Cedarville University

Date: Mar 23 2014
Major: Religion/Religious (This Major's Salary over time)
I was a Pre-seminary Bible major at Cedarville from '07-'11. I bucked against some of the rules (which I thought were a bit overbearing, and this was exaggerated by the way people tended to moralize and spiritualize them), but I loved my department. The theology and philosophy professors (Dave Mills, Shawn Graves, Tim Gombis, John White, Ryan Peterson) were all fantastic.

However, I would not go back there, and I would recommend prospective Bible/theology or philosophy students do the same. In the year after I left, some of the Trustees decided the university was getting too liberal (it was still quite conservative, and I say that as a theological conservative), and they began making sweeping changes. Replaced administration, Student Life employees, issued gag orders to prevent them from being honest about why they were no longer employed, and ran off all the good philosophy and theology professors. It was a massacre.

That sort of agenda is utterly stifling for honest Christian theology or philosophy, and Cedarville is no longer a place where students can learn to think deeply about their faith. Instead, they will learn to recite Southern Baptist doctrine as though it were the unchallengeable apex of Christian theology, faith, and science. There are still good programs (nursing and engineering, for example), but the new administration has made the whole university a toxic environment, silencing any dialogue opposition through behind-the-scenes coercion (such as threatening of tenure, etc.). Seriously, just go to Wheaton or Calvin.

As one who grew up Southern Baptist: the Southern Baptist leaders who have practiced this systematic policy of severance and oppression within the Body of Christ will stand before Christ in the Day of Atonement and have to answer for what they have done.