My name is [Name Removed - Eds.] and I am a 2008 graduate of Erskine College. I thoroughly enjoyed my Erskine experience and genuinely loved and appreciated my professors. It has come to my attention that some concerns have developed regarding Erskine’s commitment to integrating faith and learning in the classroom. These concerns were emerging while I was still a student, but now the situation has escalated enough to prompt current students and alumni to approach the ARP synod to ask for an inquiry into the conduct of Erskine College and its administration over the school’s mission. To summarize, Erskine College has compromised by allowing evolutionary, humanistic and secular concepts to be taught (without the criticism of a Christian worldview perspective) and by failing to stop such teachings when they first began. This, in turn, jeopardizes the students’ personal faith. Click to continue »
Through the four years that I have spent at Erskine College I have grown in my Christian faith.God blessed me with friends, roommates, and a fiancée who share in the same faith and love for Him, and we have helped each other grow in our faith and love for Christ.Through the Bible Department at Erskine I also learned a lot about what God’s Word teaches, and it has encouraged me to have a faith that seeks understanding.However, I cannot say that Erskine College as a whole has done much to nurture my faith. Click to continue »
Recently, I completed my second year at Erskine College. Over these two years, I have grown to love the campus, the professors, and my peers. However, these two years have also given me the chance to see many of Erskine’s problems. I write this letter to you, Mr. Moderator, because I believe these problems to be severe. As a member of the ARP Church, it is my desire to inform you of my concerns in the hopes that the ARPC will protect and shepherd God’s people and glorify her Lord.
I became especially concerned about the direction of Erskine after a conversation I had with a woman from my home church, First ARP Gastonia. She wanted to know what I thought about the campus. She said that after visiting the campus and hearing the President, she doubted whether she could send her daughter to Erskine in good conscience. Click to continue »
“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)
I am afraid these words from James’ epistle could all too easily be addressed to Erskine College these days. How so? Well, let’s begin by talking about what friendship with the world means. As my pastor explained in a recent sermon, in the ancient world, true friendship involved a sharing of interests, values, and goals. True friends got along because they were thus aligned with each other. It is not difficult for Christians and Christian institutions, whether intentionally or otherwise, to become so aligned with the world’s ways of thinking and of doing things that they begin to look more like their secular counterparts than like the redeemed children of God. I believe Erskine is showing signs of this very problem. Click to continue »
Editor’s Note: The editors of SAFE have been given these notes from one of this year’s History 101 classes, which was taught by a faculty member who was hired by the current administration.
There is little editorial comment needed; the notes speak for themselves.
-The Editors
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“I won’t talk about the beginning of time and creation; I’ll leave that to your biology and science classes.” Click to continue »
Erskine’s mission of Christian commitment and excellence in learning, along with its strong sense of community, made my decision to spend my college years at Erskine clear to me. After spending three years at Erskine I am concerned that it is not living up to its commitment to have a Christ-centered environment. Click to continue »
Editor’s Note: Mr. Stephens’ article originally appeared as an op-ed in The Erskine Mirror, Erskine’s student newspaper. Mr. Stephens was the Executive Assistant Editor of the newspaper for the 2008-09 year. It is reprinted here by permission.
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Here at Erskine we are hearing that we have money, admissions, and retention problems. If you haven’t heard, we do, and the administration is scrambling to figure out how to solve these admittedly big problems. While I cannot claim that this article contains all the answers, I do submit that it identifies a central one. The answer is quite simple: students arrive with a perception of the college that is not accurate at all. Once they find out that Erskine is, in reality, quite different from what they were sold on, they become dissatisfied and frustrated. Click to continue »
Editor’s Note: The purpose of the petition letter is to express general concerns about the direction of Erskine. 144 students and alumni were signatories to the petition letter. If you share the concerns expressed by this letter, please view the “How to take action” page.
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Dear Mr. Moderator and Mr. Vice Moderator, Mr. Moderator-elect and Mr. Vice Moderator-elect:
We are current students and alumni of Erskine College. We love Erskine and its stated mission of providing an excellent Christ-centered liberal arts education. We are committed to seeing Erskine prosper and grow as an excellent Christian liberal arts college. We write to you now because of our deep commitment to Erskine, and because of our desire to see Erskine become, by God’s grace, what it could be. Click to continue »
Editor’s Note: The following video was produced by Erskine students and is intended to provide some of the reasons why evangelical students are concerned about Erskine’s present condition and trajectory:
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. Click to continue »
Students Aligned for a Faithful Erskine (SAFE) is run by students and alumni of Erskine College committed to Erskine’s mission and concerned about Erskine’s direction as an institution.
