The University Scene

“As we should finally admit, from Berkeley to Yale to Mizzou, it is on our campuses where generations of cadres have received their Marxian indoctrination under permanent cover of ‘bright college years,’ football games, and cap and gown. Over the past century, these cadres became the indispensable legions of ideological victory in a ‘Cold War’ most Americans still insist they won.”

Diana West
The Red Thread

I have seen this as a Pastor and I have seen this in my extended family. I have seen 18 year olds head off to Colleges… even ones who advertise themselves as Conservative ones and what happens in the course of 2-4 years is that these young adults are transmogrified into the replacement leftist and proletariat class whose role is to march through the existing Institutions in order to revolutionize what little remains of our Christian social order.

As a parent or Cousin, or Brother or I would warn that sending young adults to University may not be wise, but, I, as a troglodyte knuckle dragging Christian minister what could I possibly know ? So, with excitement little Johnny and Suzy would be shipped off to school just to return in very little time with colored hair, nose rings, and in violent opposition to Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and Western Civilization in general. I’ve seen young people who I had catechized develop a “I know that Christianity is a myth” mindset which they learned from their Professors at their Conservative or Christian University.

I also saw it with my own eyes up close. When my oldest finished high school we allowed her to attend a local community college while serving as a Nanny – Au pair of a solid local Christian family. Not long after her starting I’m getting grilled inquiring how Christian the Puritans really were. Question were being raised about how just the social-order was that the Puritans built.

Finally, I decided that I had to attend the class wherein all this was coming from. I showed up to discover a Professor who could not have been more than 30. It wasn’t long before he was teeing off on the Puritans. I sat their clenching my jaw and curling my toes at his continued misrepresentations of the Puritan society. Finally, at the end of the class hour it was my turn. I didn’t have time to unravel everything he had said but I gave him a list of about 10 books he needed to read. I told him that he had grossly misrepresented the Puritans and I gave him chapter and verse on how that was so. I told him that the Puritans had very little to do with whatever it was he was teaching. I remember distinctly speaking to him about how he had completely gotten wrong how the Puritans understood Christianity. I also asked him if he realized that “the Puritans” constituted many streams that emptied into the same river so that it wasn’t always advantageous to speak about the “Puritans” without getting more specific. I didn’t let him get a word in edgewise for 10 minutes and then class was past over and the students were itching to get away.

A few weeks later he stopped my daughter and told her that he had looked up some of the sources I had given him and further told her I was right when it came to my sources.

Now the above could read like a “I told him” account but what I want it to be an account of is that the University is no place for God’s and our covenant seed. Certainly there may be exceptions where University might work, but on the whole the University (especially the Christian University) is not a place where parents want to place their children who are hungry for truth. 18 – 22 y/o are not equipped to go mano vs. mano with a well studied Collegiate liberal professor (tautology) when it comes to the field that the pagan Professor has “mastered.”

In another instance I had a young person who had been one of my best catechism students tell me that they had a major paper assigned requiring the students to explain what central question that had to be answered in order to pursue truth. This student wrote a paper that advocated an answer that he had learned from me over the years in Catechism. The answer to that question is and remains that the central question that has to be answered in order to pursue truth was the question of God’s existence. This Professor at this Conservative college told him that was not the right answer and graded his paper poorly for offering that answer. My young protege was crest fallen and was wrongly disappointed in me when they should have been disappointed with addlepated professor. The left had succeeded in picking off another young Christian altering the trajectory of their Christianity so that their Christianity ended up soft and squishy as they in turn became an academic.

Years ago, I went toe to toe with a Christian Minister Professor who now teaches at my Alma Mater. I do not believe, given the man’s views, that he was even Christian. We had a long and involved conversation that made me determined that I would do everything I could do to make sure no parent I knew would EVER send their children to sit under the tutelage of the heretic whom had come across my conversational path. Most Academic Ph. D’s I know (and I know a few) who are teaching young adults scare me to death. If I had a magic wand I’d make sure they never got near young skulls full of mush.

I could give other examples even more extreme.

Allow me one further observation on the consequences of what we are speaking of here. It is not only the students who have their faith shipwrecked. My observation has been that a result of this phenomenon I have recorded here it is often the case that not only is the student lost but so are their parents. I have seen repeatedly that a child, while at University, who is ideologically and theologically unraveled in terms of their Christianity end up pulling their parents to the left along with them. Parents so love their children that they end up being radicalized in a Marxist direction along with their child so that they don’t lose their relationship with their child. What I have seen is that parents will give up long held convictions, which were a consequence of their Christian faith in order that they won’t forever have to live in tension with their precious Johnny or Suzy. They would rather alienate Jesus then alienate their children.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane