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What To Expect at St. Olaf College

3/14/2015

2 Comments

 
Many parents believe that by sending their child to St. Olaf College (ELCA) they will be taught by Christian professors at a Christian school. Think again. John Barbour, Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College, on the St. Olaf website, says “Students, faculty and staff are free to practice any religion they want or no religion” and that St. Olaf has a “community-wide commitment to religious diversity and pluralism." (see here at the 7 minute mark).

Many parents also believe that they are sending their child to a good Christian, God-honoring school that believes Scripture. Decide for yourself when you read this from the St. Olaf College Religion Department -

“. . .I’ve come to believe that religious truth is more likely to be found in fiction than anywhere else, and that’s especially true for me when it comes to encountering the Bible. (A quick example: Moses’ encounter with the burning bush is the best metaphor I have for how I understand my own sense of wonder in the universe.  Do I believe it historically happened? No. In my own passion for that text, do I believe it says something real of how I experience and creatively engage truth? Absolutely.)” (read here)

So the Bible is just a bunch of made up stories? Remember, this comes from the St. Olaf Religion Department.

And what else do the students learn at St. Olaf? Let's go back to St. Olaf's own website to find out -

“I think my faith and my academic study occur together most strongly as acts of loving interrogation.  Theology offered me the language to ask questions I had always wanted to ask but didn’t know how about meaning and injustice and the fragility and resilience of human relationships.  I believe my job as a person of faith is to be a theologian of the cross, as Luther said: to not look away from suffering in the world–especially suffering caused by stories told and symbols thrown by Christians, by Christian theologies, by harmful Christian imaginations–and to interrogate and to seek the creative transformation of those worldviews in love.  Ask yourself: Does this theology commit harm against people of other religions? Does it perpetuate white privilege and racism?  Does it commit intellectual or material violence towards queer, gay, lesbian, and trans folks? Does its portrayal of a male God scapegoat women? Does it sanction violence and hatred in any form?  These are questions I have to and get to ask out of love.  From the my academic study, I get to honor the very Christian calling that I demand my own traditions be better in their own calling, in what they says they are.

Finally, I utterly believe that my teaching and my writing are fundamental, fragile acts of hope.  I write on environmental ethics, on climate change, on theology. And there are days when the climate science and the history of Christian violence towards the earth and loss of fellow creatures breaks my heart, and the imagination can quickly spiral into an overwhelming despair.  (The Western Black Rhino was officially declared extinct recently.  I, and you, will never get to see one).  And that’s when my theological work, my academic work, becomes one of the deepest boons to my own sense of faith, as mysterious as I find it to myself. Because writing, the very act, the very practice of writing a sentence that reimagines what faith means on a warming planet, is an expression that that sentence, that idea, that story told in that way, might matter for the very life and imagination of myself or someone else.  Theology, for me, gives me permission to fall neither into utter despair nor utter denial of very real violence. I get to take things seriously and imagine something else is possible.  Without a vision, the people [and the planet, I would add] perish, Proverbs says. Hope is an incredibly ordinary thing. . . .”
(read here)

Liberal social justice. I can't believe there are very many parents and donors out there that want students to walk away from college with this view of Scripture and Christianity.

2 Comments
Didaskalos link
3/14/2015 12:25:55 am



". . . I’ve come to believe that religious truth is more likely to be found in fiction than anywhere else, and that’s especially true for me when it comes to encountering the Bible. (A quick example: Moses’ encounter with the burning bush is the best metaphor I have for how I understand my own sense of wonder in the universe. Do I believe it historically happened? No. . .” [http://wp.stolaf.edu/religion/about-the-study-of-religion-at-st-olaf/are-we-trying-to-destroy-your-faith/ — Jacob J. Erickson, "St. Olaf alum, religion major, and visiting instructor”]

Here’s what would obviously be required to make this St. Olaf religion-major alumnus — and St. Olaf's religion department professors, on whose page Erickson's essay was proudly posted — believe the historicity of the Bible's burning-bush account:

-- And the LORD spoke to Moses from the burning bush saying, "Moses, go and tell Pharaoh: ’The LORD is angry with you, Pharaoh. In requiring the Hebrew children to glean straw to make bricks, you are destroying the habitat of the Egyptian field mouse. If you do not cease this violence against the earth's creatures, I will lead the Hebrews out of Egypt and cripple your brick-making industry.’ “

If Erickson and St. Olaf religion professors had lived in Jesus’ days of earthly ministry, they’d no doubt have deprecated His (pre-incarnate first-hand) witness that God actually did speak to Moses from the burning bush: "And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?” [Mark 12:26]

There's good news about Jacob Erickson’s paean to the ELCA's warmed-over heresies: Any parents who are thinking of sending a Bible-believing Christian kid to “college of the church" St. Olaf can, simply by visiting the religion department’s web page and reading only Erickson's department-endorsed essay, receive ample warning that St. Olaf -- like its ELCA parent -- is a devoted adherent of the Church of Whatever the World Currently Approves, We Proudly Embrace.

And religion professor Barbour takes pains to note in his chapel talk that St. Olaf (like the ELCA and the world) currently approves and zealously embraces “diversity": “There is [at St. Olaf] no orthodoxy that you have to believe. . . . St. Olaf is one of relatively few colleges that combine academic excellence, a historic religious identity, and a community-wide commitment to religious diversity and pluralism.”

ELCAspeak translated: “ 'Historic religious identity' is an empty phrase we use to try to keep our donors happy. Our St. Olaf policy is that we’re definitely not going to sin against ‘diversity’ by exhorting you to become a Bible-believing Christian while you’re here. We’re happy with whatever religious or anti-religious beliefs float your theological boat. Rest assured there’ll be no Matthew 28:18-20 Great Commission as an official stance of St. Olaf College. We’re a college of the ELCA, after all, not of the Lord of the Church, Who gave that commission to every one of His disciples.”

Reply
W. James Young
3/16/2015 10:58:26 am

I was heavily recruited by ELCA colleges as a member of an ELCA congregation and an academic "star."

Thank you for reconfirming my decision to go elsewhere.

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    Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.  
    ​1 Thessalonians 5:21

    Dan Skogen

    Former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word.


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