Looking for a miracle

A transformed denomination seeks to transform its college and seminary | Joel Belz

Joe Crimmings

Thursday, June 11, may not go down as an especially noteworthy date in the overall history of Christian higher education. But then again, before it's all over, maybe it should.

On that morning a couple of weeks ago, 300 churchmen representing one of the oldest and smallest denominations in America decided that enough was enough—and that it was time to end the doctrinal drift they sensed at the church's two educational institutions.

Erskine College and Erskine Theological Seminary, you must understand, are no bastions of free-thinking liberalism. Located in Due West, S.C. (population 1,208), both schools have since their founding in the 1830s competently filled their role as solid and respectable citizens of the educational world. A radical philosopher like Peter Singer from Princeton or a wild-eyed Ward Churchill of University of Colorado fame would hardly be at home here.