t our youth then conclude that we have no answers?

When we see Christians loosing their jobs and being expelled from universities because of their beliefs, shouldn’t we speak up on their behalf and also about the truths that govern our lives? However, when we try to do this, we are accused with being “preoccupied with sex!”

You claim that Christians have failed to speak out against the corporate thieves. I think that you are greatly mistaken about this. However, if these thieves or adulterers began to demand an “Adulterer Pride Month,” and required the schools to carry texts and teachings on the “Virtues of Adultery,” I think that Christian protest would be more apparent.

You conclude with these words:

• “I think it is time for Christians to leave the subject of homosexuality for the time being and put their own house in order, before thinking they have either the right or ability to direct the morality of others.”

I hope you are saying the same thing to the media, to the universities, the public schools and, of course, to our government officials – all of whom are speaking forcefully in favor of homosexuality. I would imagine you have no problem with their talking on this subject. Why then the disparity? Why can’t we also talk on this subject?

I think that this reflects the growing intolerance of society. Only certain people – those who agree with me – are allowed to voice their opinions.