Is Bryan College Caving on Adam and Eve?

Professors protest clarification of a Christian college’s statement of belief that affirms “creation” includes a literal Adam and Eve.

According to an AP story posted on the Times News, professors overwhelmingly voted “no confidence” in a trustees’ “clarification” of its creation stance that “states that Adam and Eve were historical people who were not created from previously existing life forms.”  The vote was 30-2 against the clarification by some of its 44 professors.

According to the news article, the professors objected more to the process employed than to the statement itself.  The trustees respond that it was a statement of “clarification,” not a change to the statement of belief, which is supposed to be unalterable.  It would seem Bible-believing professors, though, would welcome the clarification.  World Magazine explains that some of the professors are cozying up with the theistic evolution staff of Biologos Foundation; that’s why they object to the clarification.

Bryan College’s Statement of Belief is an eight-point doctrinal statement adopted at the time of the school’s founding in 1930. According to the school’s charter, the belief statement cannot be amended or changed, and trustees, officers, faculty, and staff must affirm it once a year. The fourth point in the statement says the school believes “that the origin of man was by fiat of God in the act of creation as related in the Book of Genesis; that he was created in the image of God; that he sinned and thereby incurred physical and spiritual death.”

Such a clear statement seems self-explanatory.  The trustees explain why they felt the clarification was necessary:

Last month, the board of trustees adopted the following “clarification” statement: “We believe that all humanity is descended from Adam and Eve. They are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life forms.”

Board Chairman John Haynes told me the clarification is not an amendment to the Statement of Belief, which may not be altered. “We are clarifying one point in the Statement of Belief, which has to do with the creation of Adam and Eve,” he said. “We’re saying this is the intent of that statement.”

Asked why the board felt it was necessary to make such a clarification at this time, Haynes simply said, “There seems to be some question as to the intent of the Statement of Belief. That’s the bottom line.”

The Blaze includes a video clip from the Chattanooga Times that claims professors are being “forced” to sign the clarification, and that students and alumni are joining in the protest on the grounds of “academic freedom.”  The Blaze article states, though, that professors are being given opportunity to comment on the statement.

Bryan College is named after William Jennings Bryan, who defended the Bible and creation in the famous Scopes Trial of 1925 in the college’s hometown, Dayton, Tennessee.  Its motto is “Christ above all.”

For one thing, all readers should be skeptical of the Associated Press.  AP has an agenda and is fully capable of spinning facts to present a desired narrative.  New Republic‘s article is even more biased, calling Bryan College an “extremely conservative” school that believes in “Biblical literalism,” making it sound like an inquisition is going on: “A Tennessee College is Forcing its Faculty to Swear They Believe Adam and Eve Existed.”  World Magazine is a much more trustworthy source.

If the professors are, in fact, objecting to belief in a real Adam and Eve, it’s a judgment on their scholarship, not on the Bible.  People need to understand that academics are some of the worst people in the world when it comes to groupthink.  Nobody in academia wants to be an outsider.  Since progressivist liberals have taken over the universities of this country (and progressivism is built on the evolutionary worldview), the few stalwart Christian colleges feel that isolation.

If the Bible-compromising profs want to go, let them go.  Good riddance.  They applied knowing what the college believes.  They already signed a statement that God created man “by fiat” according to Genesis, and that “he” sinned, and that death was the judgment of that sin (not millions of years of death before he evolved).  They should know that Jesus Christ believed in a literal Adam and Eve, a literal Fall, a literal Noah and a literal Flood.  So did Paul and the apostles.  If the professors love the world more than the Lord, let them go to the disgraced halls of secularism where terrorists are praised, where sexual orgies are promoted, and where conservatives are shouted down in the name of “free speech.”  Let them sit in the gates of Sodom, and take part in its judgment, if togetherness with the mob is what they desire.

As for their crocodile tears over “academic freedom,” what a laugh!  Darwinists with their DODO Policy are the worst intolerant bigots anywhere in the ivy-walled ivory towers.  Look how many innocent scholars have had their careers ruined by the Darwin Party (partial list on Evolution News & Views).  Dare to doubt the Darwin religion, and you are at great risk, whether you are a professor, reporter, or employee involved with secular science.  Oh, the irony!   The poor, narrow-minded bigots “will be afraid to teach alternative creation theories.”  Good grief.  Try presenting any non-DODO alternative at Ball State or George Mason and watch the war erupt.  We hope Bryan College will stand its ground, proud and free against the intolerant Darwin bigots (we need to call them what they are).

If the profs go, the lines are drawn.  Then we can debate them as secularists on the evidence.  Let the theistic evolutionists defend the sorry record of human evolution (3/07/14).  Let them explain upright, big-brained humans going hundreds of thousands of years grunting in caves rather than building cities or inventing technology.  Let them explain the genetic evidence that not only supports the Genesis account (Thomas, ICR), but makes the secular millions-of-years story untenable (Jeanson, ICR).  Let the Darwin-worshiping idolators force every Darwin-contradicting fact into Charlie’s myth.  Let them toss their Bibles into the trash and show their true loyalty to Darwin-Baal (9/26/03, 9/14/07, 4/07/10).  Better that than have them pretend to ascribe to “Christ above all.”

Tip link:  See Keaton Halley’s answer at CMI to the question, “Does the Bible trump all evidence?”