User:Cosmikdebris/Cedarville

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Reference material for Cedarville University

Cedarville University is a Christ-centered learning community equipping students for lifelong leadership and service through an education marked by excellence and grounded in biblical truth.

A conservative Baptist college in Ohio has been shaken by the resignation of its president and one of its vice presidents, the dismissal of a theology professor and reports that the Board of Trustees might soon vote to eliminate its philosophy major.

The uproar is the latest development in an ongoing, tangled doctrinal controversy at Cedarville University, an independent Baptist college with about 3,000 students. Six years ago, the college was sued when it fired two tenured professors. The faculty members claimed they were dismissed because they were too theologically conservative.

(Professor David) Hoffeditz was fired for -- the university said -- failure to “maintain consistent, biblically appropriate, spiritual interest and effective Christian relationships in the university family.” The university also said that he had "made statements to students expressing [his] disagreement with established school policy and the judgment of the senior administration in spiritual matters, and when confronted ... defended [his] absolute ‘right’ to do so”; and that he had "made statements and exhibited behavior that does not demonstrate Christian love and objectivity in the professional judgment of colleagues."

In 2010, huddled in a dimly lit off-campus Cedarville apartment, a small group of intellectuals and sometimes-miscreants had an idea for a project. A newspaper that would give voice to the ideas and individuals that were constrained to the shadows by the dominant evangelical culture permeating Cedarville's classes, sermons, and dorms. A project that would give a bold platform to those who brazenly attached their names to their contributions, and a project that would provide an anonymous voice to those who could not for fear of institutional and social backlash. On that night, The Ventriloquist was born.

As I experienced this life that was my own and completely my own, I began to disdain the beliefs of Cedarville. My eyes had been open to the hate, intolerance, and holier-than-thou attitudes that plagued the campus. I noticed myself challenging the status quo for the first time in my life. I remember engaging in discussions on LGBTQ issues, rape culture, and countless other social issues that Cedarville tends to write off or ignore.

Cedarville, which recently weathered a turbulent year of disagreements and resignations, has also restricted classes in the women's ministry program—functionally, every Bible class in the fall schedule taught by a woman—to only female students, according to alumni and a university representative.

Jordan Ryner and Zach Schneider, both seniors at Ohio’s Cedarville University, said they hadn’t run into any problems handing out their independently-run school newspaper, The Ventriloquist, until this past issue.

The two suspect that their Baptist school’s administration halted their distribution of the paper because of their February issue, which featured a first-hand narrative from Anthony Redic, a gay student whom their University stripped of all his leadership positions because of his sexuality.

Top administrators at Cedarville University, a conservative Christian school in Ohio, have apparently banned an alternative student newspaper named The Ventriloquist from being distributed on campus.

Alumni expressing concern said the university, under Brown, had moved from fundamentalism to a more-mainstream conservative evangelicalism, but has since become theologically closed-minded and will have difficulty recruiting students.

The frustration is not that the school is becoming more conservative but that it seems to be " close-fisted -- Christianity as a fortress," a place that doesn't welcome disagreement or serious debate, said Jonathan Lett, a 2006 Cedarville graduate who is pursuing a doctorate in theology and ethics at the University of St. Andrews.

J.D. Winteregg, who's received outside support from the Tea Party Leadership Fund in his bid for Boehner's House seat, had been an adjunct professor at Cedarville University, a small Christian college in Cedarville, Ohio, for three years. Last week, Winteregg was told his contract would not be renewed. Winteregg, 32, said in an interview that he was dismissed after his campaign released a video parody of erectile dysfunction advertisements.

  • The Foil. via archive.org. A subversive publication by Cedarville University students. Includes an incredible article by an anonymous Cedarville student entitled "Is God Immoral? An Argument for Secularism."