When I was a pretty new Christian in college, I joined Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. While getting to know the other young Christian students, and the progressive feminist IVCF student leader, I suddenly realized that not everyone who called themselves a Christian really believed the Bible. In my case, problems arose over the doctrine of Hell, sexual morality and evidential apologetics.
This was my first exposure to a Christian organization that was not rigorous about the Bible. I would try to get them to bring in apologetics professors to talk about science and history, but they kept insisting on prayer walks and testimonies. This was one of the experiences that let me to do my Christian work using an alias. I began to think “what if these progressive Christians get into power, and they get offended by my conservative views?”
And that’s what happened to this professor, who tweeted out Biblical views under his own name. He must have thought he was safe working for an evangelical Christian college. But he was not.
I was recently dismissed for misconduct by Cliff College, an evangelical Methodist Bible college where I had worked as a lecturer and programme lead for seven years. The misconduct referred to my now-infamous tweet…
[…]A Twitterstorm quickly ensued. Aggressively pro-LGBT advocates attacked me as homophobic and hateful, pressurising the college to sack me. The college swiftly and publically denounced my tweet as “inappropriate” and “unacceptable”. They later asked me to remove it. When I said I couldn’t do that in good conscience, I was suspended and later dismissed for “bringing the college into disrepute”.
He wrote this, which I found very interesting:
One woman, a Soviet-born émigré now teaching at a US university, said: “You have no idea what completely normal things you do today, or say today, will be used against you to destroy you. This is what people in the Soviet Union saw. We know how this works.”
I came from another country to the United States, and I saw Christians being persecuted by the secular left government for the things they had said and done. That’s why I left.
Cliff College describes their organization this way:
Cliff College provides theological education and training with a particular focus on mission and evangelism.
Cliff College has a long and rich heritage of providing Bible training to people from diverse backgrounds, for mission and evangelism.
Since the beginning, we have sought to provide biblical, evangelical training that is both relevant and forward-thinking, with an emphasis on scriptural holiness.
“Scriptural holiness”. It makes you laugh to read it.
And:
Cliff College is an evangelical learning community which is rooted in God’s Word and Spirit, for the purpose of equipping God’s people for practical ministry and cutting-edge missional engagement.
The education we offer at Cliff is theology for the real world – rooted in practice, forged in community, grounded in the authority of Scripture and consistently prompting us to face outwards. We proclaim the Gospel and invite everyone to experience the life-changing transformation of a relationship with Jesus Christ.
When the authority of Scripture comes up against the secular left culture, Cliff College sides with the culture.
A CONSERVATIVE media commentator, Calvin Robinson, has said that his ordination in the Church of England was blocked, owing to his political views.
Mr Robinson was due to be ordained deacon in the autumn. Without a title post, ordination cannot take place, and, in an article for the Mail on Sunday, he alleges that the offer of a part-time post as assistant curate of St Alban the Martyr, Holborn, in London, was withdrawn, after several bishops had expressed concerns about his outspoken views.
I thought this was interesting – a progressive white woman told the conservative black man what he should think about racism:
In February 2020, the Archbishop of Canterbury told the General Synod that the Church was still “deeply institutionally racist” (News, 11 February 2020).
[…]Mr Robinson, who is black, wrote on Sunday that he “fundamentally disagreed with this approach”, and described it as “divisive and offensive”.
“I do not think the claim that either the Church, or wider society, is institutionally racist has ever been supported by robust evidence,” he wrote.
Mr Robinson says that, in a meeting with [the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Sarah] Mullally, she said to him: “Calvin, as a white woman, I can tell you that the Church is institutionally racist.”
What I’d like to see from Christians is seriousness about the need to find a career where your views can be kept secret from nosy progressives like the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Sarah Mullally. My goal in life is to never have my Christian activities be subject to the authority of the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Sarah Mullally. Or an employer like her. Or a judge like her. Or a pastor like her. One of the reasons why Christians don’t stand up to the secular left is because we make too many friends, and then we conform our speech to these friends, in order to be popular.