A. C. C. Threatens Expulsion …

IS ABILENE AN ANTIOCH OR A JERUSALEM?

Every important movement has its polarities of thought, with persuasions moving from the far right to the far left. The Restoration Movement is no exception, for from the time of its inception our leaders have been poles apart in their thinking. Our heritage includes “rightists” or conservatives like Fanning and Franklin and “leftists” or liberals like Ainsworth and Pinkerton. Even with the four Disciple patriarchs (Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, and Walter Scott) there was polarity of thought, with Scott rather far to the right and Stone definitely to the left. The Campbells were more toward center, where most of us would probably place ourselves.

So it was with the primitive community of saints. As Jewish believers Stephen and Paul were liberals in their attitude toward Gentiles and the demands of Judaism, as was Jesus before them. James and Peter were toward the other pole. One fails to understand much in the New Testament scriptures if he does not realize this diversity of thought and the strain it placed upon the communion of the saints. It was a remarkable display of love that the primitive community was able to survive and plant a catholic Christianity on European soil. It is also to the credit of our own founding fathers that the Restoration Movement was indeed a movement despite its polarites.

This dichotomy is sometimes identified as Jerusalem and Antioch, for Jerusalem represents the orthodoxy of James, while Antioch stands for the more inclusive view of Paul. Jerusalem is to the right, Antioch to the left. None of us these days particularly goes for these labels, but in this context they do have meaning, for there is reflected here two entirely different views as to the nature of the gospel and the mission of God’s community.

If we look at our own Churches of Christ, we will see the same diversity of thought, moving toward opposite poles. This explains why we find ourselves closer to some in other churches than we are to many in our own segment of Christendom. A “liberal” Church of Christ man may, therefore, be closer in spirit to a “conservative” Episcopalian than one of his own “anti” brothers. But an interesting way to view our own polarity is by a study of the colleges. It would be here, if anywhere, that any thinking would be going on.

Among our older colleges David Lipscomb College and Freed-Hardeman College are definitely to the right, while Abilene Christian College and, to a lesser degree in recent years, George Pepperdine College are to the left. If we state it in terms of cities, we can say that Nashville is our Jerusalem and Abilene is our Antioch.

In Nashville the seeds of orthodoxy are so thoroughly sown and re-sown that we look for no new ideas or fresh insights to emerge there. Abilene is in the west and is younger, and it knows the world of oil and cattle and has discovered places like Harvard. If anything significant ever happened among us in terms of ideas, we would expect it to be at Abilene. If ever our people join the Christian world, we would suppose it to be Abilene that would lead the way.

This is, of course, a generalization, for the polarity we speak of is present on each campus. Abilene surely has its rightists. One member of the Bible faculty has recently threatened to expose all the others as liberals, and he has been in touch with at least one editor with his list of names, which, we understand, has everyone’s name on it except his own! And Lipscomb has its leftists or did have! Recently in the same mail were letters from two professors in the same department of an orthodox Church of Christ college. The men were poles apart in their ideas, one an obscurant preserver of “the old paths,” while the other reflected the vision of Stephen, who was murdered for being a liberal. Needless to say that the latter was unhappy in his situation and was in search for a way Out. The former was blissfully happy, or so it would seem, enjoying the Nirvana of his own arrogance.

We might observe here in passing, as I learned from one of my old Harvard profs, that it is the conservative that creates the liberal. The liberal mind is a reaction to the duress of the illiberal mind. If orthodoxy paid less attention to unorthodox views they might peter Out. It is when one seeks to constrain another’s thinking that he pushes one into what he then calls “liberalism.”

In saying that Abilene is the Antioch of the Church of Christ we hope we are not indulging in wishful thinking. While there are strong indications that this is so, there continues to be disturbing developments to the contrary. Most of its educational program, including the annual lectureship, continues to be geared to the party line. Its prospective faculty are interrogated in a fashion that would be more fitting for membership in the Communist Party than for service in an institution of liberal education. Not only must one be a Church of Christ member, and in the right party at that, but even his political views are sifted. And recently the Bible faculty has been requested to sign a kind of “loyalty oath” in which each professor subscribes to a safe and orthodox view of inspiration. (We can hardly say a scriptural view, for there is no doctrine of inspiration in the Bible.)

We admit that this sounds more like Jerusalem than Antioch, but such illiberal tactics may be an effort to hold the line against a wave of liberal thought that is inundating the Hill. That the administration, which may be adamantly orthodox for pragmatic reasons as much as from personal conviction, is on the verge of panic in the face of new ideas is indicated by its treatment of a group of students who have dared to act and think for themselves. They actually threatened the students with expulsion from college if they did not change their ways. And we are not talking about hippies or rioters or demonstrators. It is not a question of guitars or long hair or sit-ins. The students involved are as fine a young people as you would find in anybody’s college. The college threatened to expel them because of their religious views and practices! Their crime was in being different.

A dozen or so of these students were meeting off campus in a non-Church of Christ home for prayer and Bible study. They were especially engrossed in matters relative to the Holy Spirit. While we do not have details on the nature of their meetings, which were held periodically, we assume that this involved a mutual sharing of experiences of their communion with the Spirit. Perhaps they prayed together for the gift of the Spirit. There may even have been tongue-speaking.

But we do know that they were summoned by an administrative official and summarily instructed to desist with such meetings forthwith or be expelled from college.

This occurred at a time when it was too late to enroll at another college, and so a full term of credits would be lost. Some of the young men had been deferred by their draft boards. Expulsion would have jeopardized their chances to get their education before being shipped off to war. But the administration did not appear to be sensitive to these personal problems.

Some of the parents, however, were concerned. The father of one of the students flew to Abilene to see what could be done, taking with him an attorney, who happened to be an Episcopalian. The ensuing conversations revealed that the college had been aware of “the Holy Spirit meetings” for a long while, and that the administration could have given their ultimatum at a more convenient time for the students, such as between semesters, so that they could have continued their education elsewhere. Since the college’s giant Lectureship was upcoming, some involved had the suspicion that the administration was trying to clean out all the heterodoxy before the constituency arrived.

The attorney pointed out to the administration that ACC had been the recipient of federal grants, and that such grants were given on the condition that no prejudice be shown students in respect to race, creed or color. It was further observed that the students were in no way interfering with the program of the college, but were merely exercising their freedom of religious expression, that the meetings were not even held on campus but in a private home. The lawyer also explained that the ultimatum was an imposition upon the personal rights of the students and an invasion of their private lives.

For these reasons the case would be taken to court, the attorney avowed, if the college carried out their threat of expulsion.

The administrator who had spoken for the college up to this point, a second level officer, explained that the ultimatum was not his own, but that he was acting upon orders from his superiors, and that he would consult with them about what to do. The last we heard is that the college officials still have the matter under advisement, the students are still in school and presumably are still communing with the Holy Spirit.

We readily admit that this sounds more like something that would happen at Freed-Hardeman or David Lipscomb than at Abilene, if indeed it had to happen anywhere in our ranks. Our readers may even find it hard to believe. At about this same time it was in the news that Howard Payne College, a Baptist institution not far from Abilene, had announced a policy to the effect that no hippie would be allowed to enroll, and if one became a hippie while a student he would be asked to leave. Most of us can sympathize with this, for after all a college can hardly do its work with such distractions to endure. But it just doesn’t make sense for a Christian college to ban students because they believe in the Holy Spirit. This is surely a “first” in the history of American education—for students to be threatened with expulsion for praying together!

I can understand why the lawyer involved was flabbergasted by what he saw and heard on the Hill at Abilene. As an attorney of many years he thought he had seen everything, but here is one he’ll be telling to his cronies at conventions for many years to come. There is no possible way for an “outsider” to understand how things like this can happen among us Church of Christ folk. But to those of us who have been around for awhile it is easy enough to understand, tragic as it is. And we understand that the administration at ACC is by no means malevolent. To the contrary they are well-meaning Christian gentlemen. How then is such behavior to be explained?

One word tells much of the story, a term that explains a lot about the schizophrenic behavior within “the system” of Churches of Christ—desperation. Administrators who are otherwise sound in their educational philosophy and professional ethics will fire some of their best faculty, violating all the rules of academicia, because of some doctrinal abnormality. That has happened only recently at several of our colleges. It is desperation. There is a mortal fear of anything that threatens the system. Such brethren are to be pitied more than censored. Perhaps the very Holy Spirit who is sought by the ACC students can bring peace into the hearts of these men—and to us all.

The father of one of the threatened students told the ACC dean that he would accompany the dean to one of these meetings, that they would together join the students with open Bibles and in prayer, and find out for themselves what was going on. This calm, peaceful, Spirit-filled approach to a problem finds most of us unprepared, for we simply haven’t the maturity to deal with matters this way. If we had the maturity, we wouldn’t have such a problem to start with. For too long now we have vilified, written people up, debated, disfellowshipped, divided, and even expelled. These are immature ways to deal with human sensitivities, too much like the tactics of the Salem witch-hunters.

What a tremendous impact it would have had upon the students at Abilene if the president of the college (and a great and good man he is, too) could have made his way to that non-Church of Christ home where the students were praying in the Holy Spirit and said something like this: “Dear young friends, I am a man who is growing old and will soon be retiring. I have lots of problems, and the college has lots of problems. It may be that you have learned things about prayer that I do not know. I have come ro pray with you.”

The tragedy of all this is that ACC does not really need to be fearful of the unusual Their desperation is not necessary. Most of the faculty would defend the students in their right to seek deeper truths in their own way, even if they disagreed with their conclusions. Indeed, a group of faculty delivered a formal protest to the administration for its action. The rank and file of brethren, even those who are wary of “this Holy Spirit thing”, would go along with the college in preserving an atmosphere in which ideas can compete. This is what liberal education means, and this is what most parents want for their children. To be sure, ACC is fortunate to have such diversity of thought in both faculty and students. Nothing is so boring and unexciting as sameness. God never intended it—and it is good for us that He didn’t, for we would never in this world attain it except through intellectual suicide.

So we conclude by saying that, despite a lot of things that might suggest the contrary, Abilene is our Antioch. They may fire faculty and threaten students, stack their lectureship, indoctrinate as much as educate, maintain a parochial faculty (or try to), and follow the party line, but even Paul’s Antioch had similar legalistic problems in breaking away from Judaism and moving out into the larger world. Indeed, all this desperation at Abilene is an effort ro “hold the line” for orthodoxy. We have good news for them. They’ll never make it.

By the way, the record in Acts reveals that the Holy Spirit was very much at work in Antioch. He spoke to them while they were fasting (of all things), and it was He who sent forth Paul and Barnabas on their mission to the Gentiles, a kind of expulsion you might say.

Is the same Spirit at work on the Hill in Abilene?