Friendly Atheist: If Faculty Members Don’t Accept Young Earth Creationism, This Christian College May Fire Them
Bryan College in Tennessee — yes, named after William Jennings Bryan of the Scopes trial fame, or infamy — has a notion to force faculty members to sign pledges to teach nothing but the literal six-day creation story out of Genesis. Hemant Mehta concludes,
I know this won’t reach the potential students who need to see it, but this is precisely why you shouldn’t go to a Christian college. By requiring you to adhere to a Statement of Faith, whatever it says, there’s simply no room for flexibility if you ever have doubts or you want to challenge long-held beliefs. Not all Christian schools require you to preach Creationism like Bryan is about to, but college should be a place where students are made to think critically about their beliefs. Bryan administrators are telling these faculty members not to challenge them at all — the Bible says it so there’s no room to question it. It’s the opposite of preparing them for the real world. Instead, Bryan College is billing itself as the place to go if you want to remain in a Christian Bubble for life.
There’s a longish article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which indicates not all the faculty or student body is on board with this.
The board of trustees is requiring professors and staff to sign a statement saying that they believe Adam and Eve were created in an instant by God and that humans shared no ancestry with other life forms. If they don’t sign, they fear that jobs could be on the line.
Pledges to ideology or dogma are never a good idea. You’d think they might have learned from history.
