The Coming Storm

One sultry summer afternoon my mother and I were sitting in my grandfather’s kitchen, around the dining table and in front of the large picture window that afforded a good view of the landscape. Mom sat with her back to the window, and I sat across from her. The position of her chair kept her from seeing what I could see: the increasingly bruised skies, the angry clouds, the fantastic and foreboding mix of blues, greens, yellows, and purples that boiled and roiled above the lawns, the roofs, the trees. As a young boy I’d seen my share of Missouri storms come and go, but I could tell that something unusual was brewing. Repeatedly I said, “Mom, we’d better get going. Things are getting ugly out there.” I said it again and again with increasing concern, and she finally turned and looked out the window for herself. “Wow!” I remember her saying, “There’s a big storm coming!” We wrapped up our visit quickly, ran for the car in the pelting rain, and made a beeline for home. But we’d left too late. On the way we were caught by a storm so intense that we had to pull over to the side of the road as the winds and rain pounded the car, rocking it from side to side, up and down. It was only later that we found out how narrow our escape had been: a tornado had touched down literally yards from where we had taken refuge on the side of the road.

As sure as I sat in my grandpa’s kitchen that day, felt the oppression in the air, and saw the cauldron of the skies churning away in angry ecstasy, and as sure as my own good sense told me that there was a storm approaching, I can sense today that there’s something brewing on the horizon, something that looms and boils, something that threatens with heavy anticipation. It’s also something of which many people in my (former) camp seem to be oblivious. Maybe what’s transpired in my life since July has sensitized me to it. No doubt there are those who would say that what’s transpired in my life since July is making me see phantoms where none exist. Time will tell, I suppose. But as sure as I felt it on that hot summer afternoon in Missouri, I feel it now: something is coming.

Today my wife turned my attention to two very interesting posts on Dan Burrell’s blog. The posts are over a year old, but I don’t think that the short span of a few months dilutes their importance much — if at all.

First, you may be asking, “Who is Dan Burrell?” You should read Dan’s credentials for yourself, but to highlight a few of his more salient achievements:

Dr. Burrell was the second president to preside over the Florida Association of Christian Colleges and Schools and succeeded the founding president, Dr. Al Janney… Dr. Burrell has served on the Executive Board of AACS, has co-authored three books on Christian education, has spoken at dozens of Christian educational conferences, lectured and preached at over a dozen Christian colleges and travels internationally to speak on Christian education and preach… He has served on the Board of Directors for Piedmont Baptist College, Appalachian Bible College, Boston Baptist College and Tennessee Temple University.

So back to the posts. According to Burrell:

I received a post from a friend who received it from a somewhat well-known professor at a very well-known fundamentalist school of higher learning. It is my understanding that what I now have in my possession is 58 of an eventual 95 “Theses” which, when completed and at the conclusion of this gentleman’s tenure at said “fundamentalist school of higher learning”, will be posted in a prominent location somewhere on campus in a reenactment reminiscent of Luther’s posting on the famed door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

The title of the yet-to-be-completed Theses is “Regarding Christian Liberty and Legalism.” I found so many startling parallels with the very things that Camille and I were saying to the BJU administration back in July (you know: the things that resulted in our forced resignations), I got just a little bit swimmy-headed. But rather than enumerate everything that made my eyes bug out on stems, I’ll just link to the original posts so that you can read and decide for yourself. The list of “58 of an eventual 95″ is in two parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2

I had a short but very interesting email exchange with a student-friend the other day. He’d asked my advice: how should someone attending BJU conduct himself when he finds himself at odds with some of the very distinctives that drive the place, that give it its identity, that make it what it is? The first suggestion I made to him was that he take my standing with BJU into account and that he swallow what I had to say only if accompanied by a large dose of salt. “I’d be fooling more than just one of us if I professed to be unbiased on the topic,” I told him. I went on to say this:

A lot of people — faculty, staff, and students — “play the game” at BJU, and as a result the culture suffers from a nearly lethal dose of groupthink. It’s certainly understandable that those same folks don’t want to make waves. They just want to get along: earn a wage, make a grade, get through. And in many cases, the possibility that the “BJU position” might be mistaken is more than some people can bear to consider. The impact of the result would simply be too much to negotiate, and so they simply turn their heads and look the other direction. And you know what I mean: when you’re behind the walls with everyone leaning toward the center, it’s very safe, it’s very comfortable, and it’s very consistent, day in and day out. Everyone rides the same current, bobs the same direction (no pun intended), negotiates the same waves. It’s easy because everyone is doing the same thing at the same time, thinking the same thoughts, talking about the same ideas. But I’m here to tell you: once you’re outside of the gates, it’s plain that BJU’s ship of state is in a bottle of its own making.

The landscape that will be affected by the looming shift in fundamentalist thinking certainly encompasses more territory than a few square acres occupied by BJU in Greenville, SC. But anyone who’s ever been involved with BJU knows that it most certainly is a cultural barometer for what’s taking place in Fundamentalism at large. When my conversation with the aforementioned student leaned toward perspectives on grace and discipline, legalism and Christian liberty, reformed theology, and sanctification, I said to him, “Weird all of this. I feel as though the whole of conservative culture is in convulsions over these very same issues. It’s like we’re at a nexus or at the parting of the waters.”

The storm’s coming. The barometer is falling. Grab your keys and run for the car.

Dec 29, 2007

• Posted by Grant
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