Dr. Everett Piper on Wokeness in the Wesleyan Tradition

Well, good morning, everyone. We're live now on the Conversations That Matter podcast, and it is a beautiful day where I am. I hope that you're enjoying the last of summer. I mean, it's kind of transitioning here in New York from summer to fall, it just starting, but we still got 90 degrees on some of the days this week.

So anyway, I'm looking forward to getting out and doing some summer things. We have an important topic though to talk about today. And as many of you know, if you listen to this podcast for long enough, I do cover a lot of the social justice incursions that are made in evangelicalism.

And we've covered various denominations, traditions, organizations that have been infiltrated. And I try to trace down how they've been infiltrated. What were the tactics that were used? What should our response be as Christians who are Orthodox in our theology, who are conservative politically because we're conservative theologically.

And I have the privilege today, I don't know why I haven't had him on sooner, but we have Dr. Everett Piper with us. Dr. Everett Piper is a contributor to the Washington Times. He's written a few books.

Not a Daycare is his most popular one. You can go to dreverettpiper .com if you wanna purchase those books or find out more about him. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the Wesleyan tradition because that's where Dr. Piper comes from.

And he has been, we'll say in the upper echelons of an institution in that tradition. So thank you, Dr. Piper. Thank you for joining me.

Oh, I'm honored to be on your show. Thanks for asking me.

The Wesleyan Tradition of Orthodoxy and Holiness

I think many of the people who are watching my podcast or listening have probably seen or at least know about enemies within the church. And you were featured in that documentary. And some of the things you said, I just was not familiar with.

I think I come from more of a reformed fundamentalist-ish background and outside the Wesleyan tradition. Though I actually do have some cousins who are Methodist ministers, but we didn't pay attention as much to what was happening.

And some of the things you said, I thought were just startling. You talk about a grant in the documentary that you were offered for, I think it was a million dollars that you turned down because it was tied to some, I guess, wokeness or social justice.

So I wanna get into some of that and trace down what's going on in the Wesleyan tradition. But before we do, I think for the viewer's sake, because I know I needed help with this initially, what is the Wesleyan tradition?

Well, that's a good question because as president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, I was often asked, are you the same as Texas Wesleyan or Kansas Wesleyan or Illinois Wesleyan or Dakota Wesleyan? And the list went on.

And the answer is no, except we would be cousins at the family reunion, I suppose, if you wanna look at it that way. The quickest way for me to describe the Wesleyan tradition is to go back to John and Charles Wesley.

Of the mid 1700s.

Many of you, even if you're in a reformed church, are singing Charles Wesley hymns frequently. Well, who were the Wesley brothers? John and Charles Wesley challenged the Church of England because arguably they would have said the Church of England in the 1700s had its orthodoxy right, but it didn't have its orthopraxy.

In other words, they weren't practicing what they preached. So the Wesley brothers rose up and said, you can't separate head from heart or belief from behavior. You can't separate public life from religious life.

You have to be a unified, holistic Christian. You have to be a person of integrity. You should integrate all of your Christian life and your Christian beliefs into one Christian being. So the Wesley brothers started what was called the Methodist movement.

Well, what was that at that time? It was the methods of holy living. They believed not, nobody in the Wesleyan tradition, the Methodist tradition, were arguing that you're saved by works, but they believed that, as Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey me.

Or as even Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a couple centuries later said, only those who believe obey and only those who obey believe. So that there's this mandate, this call as the epistle of James, that faith without works is dead.

So it's by grace that you're saved through faith. It's not of yourselves, lest any man should boast, but part of the Christian life is a holiness life, a life of sanctification, becoming increasingly obedient unto the Lord.

The Wesley brothers started the methods of holy living, the Methodist movement. It's interesting, in the first phase of that movement, that was a pejorative term that was put on them by their adversaries.

It was kind of like liberals calling you or me a fundamentalist today, as if that's a bad thing, believing in the fundamentals. You get my point? So the word was pejorative in the first place, but it really became almost an identifier of who they were in terms of holiness unto the Lord.

But as you fast forward, as all denominations ultimately go, they lose their way. So by the civil war, 100 years later, the Methodist movement was not taking a stand, at least in the United States, was not taking a stand for abolition of slavery or for allowing the poor in the church.

So at the time, many churches were charging for their pews. So if you paid a higher dollar in terms of your tithe, or you gave a major contribution to the church, you could sit in the pew of your choice.

And therefore the poor were excluded from sitting in the church. And then of course, slavery, blacks weren't welcome. Well, the Methodists at the time weren't taking a stand against that in the United States.

So out of that movement, the Methodist movement arose a more conservative movement that believed that the Bible was very clear that a black person is a human being and that the poor should be able to sit in the church any place they want.

The Nazarene church, the free Methodist church and the Wesleyan church denomination sprung out of that movement of the civil war. So we have this abolitionist history in our DNA, but we were all biblical.

We believed in the inerrancy of the scriptures and held tenaciously to that and believed that Christians should behave in the public square like Christians. Again, integrating your orthodoxy with your orthopraxy.

So that's a rich and I would argue positive aspect of the Wesleyan tradition. But the irony, and I think what we're gonna talk about today is we're losing our way again. We're starting to slip and we're starting to argue for more of an existential view, an experiential view, an emotional view of what Christianity should be in the public square, as opposed to the reason and the rationality and the clarity of scripture, the inerrancy of the word.

Denominational Differences Over Inerrancy and the Rise of Social Justice

So Nazarenes, they would be Wesleyan, Methodists are Wesleyan. Are there other major denominations that you would tag as Wesleyan?

Well, define major. You have some smaller holiness denominations. The free Methodist denomination is not United Methodist. Now, the interesting thing here, John, is that many of us, myself included, kind of recoil when you start equating us with the contemporary United Methodist church, because we all know what they're going through right now.

Right, right, I understand.

I would raise my hand quickly as the former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan and say, we're not Methodist, because we believe in the Bible. We are inerrantists. We believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

We don't have gay and lesbian parades on our campus, and you're not gonna find a rainbow flag on our homepage on our university website. So there's a difference between a Wesleyan and a Methodist, even though if you had a family reunion of all of the great-great-grandchildren of John and Charles Wesley, we'd be the conservative cousins in the tent, if you will.

Nazarenes, Wesleyans, free Methodists, Pilgrim Holiness, United Brethren in Christ, some of these denominations all would have common heritage, and we're actually, we overlap a little bit with the Assembly of God.

So we have a similar tradition. Yeah, I was gonna ask if some of the Pentecostal traditions and the Assembly of God in particular would be considered that. So it is broad, and of course, PCA members, Presbyterian Church of America members would not wanna be lopped in with the PCUSA people.

So I totally understand what you're talking about there. All right, so this tradition, as I think you've rightly described, was initially with John and Charles Wesley a move back towards personal piety, taking the Bible seriously.

Things that we would think overall would hedge against threats, I suppose, to orthodoxy, heterodoxy. And what we see now is in all denominations, it's not just the Wesleyan tradition, is social justice is really challenging this political movement, orthodox beliefs, and in a subversive way.

And you sent me a long, just a lot of notes that you took on what kind of happened from your vantage point in the Wesleyan tradition and how, especially, I would say, some of the more aggressive stuff, the LGBT stuff started coming in.

So I am curious, and I think everyone's probably curious to hear you talk about how did that fundamentally anti-biblical understanding get introduced, and why was it at least somewhat accepted by some?

And where was it accepted? Was it the educational institutions? Was it in the churches themselves? How did this come in?

How Educational Institutions Watered Down Scripture

Well, as an educator, I'm always gonna be quick to point out that what's taught in the classroom today is gonna be practiced in your culture, in your church, in your courtrooms, in your living room tomorrow.

So education matters. I would argue, and I think I have the right and even the responsibility as an educator to say colleges and universities and seminaries are greatly to blame. When you start dumbing down the definition of scripture, when you start watering down your doctrinal statement, which the Wesleyan church, the Wesleyan denomination still declares in its discipline, in its official doctrinal statement that we are inerrancists.

We believe in the inerrancy of scripture in all the original 66 documents, period, okay? Similar to what I assume you would say in terms of your view of scripture. Now, the interesting thing is, there's a couple of the other holiness denominations.

For example, the Nazarene church says that they believe in inerrancy, but then they qualify it in matters of salvation, okay? Now there's a huge difference between those two statements on inerrancy. And I think anybody can understand the huge difference they're in.

If you say you believe in inerrancy and then you qualify it in matters of salvation, that leaves a lot of stuff in the Bible that you can say is culturally or socially relative for a given time and place, et cetera.

And then you can start having these arguments for political and social justice that I would argue are outside the boundaries of biblical definition. So there's a difference between the inerrancy claim of one holiness denomination, the Wesleyan church, and the inerrancy claim of another holiness denomination, the Nazarene church.

Even though we've had ongoing discussions, and I would argue they're even still taking place at this time of merging as one church, one denomination. In fact, let me tell you this quick story. When I was on the board of trustees for the Wesleyan church international, I was on the board of about 30 board members.

There was a robust conversation in one board meeting about five or six years ago about the potential of the Nazarenes and the Wesleyans merging into one holiness church, one denomination, because we are so close in our theological beliefs, our doctrinal beliefs.

We all are Methodist in heritage. We're holiness in tradition and in belief. We're biblically faithful, we argue, but yet there are two definitions in those two denominations about scripture. So when we were having this debate on the floor in a board meeting for the Wesleyan church, I raised my hand and I said, excuse me, if we merge, which definition of scripture are we gonna use?

There was silence, you could hear a pen drop. And then finally, a senior leader in the church who was a former general superintendent, which is the highest position you can hold within the Wesleyan church, looked at me and said, we consider the difference to be insignificant.

I didn't even have to say anything. I just looked, raised my eyebrows a little bit and said, hmm, the difference is insignificant. Now, when we stopped to have a break in that board meeting, I had several people come up to me and say, we did not even know that the two denominations had different statements on scripture, but we went and Googled it after you said that.

And found out it was true.

Oh my goodness.

So part of it is ignorance, people don't know. Even leaders of the church didn't know there were two different descriptions, definitions of scripture, two definitions of inerrancy. There are hugely different.

Because if you say the Bible is only inerrant when it comes to salvation through Jesus Christ alone, great, I agree with that statement, that salvation is only through Jesus Christ alone. But what about all the other stuff you're gonna take off the table and say, well, that's social or that's cultural?

I would argue that's dangerous because now you've watered down the definition of scripture to the point where you don't have to comply with a ton of stuff that you find in the Gospels, the Epistles, or even the Old Testament.

Side B Christianity and the Hyphenation of Identity

Yeah, well, that's amazing to me. I didn't actually know that. I know you're aware, I did a episode, I don't know, a week ago on the Nazarenes and some of the compromises. And so I had no clue though that that was, I thought they had a more solid statement on inerrancy.

I assume that, I suppose, and maybe a lot of the people in that board meeting assume that. Are you bringing that up to, I mean, that is an obvious weak point. Are you telling us though that the Nazarene church was the first to adopt some of these LGBT-friendly ideas because of that?

Well, I don't think you can separate the two things. If your view of scripture opens up the door for you to start talking about various different things with regard to the Christian life as being cultural and being social constructs rather than biblical mandates, then you're going to get there.

You're gonna end up at the place we are now with regard to the rainbow agenda, the LGBTQIA agenda. Because you have a ministry in the Nazarene church right now called LGBTQ Love Wins, right? At the 2017 general conference for the Nazarene church, there was a rainbow colored booth with that label on the booth promoting their ministry.

Now they claim that they're not promoting a homosexual lifestyle, but what they do overtly say is that they believe inside be Christianity, that you can be a homosexual Christian. You can hyphenate your Christianity with your sexual preference, your sexual proclivities.

And I would argue that's unbiblical. Where in the Bible does it tell you to hyphenate your Christianity? That you are a gay Christian, you're a bi Christian, you're a trans Christian. Where does it tell you in the Bible to hyphenate your Christianity by any of your proclivities or your inclinations to sin?

That you're a lying Christian or that you're a gluttonous Christian or you're a greedy Christian? No, the Bible does not tell us to hyphenate our Christianity, our identity with our sins. It tells us to confess our sins and to repent of them, not to identify with them and make that part and parcel of who we are.

Again, of all the denominations that should understand what I'm saying right now, it should be the holiness denominations which have always stood for practicing what you claim to believe. For unifying head and heart, fact and faith, belief and behavior into a sanctified life of holiness unto the Lord.

You do not hyphenate your Christian identity with your inclinations, your habits, your appetites or your libido. Your holiness is unto the Lord, not to your libido. Am I, is that clear?

Absolutely, absolutely. And amen. And that was in 2017, you said, I think. And that, so we're talking now, this is three years before 2020. This is when I would argue it probably didn't have to do this, right?

Maybe there's more pressure now. There was pressure then, but I mean, we, gay marriage, quote unquote, hadn't even been approved by the Supreme Court until, what, two years before this. So, you know, this is kind of early in my mind.

And so I didn't know this, that this makes sense of the direction that the Nazarene church has been going. Was this kind of out of nowhere? Was there opposition to it? Was, I mean, did it create a stir?

Or was it just kind of ho-hum, there's a booth?

Well, I had a, see, I'm not, again, people need to understand, I'm not Nazarene.

I'm Wesleyan.

But the two denominations are very, very close as I've described, close enough that we're always talking about mergers. And pragmatically, why not? Why not merge the resources of these two relatively small denominations of a half a million to a million members nationwide, merge them together, stop wasting your resources, if you actually believe, teach, preach, and practice the same thing.

But there are differences, as I've identified. So I had a friend that was attending that 2017 General Conference of the Nazarene Church in Indianapolis, and he took a picture of that LGBTQ loved ones booth and sent it to me.

And I thought, oh, my land. So I posted it on Facebook, and I said of, again, I repeated some of the things I'm saying to you on the show right now. I said, of all the denominations that should understand that this is not right, this is unholy, this is unbiblical, this is not Christian, that you don't define yourself by your sinful inclinations, that you define yourself by your Lord, not your libido, the holiness denominations should understand that.

And then I finished my little rant on Facebook by saying John and Charles are rolling over in their grave. Over 2 ,000 people chimed in and responded to that, which in my world is a substantial number of people taking notice, paying attention to a Facebook post.

Now, the interesting thing is by far the greatest majority of those 2 ,000 people were negative. There were Nazarene youth pastors, Nazarene head pastors, and there were Wesleyan youth pastors and Wesleyan head pastors chiming in and saying, you're being uncharitable, you're being unfair.

And for a variety of reasons. So it resulted in a long debate on Facebook, which I think was very healthy for the holiness denominations to engage in. And basically those notes that I shared with you, which are lengthy, come down to this basic fact.

Do we define ourselves as Christians? Do we define ourselves by our desires? Or as 2 Corinthians 5, 17 says, when you are in Christ, you're a new creation. Behold, the old is gone, the new has come. Are you transformed in Christ or are you transgendered?

Are you a gay Christian, a bi Christian, which Andy McGee, the director of the ministry for the Nazarene church called LGBTQ loved ones. Andy McGee, the ordained pastor for that church defines himself as a bi Christian, a bisexual Christian.

Now, that's not what we're called to do in the epistles or in the gospels or anywhere in the Bible. You are to be born again. You're not supposed to just be too easily satisfied with being born that way.

Isn't the message from Christ to Paul, to James, to John, to Jude, to Peter, aren't those messages found in scripture consistent in terms of dying to self, being dead in our sins, born again, raised in Christ, a new creation in the Lord.

And I would argue that the entire agenda of the side B Christianity ignores the fact that you don't celebrate your inclinations to sin. You confess them because that's our obligation as followers of Christ.

We have someone in the chat who Brett says that if one follows what is happening at Indiana Wesleyan University, you'll know that John and Charles Wesley have been spinning in their graves for a very long time now, a graduate 1982 of Indiana Wesleyan University.

So he's saying, I guess, back in the eighties, there were problems that John Charles Wesley wouldn't have approved at that particular institution. Now you were, at the time in 2017, were you still at Oklahoma Wesleyan?

Yes, I was the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan from 2002 to 2019.

So there's cross-pollination, I'm assuming, between the Nazarenes and the Wesleyans. As far as pastors from maybe Oklahoma Wesleyan are graduates are gonna go into a Nazarene church, that kind of thing.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Great deal of, like you said, cross-pollinization, yes.

Courageous Leadership in Christian Institutions

Okay, so I can imagine when you made this stir online that this was seen as a big deal, that you were a heavy hitter for not just the Wesleyans, but actually people in the Nazarene denomination who were going to your school for education.

What kind of pressure did that put on you, making that public stand?

Well, maybe you can already figure out from just this brief interview, I really don't care.

I know.

That isn't the way I run my life, nor is it the way I led as a university president. I've always had the attitude, you run into the face of the storm, you don't run away from it.

Yeah, but just real quick, most guys that in my, and I don't know what your experience has been, but in mine, most guys do bend to that pressure. You're rare, and the people who don't are rare. So I think it's helpful to know what kind of pressure comes on someone for taking these stands, just because the expectation I have is most guys are gonna kind of cave, or at least try to figure out a cut a deal.

Well, that may be true, but I'll be very clear here. Shame on them if they do. There's a time within all cultural movements where Christians have to be clear, be bold. It's like they used to say when you went and bought your first flat screen TV, go big or go home.

And I believe that that holds true in terms of our Christian testimony. And I'm not saying be a jerk, or be abrasive, or be condescending, or rude, but you have to be clear, and you have to be biblical if you're going to wave the banner of Christ.

And if you're not gonna do that with courage and conviction, then my respect wanes. And I think you're gonna find that you turn around and find very few people following you because you're not leading in a clear direction.

The sidebar, when I took over Oklahoma Wesleyan University in 2002, it was near bankruptcy. And I made up my mind right then and there. We were gonna wave the banner for the truth of Christ and the truth of scripture.

We were gonna speak boldly and unapologetically about inerrancy. The primacy of Jesus Christ, the priority of scripture, the pursuit of truth, and the practice of wisdom. Jesus is the son of God. The Bible's the word of God.

Truth is given by God. It's not made up by you or me. And wisdom, sanctification, holiness, obedience is demanded by God. It's not optional. I talked about those things incessantly. And the irony was, I had an Indiana Wesleyan theology professor who accused me of being a closet Baptist because I was talking about those things too much.

And my response was, if that makes me a closet Baptist, then our denomination is in a lot of trouble because nothing I said is outside the bounds of biblical orthodoxy. And by the way, our Wesleyan discipline says, we believe in the objectivity of truth, that truth is revealed by God, not a postmodern construct of man.

And it also says that we believe in inerrancy, all 66 original documents. So how am I a closet X for saying those things? Everything I just said is Wesleyan. Now you can tell the way I chose to deal with that confrontation is to just speak the truth with conviction and clarity.

And guess what happened? He went away. Okay, he went away. Because how can you argue with what I just said? So if you're a biblically driven pastor or lay person right now, listening to this particular podcast, grow a spine, have some courage, wave the banner.

If you win waving the banner of Jesus Christ, if you win waving the banner of the truth of scripture and truth of Christ, great, God's grace. If you lose waving that banner, who cares? Go down fighting, be willing to do so.

That is true leadership. And guess what? God doesn't have to bless that. I'm not a name it, claim it guy. I don't believe in that theological angle, but he can choose to bless it if he wants to. Oklahoma Wesleyan went from bankruptcy to financial solvency.

We were ranked by Bain as one of the top 20, we were in the top 20 in the nation in terms of financial viability for academic institutions in the nation.

Why?

Because we stood for something. We were willing to say we are Christian and this is how you define Christianity. You find it in the Bible. It's not complicated. That's who we are. And if you wanna come and get an education within those parameters, come here, because you're not gonna find it at many other places.

Anyway, that's a pitch that you didn't ask for, but it is a commentary on leadership, I think.

Well, does that hold true even now that you're not the president? Is that the school you'd recommend for aspiring pastors in these denominations?

My successor is not buying into the woke agenda. He's not as aggressive as I am. The pendulum swings, I get that. I think it's an institution you should look at, but I also think you should be an informed consumer and recognize that the Wesleyan Church, the Nazarene Church, the Free Methodist Church is having a conversation about social justice, a conversation about side B Christianity.

They're having a conversation about critical race theory, et cetera. I think anytime you find a sponsoring denomination that's having conversations about those things rather than confronting them, you need to do a lot of homework before you write a check and decide to go there.

And I would say that about a Baptist school, a non-denominational school, a Nazarene school, a Free Methodist school, et cetera. I think all of the schools are tempted to get into what's popular rather than being what's right.

What Laypeople Can Do to Resist Denominational Drift

What you just described, I think would have been also true in 2017 as far as having that side B discussion. Now though, it seems like the Nazarenes, they're having a discussion about whether gay marriage is acceptable, right?

So they're farther down the path and it's only been a few years. And so we can see where this train goes once you start opening that door, who's to say that you can't take it all the way and who's to say in another five years they won't have transgender, maybe they already do, debates going on.

So if this starts, as you kind of suggested, at least at the beginning, in the educational institutions, I don't know how the accountability works for a place like Oklahoma Wesleyan, let's say. What can laymen, because I'm sure that's probably gonna be the primary audience here, are gonna be laymen in the Wesleyan church, in the Nazarene church who wanna do something.

They don't want their denominations going to pot, but what can they do?

I need, well, first of all, you need to be informed, staying engaged with podcasts such as yours, reading, make sure you understand what's really going on. Be aware that Christian colleges and evangelical churches are being challenged right now.

Here's another story that I think is pertinent to your question. So right after Obergefell was made the law of the land, literally the day after, I was the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan at the time. I received a letter from the president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities,.

The CCCU.

Now, if people don't know, almost every evangelical Christian college in the nation is a member of the CCCU, whether it's Baptist or whether it's Nazarene, whether it's Free Methodist, whether it's Wesleyan, whether it's non-denominational like Taylor or Biola or John Brown University or Wheaton College.

All of these universities, Christian schools, are members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, about 150 institutions strong. In theory, you could go to any of those schools and go to a biblically grounded evangelical Christian university, okay?

I get a letter from the president out of Washington, DC of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Her name's Shirley Hoekstra, the day after Obergefell. And the letter says, I'm letting you know that two of our member institutions, Goshen College and Eastern Mennonite University have decided that because of Obergefell, they're going to immediately start hiring married homosexual faculty and staff.

We

Mennonite.

Yeah.

We, says Shirley Hoekstra, the president of the CCCU, need to have a conversation about this and what we're going to do as an organization. I called Dr. Hoekstra on the phone. I remember it as clear as this conversation.

I had my phone to my ear and I'm pacing around my pool in my backyard during the summer. And I said, Dr. Hoekstra, where in the Bible does it tell us to have a conversation about sin? Last I knew, when I read my Bible, it said, confess our sins, not have a conversation about them.

I said, until you reverse course on this,.

We're out.

We are going to withdraw our membership from the CCCU. They have not reversed course. They are having that ongoing conversation. And I would argue that anytime you start talking about something as if it's an open issue for debate, you sooner or later are going to embrace that issue as acceptable within the body of Christ, acceptable within the church.

And where are we? Obergefell was, what was it, 2015, 16?

15, yeah.

15.

So here we are from 2015 to today, and we have these evangelical holiness churches and Baptist churches and Presbyterian churches and non-denominational colleges and churches having conversations about Side B Christianity and whether or not they should ordain gay pastors, they should officiate homosexual weddings, and whether or not you're going to embrace transgenderism within the church.

That's an excellent point because I think that is the temptation. I know I even have had that where it seems so innocuous. Let's have a conversation. How could that be threatening? How could that, right?

And the assumption is that both sides are committed to truth and we're gonna figure it out somehow and truth is gonna prevail. And that's just not the case. At least the pattern we've seen is when you start using the conversation language, there's some people involved in that conversation who have their minds made up.

They are using it as a tool to then get to the next level, which is let's have a conversation about, I guess, whether you should be allowed to continue in your job since you oppose same-sex marriage.

I mean, it becomes more aggressive and we have several people that are chiming in. I'm just a little, we have Micah here saying that his experience at Indiana Wesleyan University from 2016 to 2020 was pretty bad, I guess.

There was CRT stuff and LGBT stuff. Barb Johnson says, the Nazarene church we left had a board member who was not sure if abortion was wrong. The youth pastor was then full supporter of BLM. I mean, does any of this surprise you?

I'm assuming it doesn't.

No, no, because it's been going on for decades. This isn't just the last 10 years. I hope it's not boring. Let me give you another story.

Evangelical Christianity, Profanity, and the Definition of the Faith

Yeah, please.

All right, I was doing my doctoral work at Michigan State University when I worked at a free Methodist school, my alma mater, Spring Arbor University in Spring Arbor, Michigan. An evangelical school, it changed my life.

I'm very proud of much of what Spring Arbor stands for, but I recognized at the time that there were conversations going on within the free Methodist church and evangelical Christianity that seemed to me to be outside the boundaries of the very definition of evangelical Christianity.

So the topic of my dissertation at Michigan State was evangelical Christianity. What does it mean in the minds of the constituent holders, the customers, if you will, of an evangelical Christian college?

Now, don't let your eyes get crossed over. I'm not gonna bore you with all my research and analysis, but I'm gonna share with you the opening page of my dissertation. And bear with me, I'm going to quote something that's gonna be very offensive.

So grant me some latitude here. It's a quote, it's not language I would use, all right? A student walks into my office a couple of days after new student orientation started there at Spring Arbor College.

I was the Dean of Students. I was the VP for Student Affairs at the time. He walked into my office, brand new student, he was angry. He looked me in the eye and he said, you told me a couple of days ago during new student orientation that this was an evangelical Christian school.

I'm angry. And I said, indeed I did. What's the problem? He said, well, today I went to my first class, my English class, and the professor asked a question and I didn't know the answer to the question.

So she confronted me in front of the entire class and she said, and here's my quote, Jesus Christ, don't you understand the answer to the question? I looked at that student and I said, are you serious?

He said, yes, that's a direct quote. I called up the provost at the time at my alma mater, Spring Arbor University. I said, we got a problem. An English professor just confronted a student and said this to the student in response to his ignorance of a question.

The provost said, well, Everett, you need to understand that some people of that given denomination, this particular professor wasn't free Methodist. She was of a different denomination. Don't consider that to be cursing.

I said, what in the world? So the opening page in my dissertation is basically asking this question. Have we come to the point and time and place in evangelical Christianity where we don't even understand that using the Lord's name in vain is wrong and that some denominations don't consider that to be cursing?

And even if that's true, some denominations don't think that's cursing. Why are you hiring those people at an evangelical institution that should think that's cursing?

Okay?

You would think the weaker brother, you'd at least even if they thought that they would help acquiesce to the weaker brother or something, but that's

So my whole dissertation was on what is the definition of evangelical?

That's crazy.

Do we have a definition when it comes to sexual morality? Do we have a definition when it comes to biblical understanding, the definition of scripture? Do we have an understanding when it comes to whether you use the Lord's name in vain or you don't?