Saturday, February 27, 2010

Leftist Teaching at Wheaton College, Illinois

[T]he current document known as the “conceptual framework” of the education department at Wheaton College [includes] the father of the social justice movement, Brazilian Marxist, Paulo Freire and former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

UPDATE 7/1/13:  College officially changes "conceptual framework" back to Christianity

UPDATE 9/12/11: College revises teaching, hopefully for the best

UPDATE 3/11/10:
Teaching Social Justice at Wheaton College (from Illinois Family Institute)

UPDATE 3/5/10:
Wheaton College's Promotion of Social Justice (includes link to audio quotes from the College)

UPDATE 3/2/10:
Wheaton responds, but provides no evidence to refute the accusations below (post dated 2/25/10)

-- From "Billy Graham Meets Bill Ayers" by Sandy Rios, Culture Campaign (posted at Townhall.com) 2/26/10

There’s hardly an evangelical who doesn’t know about Wheaton College. Alma Mater of the Reverend Billy Graham . . .

So imagine the dismay of many to learn that, in an effort to educate its students, Wheaton has moved to the left, so much so that in a survey by the Wheaton Record, 60 percent of its faculty voted for President Barack Obama, the most pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda, spiritually confused president the nation has ever elected.

How can this be? Perhaps much of it can be attributed to a movement widely embraced by the campus known as “social justice.”

. . . Why would Wheaton College embrace such a philosophy? “…these are people you can learn from because they’re going to teach us Christians that maybe we have some blind spots here, that we’ve been oblivious to certain areas of injustice,” said President Duane Litfin.

Dr. Jillian Lederhouse, chairman of the department of education defended the conceptual framework by saying “we don’t teach our students to be afraid on an ideology as long as we give them a critical perspective. We do not have a list of people we do not read. Our goal is to produce a thinking Christian teacher.” And that is as it should be in an institution of higher learning, except for one thing. Lederhouse went on to admit that the people who were foundational to Wheaton’s conceptual framework were all on the far left.

To read the entire commentary above, CLICK HERE.

From "Wheaton College Invites Leftist, Pro-Homosexual Evangelical Jim Wallis to Speak" By Peter LaBarbera, AmericansForTruth.com February 2008

[Wheaton College's Center for Applied Christian, CACE, in September 2007 invited] homosexual “gay christian” activist Harry Knox to speak at a panel discussion on “HIV and Morality,” as a representative of the (traditional-Christian-bashing) homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign.

. . . If I’m not mistaken, Harry talked about his relationship with his male partner at the Wheaton panel discussion, which was titled, “Thy Kingdom Come: Christian Moral Engagement in the World.”

The following excerpt is taken from page 229 of “The Great Awakening” [by Jim Wallis, the Wheaton College CACE speaker of February 2008:]
“I support civil rights laws for same-sex couples. That, for me, is a justice issue. Many Christians, and I include myself, prefer the solution of ‘civil unions’ from the state, and even spiritual ‘blessings’ for gay couples (from congregations prepared to offer them), rather than altering the church’s sacrament of marriage as between a man and a woman, but those differences should not be fundamentally divisive. Gay marriage should not be the primary battleground in the fight for the health and stability of marriage and family in our society. In a pluralistic democracy, we should support civil and human rights for all our citizens, regardless of our different theological and biblical interpretations of the complicated and thorny issues surrounding homosexuality. New evidence and understanding around those issues could cause any of us to alter our views. But we should find common ground by supporting concrete practices and practical policies that strengthen families and nurture all our children.”
To read the entire commentary above, CLICK HERE.