Living On A Prayer

One of the great modern ironies is that the world’s largest consumer of books—academia—increasingly tries to sever its ties with the one volume even hotels find indispensable—the Bible. “Many institutions have lost their way, like politicians who have tried to stand for everything but end up standing for nothing because they didn’t have convictions strong enough to stay afloat on stormy seas,” David Rathburn, chairman of the board of trustees at Grove City College said at a lunch there. “They did what they thought would be popular, or expedient, or easy, and now they are in trouble.”

“They took the easy money, and believed that things would always be good, that markets and government funding would always increase, that they could be all things to all people, and they didn’t want to offend anyone, so they eliminated requirements for mandatory core classes, chapel attendance, basic moral principles.” Rathburn is also President and Chief Operating Officer of US Joiner LLC and co-founder and Vice President of Gatewick Enterprises.

Consequently, the very misunderstandings that academics claim they clear up actually prevail. Nowhere is this trend more obvious than in popular conceptions of “social justice.”

“I’ll begin candidly, with a statement that might sound uncharitable: The modern Religious Left has perverted ‘social justice,’ if not hijacked the term altogether,” Paul Kengor, a professor at Grove City College notes in a column for the Center for Vision and Values at GC. “It has so misappropriated and mangled the term that many Americans—including commentators like Glenn Beck—now reflexively think ‘socialism’ when they hear ‘social justice.’”

“Indeed, the most enthusiastic practitioners of social justice tend to advocate Big Government collectivism, pursued via a single, seemingly ever-expanding federal government.” A look in the Good Book helps to clarify the true meaning of the term, Kengor avers.

“The Good Samaritan himself helped the wounded traveler, giving his time and resources,” Kengor notes. “He didn’t round up authorities to demand 20 percent from everyone, threatening penalties if they didn’t forcibly chip in.” [Italics Kengor’s]

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.