|
|
Washington Post Legitimizes "War on Christians"
The Washington Post is a liberal newspaper. Right? Yet yesterday it published an article, Is There Disdain For Evangelicals In the Classroom? that could have came out of the "War on Christians" playbook. The article discusses a lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defense Fund, which, given the tone of the article, sounds like a good organization. Americans United clarifies ADF's real nature and goals:
ADF champions a radical agenda to destroy the wall of separation between church and state. It even has close ties to the most extreme faction of the Religious Right - a movement that wants to create a harsh fundamentalist Christian theocracy in America.
The Washington Post article legitimizes the lawsuit -- UNLESS you are among the few readers who actually follow an article to the end. From the Post:
|
Frank G. Kauffman was teaching a course in social work at Missouri State University in 2005 when he gave an assignment that sparked a lawsuit and nearly destroyed his academic career.
He asked his students to write letters urging state legislators to support adoptions by same-sex couples. Emily Brooker, then a junior majoring in social work, objected that the assignment violated her Christian beliefs. When she refused to sign her letter, she was hauled before a faculty panel on a charge of discriminating against gays.
If you just read those opening paragraphs, you might feel some serious sympathy for Emily Brooker. The article goes on to cite an important study that has an "'explosive' statistic: 53 percent of its sample of 1,200 college and university faculty members said they have "unfavorable" feelings toward evangelical Christians." Only after you read this "explosive" statistic - if you are inclined to read more -- do you hear a counter viewpoint from one professor:
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, disagreed. What the poll reflects, he said, is "a political and cultural resistance, not a form of religious bias."
Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians probably have two causes: "the particular kind of Republican Party activism that some evangelicals have engaged in over the years, as well as what faculty perceive as the opposition to scientific objectivity among some evangelicals."
But the real shocker comes at the very end. After getting the impression that the ADF is an admirable law organization helping this poor student fight the coercive behavior of a professor forcing her to advocate for something against her religious beliefs do you hear the professors viewpoint:
Kauffman, who stepped down as director of Missouri State's master of social work program, said he has been "vilified around the world" as anti-religious, when in fact he is a former assistant pastor and youth minister in the Assemblies of God, a Missouri-based Pentecostal denomination.
He said that all the students in his class voted to accept the letter-writing assignment as a lesson in political advocacy and that, contrary to the allegations in Brooker's lawsuit, he did not require them to sign or send their letters to state legislators.
"In the classroom I give equal time to everybody's views -- always have and always will," Kauffman said.
|
|
print page
