Grove City College Update: Faculty Gets Involved

Presuppositional Apologetics, Realism, and the Bill Roach Podcast

Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris. Just wanted to leave you hopefully a quick podcast here this morning. I saw some things when I logged in that I thought were interesting and important enough for me to mention, but I wanted to say before I get to that, thank you for all your prayers.

As you can tell, I'm probably still sounding a little sick. I have had the fever, but that left me probably about two days ago, and so all I have now is a bit of a cough, some congestion. I have a little bit of a pain in my right ear, kind of right above the ear.

I'm not sure what that's about, but I was looking that up online, and it may not even be related to the COVID, so I'm not sure, but that's even subsiding somewhat. So every day's a little better, and I appreciate all your prayers and your supportive messages.

I've received a number of those over the last few days, means a lot, and you're all just very important to me, and I just want to thank you. I just want to thank all of you for your support and your prayers and encouragement and all of that.

I wanted to mention something briefly, too, about the podcast yesterday. I recorded the podcast I did with Bill Roach probably two weeks ago at least, and so there's no way I'd have the mental ability to do that during the time it actually dropped, which is when I had COVID and wasn't feeling the best, starting to get over it, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I appreciate everyone who's reached out about that.

There's a lot of people who are pushing a lot of resources in my direction, and I don't know if there's a resource that has been pushed to me that I haven't already read, just to let you guys know. That podcast, I get the impression that what's going on is there's some people, especially some people on the more presuppositional side of the apologetics debate, if you will, who are very concerned that I'm rejecting all of that and that I need to read some Greg Bonson or something, and I do actually have a whole shelf with presuppositional apologetic stuff.

I have a lot on my Kindle. To me, this is somewhat of the standard if you're going to understand presuppositional apologetics, Van Til's Apologetic by Bonson, and so I've read that, I've highlighted it, all of that, so that's something I probably, at least at one time, I think I'm still probably there.

I would have known a lot more about presuppositional apologetics than even the social justice stuff which I've written books on. So I am definitely aware of that and appreciative to everyone who is recommending resources.

The podcast, just to briefly put a cap on that, with Bill, was really meant more to advertise Bill's International Society of Christian Apologetics conference in Charlotte at the SES campus, and it's because not a lot of Christian conferences are really talking about this issue, and this is one that's going to talk about social justice, and so he wanted to advertise it.

I wanted him to be able to use my platform to advertise it, and so we were just kicking around. He's already come on here and talked about standpoint theory and inerrancy, and well, what else is there to talk about?

What do you want to talk about? And one of the things that is in the apologetics world that's going on right now as a bit of a debate, as far as I know, I've seen some of this, but I'm not immersed in that world, is this debate over Aquinas and natural theology, and where does that fit, if it fits at all?

And so that was something Bill felt he could speak to in a way that would be helpful, and I said, sure. So he came on, and that's why we had the podcast we did. It certainly wasn't, I'll just put it this way.

I'm still very much, I would consider myself in the presuppositional camp, and there's a few books, books that haven't been recommended to me, ironically, over the last few days, but books that I'm planning on reading.

One is a, I don't know, I think it's more of a thesis, trying to defend presuppositional apologetics against the charge that it's engaged in idealism, that it actually is compatible with realism. So I want to read that.

There's another book I just downloaded to my Kindle yesterday that I haven't started yet on reformational theology, and this one's on the other side. This one's more of a rejection of presuppositional apologetics as not a historically, historically reformed position, and there was a time I probably wouldn't have read books like that, that one especially, just because I was so immersed.

I mean, Bonson was really the guy I think that, more than anyone else, kind of got me into that, and I just wanted to read everything Bonson had ever written, and listen to everything he had ever said, and it was from him that I got to Van Till, and of course, learned a lot of negative things about Gordon Clark, but I do have Gordon Clark's historiography, which I have thumbed through, and there's some good stuff in it.

And then, of course, Francis Schaeffer was one of Van Till's students as well, and so I've read a lot of Francis Schaeffer, and then some of his students, and Michael Butler, and I don't even know who all, I've got a bunch here that are lesser-known presuppositional apologists.

But anyway, I very much, you know, what it was is it really worked. I just, I remember the first time I really tried it, and I thought, wow, this is powerful stuff, especially for someone who was involved in college ministry and evangelism.

And I tend to be a little bit of a pragmatic guy, and I thought, I'm going to keep using this stuff, and I'm going to learn it, you know, frontwards and backwards. So that is still where I am, but I am open to reading some more about that, and I very much come down on the side of realism in the social justice debate, and seeing idealism as a big problem, and the subjectivity that comes from that.

So that may be, you know, because there's people who are claiming that presuppositional apologetics, it's just, it's idealism, it's kind of microwaved over idealism, it's Kant, it's all of this. And so I'm open to reading more about it.

That's kind of where I am at this point. So this show is not about that topic. I could make it about that topic if I wanted, but that's not my intention at this point. I think that's, honestly, that's not the biggest topic right now.

And I'm not saying it's not important, because it definitely is. It's just that there's bigger fish to fry. There's some really big things going on that, as, you know, whether you're evidentialist, whether you're classical, presuppositional, no matter what school of apologetics, no matter what flavor of eschatology, if you're just an Orthodox Christian, then we need to take a stand against the things that are happening right now.

And that's been my priority for the last three, four years on this podcast and through my writings and all of that. And so that's not changing. I might dabble here or there, might have someone like a Bill Roach come on and talk about some of the things that they're interested in.

But again, the purpose was to really get the word out there about this conference that is being hosted by the International Society of Christian Apologists on the topic of social justice. So I appreciate your patience with me on that issue.

I know some of you who are just like, what's this episode about? And that's what it was about more than anything else. So maybe we'll talk about that some more after I do a little more reading on it. But for now, we're going to keep on track and talk about some social justice related stuff this morning.

Grove City College, Critical Race Theory, and the New Faculty Letter

And this is just stuff I woke up to as I checked my messages. This stuff just was, this was right there. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to talk about this a little bit. And it has to do with the Grove City College stuff.

So I want to let you know, by way of reminder, Grove City College, Christian institution, famous for not taking government subsidized money, and thought to be very solid in the political conservative world, but also to some extent in the Christian world.

And so it's a school in Pennsylvania. And a few months ago, there was a big outcry about social justice infiltration at the school. There were several chapel messages that were, I mean, we would not be inaccurate to describe them as woke.

I did a whole montage. I watched all of them. And then I just put together some of the high points so people could see the videos on Gab. There's a, there was a big outcry about some implicit bias training, and then a course that was also being offered on campus that was, just judging by the poster and the curriculum that was being used blatantly pro CRT, the attempt from the school has been to try to say that, no, that's actually just, we're teaching about CRT, but that's clearly not the case.

And so, you know, this is something that I focused on a little bit, and then it kind of died down a little bit, but it's flaring up again. And the reason I think it's important is because Grove City can be a model for political conservatives and Christians to apply pressure on other campuses for other colleges, because this has been something, especially as I've worked on this within the Southern Baptist Convention, where those campuses just double down, they call you a liar, they say you're motivated by racism, they don't want to admit that anything wrong has happened.

I mean, and Grove City College has done something very similar. It's just not working as well at Grove City College. And I think there's a few reasons for that. I think they've had outside pressure. It's not coming from within their denomination, they're an independent school, so you have the Daily Wire getting involved, you have American Reformer.

I think another aspect of this is it is a little smaller, and you have a lot of political conservatives going to the school, and that makes a big difference, and they're aware of their political conservatism, and they're proud of it.

And so they can recognize these things, and they're not going to buy the Kool-Aid, a lot of the people, some of them definitely do, but not everyone does. And so, I think that's one of the reasons that this has ended up a little different than some of the other schools that have had whistleblowers and people calling attention to what's happening there.

This also, that now there's faculty getting involved, and that's what I wanted to talk about a little bit today, is this new evidence that there's faculty getting involved in this whole issue. I'd like to suggest this is what needs to happen on other campuses, and if anything, this is the time, if you're at Grove City, this is the time I'd come out, and I'd start talking about this is what's happening.

If you've gone through the proper channels, which it sounds like a lot of people have, and you're not getting anywhere, the only leverage you have is the donors, really, and public perception. And so, let's talk about this a little bit.

So, there's a website I want you all to know about. This is CRT at GCC, so I guess that's supposed to be Critical Race Theory at Grove City College. CRT at gcc .wordpress .com, CRT at gcc .wordpress .com, and if you go on this website, this is a student who has kind of created an archive, by date, of all the different things happening.

You can see some of my videos, but the different developments on campus, and when it comes to this whole Grove City College debate, and whether or not, well, it's not even a question of whether or not, clearly Critical Race Theory has been promoted in some way on campus, but whether or not Grove City's gonna do anything about it.

And if we get to the bottom here, February 7th, which is yesterday as I'm recording this, there's a faculty letter, and that's what we're gonna talk about a little bit. But there's also, there's a lot of things that, you know, if you're interested in this particular topic, you have January 29th, fall, Chapel review.

If you click on it, you find this is their, I guess their campus newsletter. You have a story, and it talks about students who are upset about what's been taught in Chapel, and how it's woke, essentially.

So, you know, more, just more evidence. You have, there was a Chapel here, if I could find it, fall, Chapel, no, that's not it. There was a recent Chapel that they did not record, I guess, publicly, but I'm assuming a student must have recorded, and it was for MLK Day.

And so that Chapel is, was interesting, because it showed that they're really not slowing down completely on this whole, well, let me, let me just play for you one little clip.

Lord, we do not doubt that through MLK and beyond him, you, holy God of the prophets, are still pledged to justice and peace and liberty for all. We remember MLK and 222 in gratitude and sorrow. And we pledge, amid our stressed ambiguities, to dream as they did, to walk the walk, and to talk the talk of your coming kingdom, that your truth will not stop its march until your will is done.

I believe that was Reverend Don Opitz you're hearing, praying in Chapel, just a small clip there. And, I mean, this is, he's talking about Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King Jr., which we talked about these figures on this podcast before, neither of them Orthodox Christians, not even close, not even close, not even in the ballpark.

And you know, praying, you know, that God would essentially help us, the people at Grove City College, the students there, to be like them, and to realize their, their dream, the kingdom of heaven, you know, coming down to earth, that that was God's kingdom.

Because apparently what they did was, that was part of God's kingdom and forwarding God's kingdom. And, you know, no one would deny some of the good things that MLK and Desmond Tutu have done. But to cloak it in the religious terminology that they cloaked it in is just, it's, it's false teaching.

It's not, it's not the gospel. It is, these were men who had major theological issues, and for MLK, major character flaws as well. And, you know, there's, there's got to be a way that you can highlight some of the good things that they've done without buying into their heresy, and not giving the impression to the students that these are great Christian leaders or people to emulate because of their faith, because they're not.

So that kind of thing is, is happening. And, and there seems to be a bit of a, I don't know, a cover up, some sort of an attempt to, you know, put, not record that, not put it online. This, I mean, I've seen the same thing happen at Southeastern and other places where there's someone who calls attention to what's going on, that person's called a liar, and then everything goes underground.

Well, if nothing was happening, why does it go underground? That's the question. But more to the point today, let's, let's talk about this. This is the Grove City College faculty letter. And this is interesting to me.

It's an open letter to the Grove City College Board of Trustees. And it says, we are writing to you as current full-time faculty members at Grove City College. This isn't parents and students anymore.

This is faculty. And this is what has needed to happen at all these other places. The faculty is always late. If ever, they rarely ever get involved. This is, I've seen every institution, and I mean every institution I've ever been part of, I have witnessed cowardice on the part of faculty and administration, those that I have known.

And it's, there's an unwillingness to rock the boat, to jeopardize your job. There's just a loyalty to the institution and the brand, which is sometimes, frankly, disgusting to me. And I've seen this cowardice.

I've seen it play out in ways that are not just regarding social justice. I've seen it when it comes to character flaws. You know, why did Jerry Falwell get away with everything that he got away with for years?

Over a decade, why? And the stories that were coming out, and I'm just using one example. I could talk about Southeastern, I'm choosing to talk about Liberty just because recently there was a whole, another expose of Jerry Falwell.

And you know, he claiming it, he's saying he never claimed he was a Christian and all of this. And you know, the thing that made me sad about it wasn't as much Jerry Falwell as it was all the stories that I know about that were spreading like wildfire on campus after this happened of all the faculty, all the administration, the admins who knew exactly what was going on.

Because Jerry Falwell would show up inebriated to meetings and people had gone to his house and seen drugs. And you know, this is the, and you, before it even happened and it was exposed by secular media, there was several faculty members, like many faculty members that had been there a long time that would drop little hints that they knew something was very wrong.

And the question is, you know, why was nothing ever done about it? Why was there a lack of courage? And I, anyway, I don't want to get too bogged down in that situation. I'm just saying this is standard for faculty and administration and people who are relying on an institution for their own income and to support their families.

It's just human nature. We don't want to jeopardize a good thing if we have a good thing going. And so it ends up that things get worse. You kick the can down the road and you end up with real problems and you don't just end up with, you know, you end up getting hurt in the long run anyway.

And so do a whole lot of other people, not to mention the reputation of Christ in the process. And so anyway, I'm impressed to see that you have some faculty that are actually even doing this. So they're writing this as full-time faculty.

They're a diverse group that represent multiple academic disciplines. Over the years, we have appreciated the college's culture of collegiality and cooperation. We've been content to go about our daily work serving students and avoiding controversy.

When problems do arise from time to time, we prefer them addressed through regular channels and established processes. We believe that it is appropriate, this is the appropriate way to handle conflict.

However, the recent controversy regarding critical race theory requires a different approach. Amen. As we have observed the institutional response to this controversy over the past few months, we have concluded that basic institutional processes are broken, absent immediate attention and prompt reform.

We fear that the damage the college has suffered will become permanent. For this reason, we have decided to take the unusual step of appealing directly to you. We take this step anonymously because we have watched how senior administration have handled this crisis and do not believe our concerns would be met with professional honor.

We have seen how President McNulty has publicly rebuked parents for raising concerns about the education of their sons and daughters. We've also heard him negatively characterize these parents behind closed doors in faculty meetings.

Now that is interesting. That is fascinating to me. These actions are unbecoming of a Christian college president and they demonstrate an entrenched combative posture. In the context of this behavior and the campus atmosphere it has created, we believe that revealing our identity could result in reprisals from senior administration, perhaps even non-renewal of our annual faculty contracts.

As a member of the Grove City College Board of Trustees, you have the ultimate responsibility to preserve the college's mission and identity to ensure its financial well-being. We believe both are at risk for three reasons.

First, the approach to CRT at the heart of the current controversy do not align with the historic mission and identity of Grove City College. They talk about education 290 class, cultural diversity and advocacy, and let's see here.

See if I can scroll ahead here. It says, it takes a page here from the 2020 -2021 Grove City College Bulletin and rather, let's see, it says, Grove City College portrays itself as rather than political, ideologically or philosophical agendas, objective truth continues as the goal of liberal learning.

It also highlights, and while many points of view are examined, the college unapologetically advocates preservation of America's religious, political, and economic heritage of individual freedom and responsibility.

So they're trying to point out that Grove City College is advertising one thing and doing another in some sectors. So they're really taking a shot at this education 290, let's see here, program on justice, race and reconciliation.

In fall 2020, a two-week program offered by the Office of Campus Ministries and Office of Multicultural Education and Initiatives presented an exclusively progressive perspective on race in America, and it talks about the chapel series, Bryan Stevenson, Jamar Tisby being two, and then it calls Grove City back to their conservative values and what they advertise they're about and how they're not actually being consistent with that.

They talk about the RA training. So these are a lot of the things that we've already gone over. They say that the administrative actions have alienated Grove City College's core constituency and weakened the institution's competitive position in the higher education marketplace, which is, that is spot on.

I mean, look, if you want to have, all you have to say is we're not woke and you're gonna get a bunch of students come at this point because everywhere else is. Third, the administrative decisions proceeding and in response to the current CRT controversy must be understood as the product of broken institutional processes.

And they go into detail about this. And so they have some recommended actions, conduct a full and independent review of all concerns raised by parents in the initial CRT petition, as well as in their follow-up response and provide a public report detailing the findings of the investigation.

Conduct a full and independent review of the actions undertaken by the college president and executive leadership team over the past three months in response to the CRT petition and provide a public report detailing the findings of that investigation.

Conduct a full and independent review of the structures, policies, and practices currently used for establishing new initiatives, hiring personnel, constituting and populating committees, and communicating institutional actions to the faculty and provide a report to the campus community detailing the findings of the investigation and take corrective action as warranted by the findings of the above investigations.

So they are, you have faculty coming out now and backing the parents and backing the students. And there is a place online, if I understand correctly, let's see, I don't have it pulled up. I know there's a place online where one can go and actually, here it is, I'm gonna pull it up here, and if you're a faculty member, you can actually, you can sign this.

So it's gccletter .card .co, and it's card, C-A-R-R-D, two R's, card .co, C-O, gccletter .card .co, and you can sign the petition privately. So this is very interesting. If things were really conservative and there's no problem and no intimidation, then you wouldn't have the need for faculty members to go and do this privately.

They could do it out in the open. So it tells you that there's more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye. This was interesting, too. Josh Abatoy, who is the original one who broke this story in the American Reformer, points out that there's, this is interesting, there's, I guess, an account on, it's getting ugly on Twitter, I guess that's the, threatening students with litigation.

You have the website I just told you about has a Twitter account, CRT at GCC, CRT at Grove City College, right? It has its own Twitter account, and you have someone threatening them, and it's a student who runs that, saying, I don't know what sort of litigation will be required to stop this absurd social media campaign you are perpetuating, but it will happen even if I have to do it out of my own little law office for no compensation.

And this is someone who, you click on their profile, it doesn't give a whole lot, but this is someone who claims to be a Christian, who claims to be Reformed, and all this stuff, and man, it's just threatening to sue, so, well, interesting.

Integrity, Courage, and Prayer for Grove City College

So that's what's going on at Grove City College. Things are getting kind of ugly, and I would encourage, you know, the verses, Bible verses I was thinking of with this, Proverbs 11, three says, the integrity of the upright will guide them, but the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them.

The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them. The other proverb is Proverbs 10, nine, he who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out.

And I think we're at the point with Grove City College, it's not gonna work. The frankly dishonest and less than honorable ways, and really dirty in some ways, I guess, ways that this is being handled, it's catching up to the administration at Grove City College.

They're not able to keep the ruse forever, and it will destroy the college if they don't humble themselves quickly. And so I would ask you to pray for the hearts of the administration and some of the faculty who have tried to circle the wagons and pretended that nothing significant's going on, and I would include Carl Truman in that.

Pray for them. Pray for their hearts, that they would humble themselves, they would see the kind of damage that they're doing to their institution, that they would value the input of parents who are seeking an education for their children, and paying good money for it, and not be dismissive of that.

I mean, this is the kind of thing you expect from secular academics, not from Christians. And now that faculty's getting involved, this could get even more interesting. But this is what's necessary, and I'm really glad to see that there is a place still, Grove City College is that place, apparently, where there's some pushback.

Not everyone's just bending over and saying, you know what, just keep us out of it, we don't want to get hit in any crossfire, we're just going to keep doing our jobs. But there's actually some courage starting to become on display there, and that's what we need.

We need more men and women of courage. So I hope that was helpful for you, a little inspirational maybe, and maybe an example of what not to do, and hopefully something that will prod you to pray for the situation down there.

We certainly hope that there's a cleaning of house, and that the people, that there's some massive repentance, and that there's a switching, a changing of directions there as well. So that's all I had for you today.

I just wanted to share that with you, a little update about Grove City College. God bless, and more coming later this week. Bye now.