May 31, 2009
Dear Mr. Moderator,
As a rising junior at Erskine College I am concerned with the direction of this academic institution as a whole. Specific incidents which I have experienced as part of the Erskine Community testify to an increasingly predominate attitude among Erskine faculty and administration where the true message of Christ meets diminishing attention and increasing scorn. I must assume that the majority of the members of the ARP general assembly have hitherto been unaware of the predominance of this attitude or have been unable to or unwilling to act upon their knowledge thereof. While I pray that awareness will lead to action, in this letter I hope to give some evidence for this attitude which I have spoken of. It should be noted that isolation, indifference, and silence do far more damage than any outright attack against Erskine College. Thus, I only offer negatives: I will attempt to point out where Christ should be and how he is not.
Christ should be in our finances. I must admit that I have little knowledge of the financial inter-workings of this institution. However, impressions are important, and I will give you mine. Large sums of money are marshaled for the entertainment of the students while the Christian ministries languish far behind in funding. Though I do not consider entertainment an illegitimate enterprise, any institutional philosophy emphasizing entertainment above Christian ministry cannot call itself “Christian”.
Christ should govern the administrative guidance of the students. Erskine Student Services recently put together a leadership development conference for the school’s student led organizations. The conference was designed to inform student leaders of their responsibilities and to motivate them toward effective leadership. Never in discussing this important topic (which is seen as a ministry by some) did the administration attempt to convey a Christian understanding of and motivation for effective leadership. This silence with regards to the Christian message represents what we as students have come to expect from our administrators. On the ground, this institution behaves as if without the truth of Scripture.
Christ should be in our classes. We at Erskine are blessed with some wonderful professors—professors who love and serve Christ to the utmost while expressing excellence in their fields. However, we also have many professors who (knowingly or not) teach ideas contrary to the message of Christ. Under these professors, I have studied history from a staunch humanist perspective and literature devoid of any biblical understanding of the human natures responsible for the studied works. In making this claim against the worldviews of some Erskine professors, I represent a much larger group of students who have independently expressed similar concerns dealing with professors outside of my experience; this is not a small problem at a professedly Christian institution.
Recently, one of our long-time professors publicly asserted that the ideological restrictions upon Erskine professors necessarily weaken the academic quality of the institution. Given a humanistic, naturalistic worldview, this claim is reasonable. However, a trust in God’s word produces a conviction that those who adhere to the Christian faith have, in their belief, a great advantage—even in academics—over those who do not. One need only look to Covenant College, PC, Wheaton, Belhaven, and the number of highly respected and thoroughly Christian institutions across the nation to answer the claim that too-few quality, Christian professors exist.
These are the concerns of one who, however failingly, strives to serve the Lord of the Christian faith as revealed in the Scriptures and through the witness of the Holy Spirit and the saints. For the edification of my own soul and the souls of all Erskine students I pray that Christ will continue to work through you, his servant, to draw glory to himself.
In Christ,
Hudson Smith
Class of 2011