ALR Plenary Script, “How Do the People of God Live in Exile? Lessons from the Life of Daniel”

CCCU Convention Plenary Address

8 a.m., February 10, 2016, San Diego California

“Lessons from the Life of Daniel”

For the past 35 years, I have been providing crossover communications and consultation at the intersection of faith and culture, representing individuals and ministries and telling their stories to and through the media in the context of traditional news values.

Much of my time has been holding up the arms of men (and women) of “God and good will,” helping to increase their influence and the impact of their organizations for the Kingdom. For 33 years, I was privileged to serve as spokesperson for Dr. Billy Graham.

Six weeks ago, my life changed drastically, when Dr. Ben Carson asked me to serve as Communications Director for his Presidential campaign.

It wasn’t something I sought, but as I prayed about whether or not to accept, it seemed like an “Esther moment,” and I seconded myself from the Agency I founded 22 years ago and jumped into the deep end of the pool.

I know that there are people of all ideological persuasions in this room this morning, and it is not my intent to be political. Rather, I want to reiterate that as vital and exciting as it is to be involved in the process with a citizen candidate, when I took on that responsibility, I told him that the one commitment I had to keep was to be in San Diego with you this morning; I am honored by the invitation and opportunity.

Christian Higher Education

Over the past several years, our Dallas-based Agency has had opportunity to work with a number of CCCU member institutions in crisis communications and reputation management, about which my colleague Kerri Ridenour and I will be speaking in the next hour at a session with CCCU Communicators.

I would love to walk through many of the details of these situations, some with schools represented in this room, others not, but I can’t due to their confidential nature. However this morning I want to focus on the foundations to which you can stay tethered.

The crisis is all around us and no one is immune.

1. Political Threats

a. Potential backlash in the wake of the recent Supreme Court Obergefell decision

b. Issues around non-compliance with emerging laws that contradict Christianity

2. Economic and Financial Threats

3. LGBTQ Issues

4. External Threats shootings, activism,

5. Internal Threats student unrest and demands

6. Systematic Indoctrination through the education system

a. “How do you conquer a nation without firing a shot?” Systematic infiltration of secular humanist worldview into the education system

7. Exposures- misreporting, social media, perceptions straying from truth supplied by those with an agenda

However, despite all we read in the press, I feel good about prospects for communications on behalf of Christian colleges and universities. It has been my experience that there is not a vast liberal conspiracy against Christian organizations, but as we will discuss, it comes down to colliding worldviews.

In recent years, a changing tide has swept over our nation, significantly affecting Christian organizations and institutions, including those in higher education. In the current age of political correctness fueled by social media, it has become increasingly difficult for organizations and institutions of higher learning to work within the framework of the Christian faith without added scrutiny and risk.

Christian institutions are increasingly faced with the choice of compromising sincerely held religious beliefs or taking a goal-line stand against the prevailing winds of culture. Those that do face the consequences of being labeled as hostile, categorized as intolerant or become mistrusted, mistreated and marginalized.

I’m confident you already know how important your institutions are in the work of the kingdom of God, and I can’t even begin to describe the extent of your impact in society in educating the next generation.

That was brought home to me last Wednesday evening, in a conversation with Os Guinness in Washington prior to The National Prayer Breakfast in Washington the following morning. He asked me if I recalled what Moses said to the Israelites on the night they before they entered the Promised Land after years of captivity and wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.

One would think the great leader would have talked about Freedom and opportunity. Instead, he spoke about children, education and the future.

After leading the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses teaches them the Shema prayer, which they are to recite every day:

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house..”

God inspired Moses to direct the nation of Israel in this way, because he knew that intentionally educating future generations was the key to standing on their identity in the midst of the pagan cultures by which they would be influenced. The Lord impressed upon the nation of Israel the importance of knowing Whose they are, knowing who they are and not assimilating to or segregating from the culture.

Educating the Next Generation

American culture for much of the 20th century has been deeply anxious to be “relevant” to the “next generation,” with an assumption that the cultural milieu is so profoundly foreign to the preceding generation that only wholly new measures, adapted to the new generation’s expectations and preferences, can be successful in reaching it.

As educators, we need to to turn away from obsession with “relevance” and toward “faithfulness” as our goal in educating the young.

This means that effective formation of the next generation will always be tied to faithful communication of our story, not to appealing to the interests and preferences of the next generation.

Christian educators are under constant pressure to secularize and conform the distinctive paradigm of Christian education to cultural expectations. But the call of the Christian educator is to make disciples in this particular cultural moment, and the call can only be fulfilled by someone willing to resist the pressure of consumerism and its attendant faddishness.

Cultural Trends

As much as anyone involved in Christ-centered or Christian higher education would sometimes like to retreat from the culture, it is critical to understand the trends that have taken place and the trajectory on which we are headed in order to faithfully and responsibly get your story out in a way that will be heard and understood.

As leaders in enrollment management, marketing, and fundraising, you are the “face” of your institution, and you have the privilege and responsibility to steward your story well.

Contributions of the CCCU and Member

Institutions to “Principled Pluralism”

Our nation’s Constitution has protected the rights of Christian colleges and universities to set and enforce policies based on deeply held religious beliefs. Lately, that right has been severely called into question. A spirit of pluralism – how individuals and institutions representing various faiths and ideologies (or none) can live together with our deepest differences in a civil public square – offers the CCCU the best opportunity to pro-actively position itself as communities that operate in word and deed at the intersection of grace and truth.

The CCCU does not represent a monolithic constituency, and one can find a spectrum of thought among its member colleges and universities on virtually every social issue. Further, because of its profile and leadership of Christian colleges and universities, the Council’s commitment to a biblical worldview that others with an agenda have portrayed as archaic or counter-cultural makes it, and member institutions, convenient targets for politically correct activists and progressive advocates.

One of the nation’s most influential educators, David Coleman, president of the College Board and an unlikely advocate for Christian higher education, finds contributions, where others only find controversy.

In pointing out the virtues of institutional diversity in higher education, Coleman emphasized it is “not merely the right (of Christian colleges and universities) to exist,” but their “animated values that are precious to higher education, and inescapably so.

These competitive advantages of religious education include “productive solitude,” “reverent reading” of shared texts and the determination to be “a safe haven for body and spirit,” that provides a firewall against modern student life on secular campuses that often involves abuse of alcohol and premature, reckless sexual encounters.

A Watershed Moment

This is a critical time for Christian higher education represented by CCCU member institutions.

Christianity is no longer the “home team,” as culture no longer shares values and principles of the historic Christian faith on which this nation was founded that remain vital to Evangelicals.

According to consultant Eric Locksmore, today “we are actually in a pre-Christian, rather than a Post-Christian America. But that small change changes everything…we begin to see everything as an opportunity, not as opposition. We run to others not from others. We start creating and stop criticizing.”

In that context, Christian institutions have an opportunity to function more like the First Century Church that introduced Christianity to the world, finding common ground with the generation looking to deal with and restore things that are broken.

Much has changed in recent decades regarding the nature of media, both traditional and new. Many outlets no longer report the news, but rather operate out of narrative, selectively incorporating only stories and angles that support their thesis. Media metrics are all about sensational headlines and clever graphics to capture attention and generate clicks, hits and shares.

As the foundational unifying concept of Scripture has morphed from belief in its authority to a more subjective focus on interpretation, it has created chaos about where lines are drawn and confusion around the common lexicon and meaning of terms.

Based on my work across the country over the last several decades, and through observations and research about the shifting cultural landscape, over the next few minutes, I want to introduce the three keys to standing on your integrity – as individuals and institutions -- in a way that communicates truthfully and clearly who you really are in spite of the ways that the culture has convulsed and attempts to redefine you.

Key No. 1: Know Who You Are

Since the 1960s, American culture has been convulsed by a social and sexual revolution that has transformed our political, legal, educational and media landscape. Public perception of Christianity and its institutions has transformed drastically during this same compressed time period.

Post World War II and into the 1950s, Evangelist Billy Graham burst onto the scene, and generated unity, visibility and credibility to the Evangelical Church.

At the same time, Parachurch organizations, such as National Association of Evangelicals, Campus Crusade, World Vision and Youth for Christ became respected partners as ambassadors of the Gospel message and providing a cup of water in Jesus name. And, while certainly not exercising cultural dominance, mainline and Roman Catholic churches exercised weighty public and political influence.

Mr. Graham was able to preach the Gospel in living rooms across America. Mr. Graham launched “Christianity Today,” and he and other Protestant theologians, like Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, were regularly consulted by journalists and politicians, gracing the covers of prominent mainstream publications, such as TIME and LIFE magazines.

Now, within the span of fifty years, public appreciation for and approval of Christianity has plummeted to the degree that Christian colleges face the prospect of being denied accreditation, college ministries lose registered student organization status on secular campuses and those of us who seek to proclaim the Good News of the Gospel find that we are met with what nineteenth century German sociologist Max Weber famously described as the “disenchantment of the world:” an increasing bitterness, cynicism and resentment to anything having to do with Jesus or absolute Truth.

I thank the Lord for His living Word that transcends time and speaks directly to our hearts and our specific situation. The book of Daniel is a treasure chest of wisdom and life for us at this point in time, because it answers the question: “How are the people of God to live while they are in exile?” I want to spend our time this morning looking into the first and second chapters of Daniel, because, indeed, there are many parallels between his predicament and that of the Christian Academy in the 21st Century.

Daniel illustration #1

Most all of us are familiar with the story of Daniel, and know that he had every reason to be bitter and hateful towards God. You may recall that before the siege of Israel, he was a member of the royal family, a young man of incredible knowledge and skill, strikingly handsome, and a quick study.

Daniel was on the fast track to success when his world was turned upside down. After God’s people were taken captive by the Babylonians, he was to be instructed in the occult, given unclean food and was most likely castrated for life in the king’s court. At the end of his three years of torture, if it went badly Daniel would be killed; and if it went well, he would “get” to serve before Nebuchadnezzar, the evil ruler of the most evil civilization of all time. The Babylonians were set on assimilating Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah to their culture. One of the most telling ways that they tried to do so was by giving them new names.

In Biblical times, much more so than today, the meaning of a name was of incredible significance:

· Daniel means "GOD is my judge.”

· Hananiah means "Beloved of the Lord."

· Mishael means "Who is as GOD,"

· and Azariah means "The Lord is my help."

The Babylonians knew that one’s name was at the core of their identity, so they sought to sabotage their perception of who they were by giving them names that heralded the evil values of the Babylonians.

· To Daniel, they gave the name Belteshazzar which means "Bel's Prince." Bel was the name of the Babylonian god whom Nebuchadnezzar worshipped.

· To Hananiah they gave the name of Shadrach. This name means, "illumined by the Sungod."

· Mishael was called Meshach. In all probability this was the name of a goddess like Venus. So we see that his Hebrew name means "Who is as GOD," Where the new name they gave to him mean "Who is like Venus."

· Azariah's name was changed to Abednego, which meant "The servant of Nego," who was another false god.

Most of us know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and some are familiar with Daniel’s new name: Belteshazzar. We know Daniel by his given name, by his Hebrew name, because he was writing this book, and he refused to be shaken from his true identity, and refused to call himself by anything other than his real name, even though everyone around him was seeking to redefine him.

For individuals and institutions involved in Christian higher education, there are cultural forces all around that have either consciously or unconsciously overlooked your true identity, your “Hebrew name,” and have sought to define you on the terms of the world. As the face of your institution, metaphorically it is your responsibility to know yourself by your “Hebrew name,” and to seek to communicate your true identity to those who would like to define you.

Not only does this apply in crisis situations, where the media gets wind of a story and misconstrues and blows it up into something completely different than it truly is, but it also applies to efforts at marketing, recruiting students and securing resources and opportunities for your institution in the challenging times that we now live.

I want to put before you three key cultural assumptions that have set the stage for the rise of the “secular revolution” which has taken place at a bewildering pace since the 1960s. In your work, it is crucial to consider these three major beliefs that have been ingrained in the popular mindset, and that don’t line up with Christian worldview, though there are still, as I will share with you, ways that we can transcend these pitfalls, communicate your story and speak truth into this postmodern moment.

Moral Relativism

The first major cultural assumption, which has especially taken hold of American youth today, is “moral relativism,” or as it is often disguised, “tolerance,” which Josh McDowell describes as the penultimate value of our culture – beyond merely the right of another to an opinion, but thre responsibility of everyone to champion others’ ideas, even when counter to their own.

According to Charles Taylor, an eminent Canadian philosopher and social theorist, moral relativism is the most consequential factor in the secularization that has taken place in society. He states that most people living in western, cosmopolitan society have a general awareness that all truth claims, especially those concerning questions of “ultimate concern,” are contestable and therefore vulnerable.

We are aware of the hyper-pluralism and heterogeneity of our society and aware that this pluralism places enormous pressure upon belief systems. In Taylor’s phrase, great “cross-pressures” are generated by our participation in multiple systems of belief and ideology, and by our awareness of the contestability of our beliefs, which buffet the framework of belief in a secular age. Taylor argues that beliefs are “fragilized” or destabilized in such a context, such that they lose their capacities to form people deeply. Beliefs about ultimate questions are held loosely and cautiously, almost with a sense of embarrassment or apology.

And yet, one of the distinctives of CCCU schools is a community lifestyle covenant, called by different names, around a shared framework of faith that forms the institution’s mission and vision, based on sincerely held religious beliefs.

Indeed, as many of you are aware, the legal cover can be found in framing everything in terms of mission, based on those sincerely held beliefs.

In a recent study, sociologist Christian Smith and his researchers have concluded that moral individualism is the reigning moral framework for Millennials, and that this reality does not so much speak to the corruption of Millennials as to the generations that raised them:

“We think the widespread moral individualism and solid minority presence of moral relativism among emerging adults today tell us that the adult world that has socialized these youth for 18 to 23 years has done an awful job when it comes to moral education and formation,” Smith wrote. “Moral individualism and relativism are simply intellectually impossible and socially unsustainable positions….Yet the majority of American youth have entered emerging adulthood committed to moral individualism. And a substantial minority of them have done the same with moral relativism. On these two elementary points, these emerging adults are simply lost. They are morally at sea in boats that leak water badly.”

Of course, the claim “there is no absolute truth” self-destructs, because the claim itself is an absolute truth claim. It is terrifying the degree to which these doctrines can take over entire generations, even when they have nothing behind them. Indeed, not only does the theory of moral relativism defeat itself, but moral relativists often defeat themselves in action, becoming vocal activists when they feel they have been lied to or stolen from.

Expressive Individualism

A second assumption necessary to produce our present cultural climate is what author and sociologist Robert Bellah has called “expressive individualism,” or as it is often disguised, “freedom.” Individualism is basic to modernity, and it is therefore basic to American society. The meaning of individualism, however, has changed dramatically over time.

Basic to all understandings of individualism is the prizing of freedom, understood as “negative liberty” – the absence of constraints placed upon the self-actualization of the person.

However, the various permutations of individualism are less clear in the ends to which that freedom should be used. In the early inception of the American republic, the vision cast of the individual was a heroic one: the individual was to be an “independent citizen,” possessed of the dignity deriving from self-reliance, self-cultivation, civic responsibility and industry. This civic orientation gave a definite shape to the end for which freedom was to be used by the individual.

This strand of individualism stands alongside another understanding in American history, which is associated with the freedom of the self-creation of the Romantic artist. Here freedom is conceived of as the absence of all constraint, not just of social convention, but also of nature itself, on the free self-expression of the individual will. Bellah terms this strand of individualism in American culture “expressive individualism.”

It is the individualism associated with Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century and youth culture from the 1950s onward. David Bentley Hart describes the vision of freedom associated with expressive individualism particularly well:

“Freedom for us today is something transcendent even of reason, and we no longer really feel that we must justify our liberties by recourse to some prior standard of responsible rationality,” Bentley Said. “Freedom – conceived of as the perfect, unconstrained spontaneity of the individual will – is its own justification, its own highest standard, its own unquestionable truth…..we no longer seek so much to liberate human nature from the bondage of social convention as to liberate the individual from all conventions, especially those regarding what is natural.”

In other words, expressive individualism is associated with a vision of the person as a sovereign, autonomous, self-directing individual, unconstrained by the past, by traditions, by customs, by institutions – even by its own past decisions. The allusion to Walt Whitman indicates that expressive individualism is not a 20th Century creation, but a movement that hearkens back to nineteenth century Romanticism.

Consumerism and Therapeutic Orientation

Closely related to expressive individualism, indeed emerging as a consequence of it, the third assumption that produced our current cultural climate is the orientation toward consumerism and the therapeutic self in American society.

Human beings have always consumed, but only in the past half century have we become “consumers.”

Consumerism is not simply “materialism” or acquisitiveness, though that is one consequence of the concept. What is central to consumerism is the transfer of a logic appropriate for the framework of market transactions to all areas of life. In other words, it is approaching all relationships, institutions, and beliefs through the paradigm of transaction.

All of reality for the consumer becomes disposable, interchangeable and replaceable. We are surrounded by what Alan Jacobs calls a “trade-in society,” where the “nuclear option” is increasingly the first option adopted by individuals in their relationships and institutional lives.[1]

The criteria by which individuals decide if they will remain in a marriage or friendship, or if they will continue to participate in an institution, is whether it maximizes their psychological well-being. This egoistic, self-actualizing perspective has been called by many scholars the “therapeutic” orientation of the self in American society.

The twin realities of consumerism and the therapeutic self offer enormous challenges for the formation of the thick communities and institutions. As Robert Bellah noticed as early as 1985, the interface between “therapeutically self-actualized persons is…incompatible with self-sacrifice,” and “the therapeutic attitude denies all forms of obligation and commitment in relationships.”[2]

Thus, consumerism and the therapeutic self tend to work as universal acids on modern communities. For persons operating with these assumptions about the self - and these assumptions are ubiquitous in the “strong” or deeply formative institutions of American culture, such as the entertainment industry, journalism, government, and education[3]- it is immoral and irrational to imagine that a community could demand anything of the person.

Thus, when Christian colleges demand that faculty and administrators sign a doctrinal statement, not only the persons constrained to do so, but also commentators in the media, cannot help but see this as intolerable assault upon the autonomy of the individual.

These underlying worldviews of moral relativism, expressive individualism, and the twin pillars of consumerism and therapeutic orientation impact many of the groups that we desire to reach: prospective students, media, general public. When speaking directly into a situation where these values are at play, or in addressing large groups of public, the following is crucial to keep in mind:

Never compromise your identity or the truth. Never settle for being called by your Babylonian name.

The Christian story goes something like this:

I am guided by a transcendent being- my life is not my own. I don’t live for just here and now. I’m free within the confines of the laws given to me through Scripture.

The mainstream culture’s story is: Everything I see, touch, and feel is all there is. Science and technology have the answers to life’s questions. I am the ultimate judge of my moral laws. Your Bible is meaningless and citing verses doesn’t prove anything.

Daniel was faced with much more persecution than we have today, yet he didn’t compromise his beliefs. It would be all too tempting for us, if faced with Daniel’s situation, to dig in our heels and just “try to get by.” However, Daniel did not merely “survive,” he thrived.

He lived a full life, growing in wisdom and love of God and others, he enjoyed the favor of rulers and rose in status and responsibility in the kingdom, and he was even planned to be set over the whole kingdom.

How was it possible for Daniel to thrive in this environment? How will it be possible for your institution to thrive in this postmodern moment?

Christians, who believe in the chesed or the undying covenant love of God, fully expressed in the suffering love of Jesus Christ (Phil. 2:), and who are called to imitate this suffering love in our own relationships, must examine the ways that we are tempted towards moral relativism, expressive individualism, and consumerism and ask for grace to be set free from them, and to live in the light together.

Our way forward must be not only to resolutely insist upon the communal freedom to govern and regulate our common lives together, but to embody the mutuality and heightened reliance upon one another that such a common faith and practice enables. Our practice as a church is the “hermeneutic” of our profession: only as outsiders see that our faith enables a life beautifully lived will it become plausible and attractive to them.

This brings me to the next key to standing on your integrity in a way that communicates truthfully and clearly who you really are in spite of the ways that the culture has convulsed.

Key No. 2: Know Whose you are.

Daniel had a deep love of God, and a deep heart knowledge that He was working in his situation and that He is good. In chapter 1, we see God directly intervene three times, and each time his intervention is linked to the same verb, which is “to give,” and each time his intervention is absolutely critical to the outcome.

In verse 9, we see that in a much-needed time, God “gave” Daniel favor in the eyes of the chief of the king’s court. In verse 17, God “gave” learning and skill in all literature and wisdom. But we also see that in Chapter 2, God “gave” Israel into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.

It is tempting when studying the story of Daniel to think that the ultimate solution to our solution is to try to grow in wisdom and tact, and miss the fact that this is far from what even Daniel did. He never lost sight of to Whom he belonged, and we must not forget either.

This applies very much to those who have faced a crisis, or may face one in the future (which is all of us, realistically speaking.) It is commonly believed that a “crisis” is a bad thing; that it is a problem to be stamped out as quickly as possible. However, contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t have to be the case. A crisis is merely characterized by a degree of risk and uncertainty. With a proper approach, there can be a positive side to a crisis. In fact, the Chinese symbol for crisis, “Wei-ji” is a combination of two words meaning “danger” and “opportunity.”

Daniel faced a crisis in Daniel 2, and the degree to which he moved forward with tact and wisdom and supernatural calm is inspiring. He approached the captain of the king’s guard, the very man who had set out to kill him, and “replied with prudence and discretion,” all the while trusting in the goodness and sovereignty of God. It was Daniel who penned the statement that God “gave” Israel into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand, and it was Daniel who always moved forward in trust and rested in God’s plan.

Imagine what would have happened if Daniel had been faced with the crisis and had resisted God’s plan by running away or avoiding action. All of his friends would have been killed, and he would be hunted down.

When we’re faced with a crisis, or when we’re faced with any communications challenge, it is essential to remember Whose we are, and rest in His plan, not resist. God has not forgotten us, and He has not given up on his unstoppable mission to redeem the world and make disciples, and He wants to use you to make this come to pass in your region that you have been strategically placed.

I would be remiss to speak to a group of higher education professionals about how to overcome the challenges and opportunities of being the “face” of your institution without highly emphasizing the well of joy, in addition to the life-or-death importance, of moving forward in everything you do from a genuine relationship with Christ and a surrendered heart to His plan.

Key No. 3: Live incarnationally- emulate, don’t assimilate or segregate.

As we have seen, moral relativism, expressive individualism, and the dual aspects of consumerism and therapeutic orientation have rocked our society. When we combine these three elements in the ways they apply to institutions of higher learning, we arrive at perhaps the primary grievance against Christian Colleges and Universities today: “Christian colleges undermine academic freedom.”

That there is a complex connection between Christian belief, the sacredness of conscience, and the rise of academic freedom in universities has been documented by a number of intellectual historians. The connection between the diffusion of Christian belief and concern with the rights of the victim and beleaguered minority populations is also well-documented.

As both of these phenomena have become untethered from any close connection to the Christian narrative, however, they have become disordered and totalizing notions, often pitted against one another in contemporary society. In the 19thcentury, as historically Protestant colleges were secularizing, academic freedom was weaponized by faculty as a powerful means to create secularized, autonomous academic disciplines.[4]

In the context of the secular academy, “victim status” has likewise been weaponized as a means of according disproportionate status and attention to minority voices and as a means to marginalize “privileged” discourse.[5]Indeed, many academics committed to victim discourse insist upon “academic justice” rather than “academic freedom.”

On campus after campus, campus “safe spaces” were initially constructed as places of retreat for minority communities on campuses to dialogue with likeminded persons and to be free from criticism and adverse messaging.

But as recent examples from Yale and Mizzou have demonstrated, the idea of “safe spaces” can be aggressively mobilized to colonize public spaces on college campuses and intimidate others from exercising constitutional liberties.

As Ken White has noted, “some use the concept of ‘safe spaces’ as a sword, wielded to annex public spaces and demand that people within those spaces conform to their private norms.”[6]

Likewise, “trigger warnings” on literature mentioning subjects like discrimination or sexual violence were initially innocently appended to materials in order to protect victims who had experienced such treatment.

What has become clear, however, is that trigger warnings are now routinely used by students to preserve themselves from exposure to difficult or challenging themes. There are a number of documented examples of professors censoring the content of their courses for fear of reprisal over such themes.[7]

The phenomenon of “micro-aggressions” is related to the construction of victim status for minority populations. Originally conceived as a theoretical construct to name violence that minority populations have experienced that is verbal or categorical rather than physical in nature, the term has also been mobilized as a tool to silence or threaten faculty in academic institutions.[8]

The Black Students of Emory, for instance, submitted a list of demands to the institution insisting upon the addition of the following question to student reviews: “Has this professor made any micro-aggressions towards you on account of your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, and/or other identity?”[9]

In yet another instance, the student government at Wesleyan University voted to cut funding for the Wesleyan Argus student newspaper on the grounds that one issue included an op-ed – opinion writing, mind you – from a self-described “moderate conservative” who took issue with some tactics and messaging of the Black Lives Matter movement. Not only that, but students stole and destroyed copies of the paper to stamp out the content.

The contest between the sovereignty of individual conscience, enshrined in the doctrine of academic freedom and the sovereignty of victim status, accorded weight in the contemporary doctrine of academic justice, demonstrates there are limitations inherent in the anthropological assumptions of secular modernity as enshrined in academic institutions.

Indeed, the constant policing of language and modes of inquiry in the secular academy are evidence that there is a de facto, inarticulate “creed” at the root of the secular university. It has become nearly axiomatic among secular partisans that Christian universities do not deserve accreditation because they place constraints upon intellectual inquiry and free expression of the individual.

Is it the case, however, that Christian academic institutions possess less academic freedom than secular ones?

It should be admitted at the outset that very little if any social scientific research has been done on this question. It is straightforwardly assumed that the presence of a creedal and/or behavioral statement is evidence of the absence of academic freedom. Furthermore, one can point to anecdotal instances in which individuals have had expression curtailed by an institution because it clashed with the institution’s belief statement.

The most recent example of this occurred, of course, at Wheaton College, where Dr. Hawkins, who taught in the political science department, donned Hijab for Advent and wrote on Facebook that “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book…And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”[10]

Moreover, it is the case that a number of Christian professors teaching at both secular research universities and Christian universities alike have the perception either that there is greater academic freedom (after tenure, at least) at secular universities. That is to say, It is straightforwardly assumed that the presence of a creedal and/or behavioral statement is evidence of the absence of academic freedom.”

Others have the impression that there is academic freedom at Christian colleges, but that it is academic freedom within “particular limits,” and that if you “dance at the borders” of the college’s belief statement, you are likely to be censured in some way.[11]

By contrast, a number of prominent Christian academics have a profound sense of academic freedom teaching in Christian colleges, especially in an era characterized by what Damon Linker calls “crusading moral indignation” and “hypersensitive self-protectiveness.”

Linker states that the toxic combination of these two trends “has the potential to stamp out genuine liberalism at some schools, transforming them into institutions devoted to insulating students from provocation and free thinking rather than to exposing them to it.”

Alan Jacobs, literature professor at Baylor University, is a professor who believes Christian colleges allow space for profound academic freedom. Jacobs says that what Christian colleges offer that is rare and becoming rarer at secular schools is trust – a trust rooted in shared commitments and orientation to a shared end greater than securing a credential. Jacobs writes that if you trust your teacher and your fellow students, then you can risk intellectual encounters that might be more daunting if you were wholly on your own. That trust, when it exists, is grounded in the awareness that your teacher desires your flourishing, and that that teacher and your fellow students share at least some general ideas about what that flourishing consists in.

Damon Linker, in the same piece decrying the illiberality of secular campuses, describes his own experience teaching as a visiting professor at Brigham Young University. Although in some ways it was a “deeply illiberal place” and severely curtailed his ability to engage in self-expression – he had to shave his beard, refrain from alcohol and caffeine use, and so on – he notes that,

“I was perfectly free to teach whatever I wanted in the classroom. And I did. I taught large introductory lecture courses in ancient, medieval, and modern political thoughts, including some of the most radical writings of Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx…

“We were free to discuss anything in class including Nietzsche’s suggestion that “God is dead.” The only stipulation was that I not personally endorse these views – which was fine with me, since such an endorsement would have been a form of attempted indoctrination and therefore inimical to the liberal education I hoped to impart to my students.”

Linker, like Jacobs, concludes that religious institutions can provide greater freedom to teach a wider range of material, and therefore that in one sense they possess greater academic freedom than do secular institutions of higher learning.

This greater freedom emerges from, as we have said, the trust that is fostered by a social environment in which there is a commitment to shared beliefs and shared practices.

Voices of activists who deal out accusations to Christian colleges demand that they remove that which “hinders academic freedom and freedom of speech.” However, the great paradox in this situation is that if Christian colleges removed that which made them who they are, and if they compromised on their firm Biblical foundation, they would be moving away from, not towards, the true values that activists are so vigorously seeking.

I recently read a fascinating article in the Dallas Morning News that gets right to the heart of the ways that this double standard regarding academic freedom and free speech at institutions of higher education is playing out in our world today. It states,

“College students standing together in opposition to racism, sexism or other societal ills is often positive. Their combined voices have pushed the academy — and, by extension, society — forward. No American versed in our constitutional protections would deny them their right to assembly or expression.

The problem is when the pendulum swings wildly off kilter, and these same students insist not only that we hear their voices — but that their voices are the only ones worth hearing.”

This unstructured movement has evolved from the political correctness of the 1980s and 1990s. What we’ve seen at such institutions as Yale, Missouri and Wesleyan, among others, isn’t a struggle to speak but a fight to suppress.

According to Greg Lukianoff, author of “Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of the American Debate” and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, "It's been frustrating, watching the sort of speech [suppression] shift over from administrators to students. Students should be aware that these tools are not always going to be on their side," he adds, referring to students seeking to quell hurtful speech and expression.

As a recent article in the Atlantic aptly stated, “Muzzles have replaced megaphones on campuses in many cases.”

In fact, as comedian Jerry Seinfeld and others would attest, it is not only political correctness that is keeping them from performing on college campuses, but the penultimate societal value that, “If you say or do anything to offend me, even unintentionally, you’re wrong.”

Again, we can turn to Daniel for inspiration. He was certainly very involved in working to better Babylonian society, but astoundingly, he and his three close friends never assimilated or segregated, though his true identity was suppressed at every turn. It would have been all too easy for him to adopt the values of those around him, especially after 70 years in the country, and it would have been all too easy for him to run away and remove himself from the situation. When we lean towards either of these options, we neutralize our impact. As we learn from Daniel, we need not assimilate or segregate, but rather emulate the very character of God, as is commanded in Ephesians 5:1-2. We must practice what James Davison Hunter calls “Faithful presence,” humbly and winsomely serving, bearing witness to Christ and to the power of a life lived in fidelity to the Christian faith.

Though Daniel’s beliefs were in direct opposition to almost every belief of the culture in which he was surrounded, he endured in his leadership roles across the span of all six of the great kings of Babylon, which was completely unheard of. Typically, when a new regime took power they would assassinate the whole court of the previous ruler. Daniel, however, was so valuable that he endured.

4. Conclusion/Legacy

Daniel’s legacy endured far beyond his life on earth. 500 years later, our savior was born in a tiny stable and was laid in a manger. The sky exploded with angels, shepherds came to worship him, and Magi from the East came to honor him… It has been theorized that the kings in the East knew about the coming of the Messiah from Daniel’s witness.

You, too, have been specifically created by God and chosen by God to join in on His mission to redeem the world that He loves so much. Not that we come up with our own mission and ask God to bless and help us, but that we give our lives over to loving and serving Him, and presenting our lives as living sacrifices- our true and acceptable worship.

You have been called to be ambassadors of hope, and to bring a clear and courageous message to the body of Christ that our culture needs Christian colleges and universities to stem the tide and bring a sound biblical worldview to a culture in desperate need.

All of us were fundamentally created to be communicators- to communicate with God in prayer and in deep relationship, to push the limits of our creativity to bring him praise, and to communicate with each other in perfect harmony and peace. My prayer – and this influences greatly your career and your endeavors at your colleges as well – is that the Lord might open your eyes to the greatness of His love for you, and that you might have the strength to answer the call of his still, small voice beckoning you into marvelous light and into a deeper and deeper relationship with Him. That you might be, as the vine is to the branch, tethered to Christ, and that His bountiful riches of peace, love, wisdom, joy, patience might flow through your lives to everything that you touch, and that through you, your campuses might be renewed and transformed by the power of Christ in you.

May his love, grace and truth be infused throughout your campus. May His kingdom come.

[1]Alan Jacobs, “The Trade-in Society,” The American Conservative (blog), January 25, 2016. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/jacobs/the-trade-in-society/. [2]Bellah et al, Habits of the Heart, 100, 101. [3]On strong and weak institutions in culture, see James Davison Hunter, “The Backdrop of Reality,” Interview with James K.A. Smith, Comment Magazine, Fall 2013, 36-41. [4]See Christian Smith, “Secularizing American Higher Education: The Case of Early American Sociology,” in The Secular Revolution, 97-159. [5]See, e.g. Rod Dreher, “White Privilege in Our Time,” The American Conservative (blog), November 18, 2015. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/white-privilege-in-our-time/. [6]Quoted in Connor Friedersdorf, “Campus Activists Weaponize ‘Safe Space,’” The Atlantic, November 10, 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/how-campus-activists-are-weaponizing-the-safe-space/415080/. [7]See, e.g., Judith Shulevitz, “In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas,” New York Times, March 21, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html?_r=1. [8]See, e.g., Edward Schlosser, “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” Vox, June 3, 2015. http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid. [9]Rod Dreher canvasses both the demands and the university’s response in “Emory: Faculty Thoughtcrime Tribunals,” The American Conservative (blog), December 4, 2015. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/emory-faculty-thoughtcrime-tribunals/. [10]See, e.g. Christine Hauser, “Wheaton Professor May Be Fired for Pro-Islam Stance,” New York Times, January 6, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/us/wheaton-professor-may-be-fired-for-pro-islam-stance.html. [11]Anonymous Professor comments from private email exchange with Glenn Lucke, January 28, 4:16 p.m.