Messiah College history professor John Fea drew my attention to an article by Scott Culpepper who teaches history at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa on the subject of Christian Scholarship in the Age of Donald Trump. Scholarship has always been important but, in the age of fake news, scholarship is going to become crucial.
Since religion played such a significant role in this past election, it will be important that a moral voice remains active in the years that come. Reminders of our Christian responsibility to love one another and to care for one another and creation will be needed. The Evangelical voice that aided in the election of Mr. Trump is not my Christian witness and will continue to make my voice heard.
I am undecided if I will participate in the local march here in Boston the day after the inauguration. I firmly believe in protest, and that it does, in fact, change things, I am just not sure this particular march is for me. I was recently reminded that those of us who write also protest, and so I will continue to use these pages, and others, to voice my opposition to the policies of the Trump administration.
Here is just a selection from the article, follow to end for a link to the rest.
The times call for renewed conviction, creativity and courage on the part of Christian scholars. The masses may not know they need us, but they need us. The endorsement of popular influence as a virtue in the framing of our American republic was predicated on the hope that education and character formation would equip people to exercise their rights intelligently. No one is better prepared than Christian scholars and the institutions they serve to provide this kind of education infused with serious attention to character formation.
In a time when forces abound that pressure Christian scholars to adopt a posture of compliance to fit in, we need more than ever to stand up and stand out unapologetically. All clouds pass in time. When they do, a new generation will build on either the ruins or the foundations of the past. That generation sits in our classrooms today. We have the opportunity to model something very different from what they are seeing on the national stage in both church and state. May Christian scholars in the age of Trump have the courage to give the masses what benefits them rather than what has been mandated in their name.
