5 Professors Quit Religious School

For violations against their academic freedom. You have to wonder though, WTF did they expect? This is a school founded so that homeschooled KKKristians (not the good homeschoolers) wouldn't have to deal with the evils of free information at a normal university.

But good on them for coming to their senses.

Nearly a third of the faculty members at Patrick Henry College in Loudoun County are leaving the school because of what they described as limitations on their academic freedom, causing unusual introspection at the politically connected Christian liberal arts college.

They claim that Patrick Henry College, established in 2000 to attract academically gifted home-schoolers with the hope of send them on to work on Capitol Hill or at the White House, does not value equally both parts of its mission: to offer students a strong biblical perspective while educating them according to a classical liberal arts curriculum. In one case, the professors said, faculty members were reprimanded for writing that the Bible "is not the only source of truth."

"I'm leaving the college because I want freedom," said David C. Noe, assistant professor of classics. He said he came to Patrick Henry in its first year expecting to find "a liberal arts college that will be the new Ivy League" -- as the school bills itself -- but instead found a place where classical works by non-Christian authors are sometimes considered suspect and where there is an increasingly narrow view of Christianity.

The departure of five of the school's 16 full-time professors follows the forced resignation last year of Jeremy Hunley, a library clerk who promoted the idea that baptism is essential for salvation, a violation of the 10-point statement of faith that all faculty members and students are required to sign when they come to Patrick Henry. According to the statement, and to many evangelical Christians, salvation is found only through faith in Jesus Christ.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051801995.html

the American madrassas.

If these teachers weren't solid Christians they'd have never been hired in the first place -- but that isn't enough.

PHC is a part of the burgeoning theocratic movement, backed by anti-democratic religionists like Tim LaHaye.

You want the real story of what it's about, google 'dominionism'.

It's one thing to recruit a child whose parents have been blown up in front of them to go and fight the enemy. It's another thing to hand-pick the best and the brightest and brainwashing them into a Taliban mentality so they can accomplish the same evil when they get older.

That's the perpetual conundrum of a Christian liberal arts college. How can one teach students to read, write, and think critically in one's subject and adhere to a strict religious line? I lost profs over the years--great profs--who just couldn't take that crap anymore.

I figured it would happen, though. Turnover in those kind of schools is higher than they want to admit. The profs who stay can't really go anywhere else and so either die slowly inside or quietly rage against the system in their private homes and offices. It's not that they're not good profs, it's more that they have financial issues or know that it would be hard for them to find a job anywhere else. Those kinds of schools tend to put a higher priority on teaching and make it hard for them to keep up in their research that would be required in another school.

They're getting weird, though. Even our college didn't fire anyone over that small of a faith issue. Nah, they just pressured people out for thinking critically or questioning anything.

Their charter is antithetical to the notion of "classical liberal arts." This "school" isn't about a religious or liberal arts education - its about gaining power and preventing critical thinking. Hypocrisy all around - once again, changing the meaning of words until at some point future generations won't have a clear understanding of what certain words mean.

The very idea that someone would think people like this would actually teach "classical liberal arts" is laughable.

would ever give accreditation to such a place, so I am sure the fundies will make up their own (generously funded by Scaife et al. of course)

When the major requirements for a job are your ability to ass kiss, knowing the "right" people, and being a religious whackjob?

... as Colbert puts it, all those books put stuff in your HEAD. You don't need that - you need what's in your GUT. And you can't get that from accredited schools.

He don't need no learnin' to be president.