Extremely strict colleges...your thoughts?

:tonofbricks:


From which school did Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church graduate?

How many want to send their kiddos there?

Edit: From Wikipedia

Three IF schools to form that sort of man.

 

And a lot of influence from the devil.

 

So he left an IFB school like BJU, left Prairie Bible (maybe an IFB school) but got a degree from a place that did things that wouldn't be permitted at an IFB school. Seems to me that he was a failure at the "strict" schools, but did well at a school with relaxed standards.

How is he a product of of IFB schools?

 

Yes, because it is necessary to keep the campus safe.

 

Phelps is -- to many in this nation -- the embodiment of IFB. I'll not make excuses for him. I just wanted to make a point, that attending a college with those strict guidelines CAN turn out a warped individual, who takes almost everything in the Scriptures out of context.

Phelps, for instance, took to task the faculty of the non IFB college he attended, and his (in his mind) is taking to task members of our society for merely "being there" because he can reconcile in a very legalistic way God's judgment against our fallen soldiers because "God hates fags..." In Phelps mind, God judges our nation's men because we as a nation, somehow, "love fags." Phelps is off his rocker, but he is off his rocker using a KJV Bible and a theology spawned from an IFB background.

Note that I am NOT trying to make an example of the entire IFB movement. Heavens no! But, neither am I for legalistic expressions of culture that do not help real students do real ministry in a real world.

 

Apparently he is also the emobodiment of the IFB movement to you also. And you ought to know better.

btw, where do we do ministry? I am a real person doing real ministry in the real world? You guys act like the fundamentalists have the franchise on the Acme Judgement Company when your statements are full of the judgementalism that you profess to abhore.

Also, I am a graduate of an IFB school but they certainly would not claim me as one of theirs. I rarely use the the KJV and then only from memory because it was the only version growing up, sometimes use the NIV but mostly the NASB, use contemporary music, don't wear a tie, pastor a Southern Baptist church and haven't listened to a Jack Hyles sermon in 20 years.

 

I thought that I made it clear that I was not lumping in the IFB. If I thought that all IFB were in the camp, I'd have said so. Please don't read between the lines.

My point was that Phelps -- admittedly off the deep end (I said so above) -- attended schools where the sort of strict behavioral code was enforced, and he is a by-product of that sort of teaching when it becomes one's all in all.

We're talking about legalistic schools here, not the IFB.

 

I remember when I was in my 20's talking to several others in that age bracket about college. They had gone to a strict college that allowed no dancing, drinking, or mixed swimming ... probably some other activities as well. Anyway what it boiled down to was student there either would not drink with their friends, but would sneak and drink alone or would only drink with the friends they trusted not to snitch on them. I was going to a state school and we didn't even think of doing some of the things these folk talked about doing. It seemed it was more of a challenge to them to see if they could get away with the drinking or whatever. Just because a school has strict rules I would never assume that such activities do not go on there. The school was in the South and I believe there was no problem, at that time, with smoking.

 

It's very simple. This particular rule does not qualify Tennessee Temple as an "extremely strict" college in my opinion. It is, no doubt, far stricter than I prefer, but, doubtfully as strict as the college I attended.

This extreme strictness is not good in my opinion, however, some colleges are spiritual enough to produce giants for God in spite of their ridiculous strictness- but certainly not because of it.

Lee Roberson and Clarence Sexton represent those types of colleges. I think they should ease up- but I do not deny that they are doing a great job. I pray God will raise an army of young men with the spiritual wisdom of these men- not carbon copies, mind you, but that they would pick up on some of the dynamite traits of these men (hopefully Dr. Roberson left some behind).

 

Fyi

Prairie Bible Institute is an independent Bible Inst. in Canada unless it has changed drastically.

http://www.prairie.edu/

 

Sorry, that's not my experience with other fundamentalists.

 

Good job with the guilt by association argument. But actually, Prairie may have been fundamentalist when Phelps graduated, but John Muir was never fundamentalist.

 

Yeah, folks, I'll tell you, it really ruins a person in God's service to have a strict lifestyle, to actually have high standards of personal separation. Why, we can tell that from history.

Think of that Hudson Taylor guy. Why, he was against reading novels of all things! After he started the China Inland Mission, on the boat to China with the first group of missionaries with the mission, he forbade that wicked novel reading! Probably ruined all of their lives and ministries, or at least made automatons of the young missionaries, and of course the CIM totally failed...or did it?

What about R. A. Torrey? In his writings and sermons, the man railed against going to the theatre (before movies) and other such sins. Why, he probably ruined the lives of many of those students at Moody Bible Institute. And then as one of the original fundamentalists, he ruined the rest of us who followed. God probably never used him after that, right? Or did He....

And John R. Rice was probably the worst of all. He wrote pamphlets against movie-going and all the rest of it. Probably as a result of his strict lifestyle, his tract only reached 30 million copies or so world-wide in over 20 languages. Who knows how God could have used him if he hadn't been so strict!

 

Columnist Ann Coulter's column this week is about how old one should be to vote.

This is from her column at http://www.anncoulter.com

I am the product of Union University, a Baptist school in Jackson, TN. We had some pretty strict rules back in the 1950s when i was a student there, but nothing like some of the ones mentioned in the OP. Looking back, I can see why we needed such rules. We were nowhere near being adults.

Argue the strictness of the rules, but don't argue against rules. Those kids need them big-time.

 

This has to be one of the worst examples of guilt by association I have ever seen. To bring Phelps into a discussion of schools with strict rules because he went to one (or two) violates all sorts of principles of good debate. Do you really not think that schools with lax rules also produce crackpots?

Phelps sort of behaviour is shaped by his own wicked sin nature. He is not a 'product' of these schools simply because he went there.

There are, perhaps, good reasons to question the validity and value of such strict rules, but Phelps is not one of them.

He calls his church 'Baptist.' Does that give us cause to question all Baptist churches because they can produce this kind of behaviour?

We are much better served if we don't let our emotions control our debate.

 

Good post, Tom. Way back when I took adolescent psychology in college, we were taught that adolescence continues until about 25.

Interesting that you should mention Union U. My wife went there for a year and a half starting in 1974 for their nursing program, but found out she wasn't cut out to be a nurse. Once when they had a famous country singer in for a concert, the singer got drunk and was propositioning the college girls. Seems like higher standards would have really helped protect the young ladies entrusted by their parents to the college that time!

 

Again, my point is missed... Let me say it again.

PHELPS is a NUTCASE.

But, independent schools, with strict legalistic ways helped feed his lunacy. All his notions were reinforced instead of disavowed.

And, now I come under attack for merely suggesting that the legalistic road may not be the best way to go. How is that much different from Phelps, save for a magnitude of order in the attack?

I am ONLY talking about legalistic college rules here, not making value decisions on the IFB, or its people. I can be against the legalism without dumping on the people. Get it?