Soul-Free Universities

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There’s something else that universities have missed in their diversity checklist.

“Because when we teach communism is good, capitalism is bad, when we teach self-actualization is the goal of the academy rather than selflessness and sacrifice and confession, when we teach arrogance and narcissism rather than humility in the classroom, why are we surprised to see a culture that is acting badly?” Oklahoma Wesleyan University President Dr. Everett Piper said to The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas, in a recent interview.

He believed that in order to “solve a culture’s problem” and attempt to heal the soul, “you might [want] to start teaching those things in the classroom rather than the antithesis.”

His article from November 2015, entitled, “This is a University, Not a Day Care,” went viral and garnered a lot of media attention. A student at his university was offended by a sermon in a chapel session on love from the Bible in 1^st Corinthians chapter 13. In Piper’s view, “1^st Corinthians 13 is the quintessential love chapter of the Bible” and the student had to “throw down the victim card because he felt singled out.” What was Piper’s response? “You got to be kidding me,” he told Thomas. The university president reiterated, “There was nothing in the sermon or chapel service that was political, or sarcastic, there was nothing offensive, it was a sermon on love.” Piper said he told the offended student, “That uncomfortable feeling you had during that sermon, it’s called your conscience, you might want to attend to it.” He concluded, “There was a time when a good sermon was supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, it was supposed to make you feel you should confess your sins and not coddle you in your selfishness.”