by Sandy » Sat Jul 15, 2006 9:40 pm
One of the biggest beefs of the fundies about Southwestern in the '80's was over eschatology. That's about all they could find to complain about. And in the class I had, the professor did an excellent job of covering the popular spectrum of views so fairly, I couldn't pin him down. Several fundies in the class were clearly irked when we moved on from premillenial dispensationalism, and stopped participating in the discussions after that. The problem with eschatology, though, is that you can't be a literalist and be a futurist. The other issue that was raised was in regard to a couple of New Testament professors being involved in seminars at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. They went over there to teach Greek professors on occasion. There was that "guilt by association" logic that floated around at the time.
Dr. So and So leads seminars for professors from theological schools around the country in a classroom at Brite Divinity School. Brite Divinity School is part of Texas Christian University. TCU belongs to the Disciples of Christ. The Disciples of Christ allow some of their churches to teach "liberalism." Therefore, Dr. So and So is a liberal.
These 6 schools were, however, seminaries. They were not indoctrination centers. I never attended a class where a professor tried to force his view on the students, and in most cases, they rarely pushed for their view to be the "right" one. They did push to make sure you knew and supported what you believed and could put it on paper or speak about it in an articulate, understandable way. I guess that's liberalism to a fundamentalist, since there doesn't seem to be any evidence to show that anything else was.