A philosophy professor has resigned from the faculty of Bethel College because the school has adopted a policy specifying a literal interpretation of Genesis.
On Thursday, Bethel College released an Educational Philosophy of Origins policy, adopted by the Board of Trustees in June. Due to the controversy over the literal view of the creation of humanity, Dr. Jim Stump had resigned from the college June 26. Stump was a Professor of Philosophy at the college, and had been associated with it as a teacher or administrator since 1998. He also provided leadership for the college’s BUILD honors program.
In a joint statement released at the time of Stump’s resignation, college President Gregg Chenoweth praised Dr. Stump’s relationship with the college, and stated Stump was helping the college transition and assign new leadership for the BUILD program.
Bethel College is associated with the Missionary Church denomination …
Christianity requires so many intellectual compromises that few secular schools want anything to do with a man whose roots are in the sectarian academy. I hope Stump’s career isn’t over, because on first impression he seems like he is probably a good man.
Too many of these schools, already struggling, have persuaded themselves that, Republican Party-like, what they need to do is hew to the Eternal Truth ever more stringently. What they are in fact doing is slitting their own throats, making themselves inhospitable laughingstocks in the eyes of those capable scholars who might have been willing to join their faculties — and hastening their inevitable decline.