Tag: education

Battle over religion in public schools waged in one of America’s fastest-growing cities

February 26, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

McKINNEY, Texas — Public school officials in one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities are being accused of violating the separation of church and state.

The controversy has been simmering in this once-tiny cotton-farming community, about 30 miles north of Dallas, since last summer when Rick McDaniel, superintendent of the McKinney Independent School District, prayed at a pulpit adorned with a Christian cross — during a mandatory school employee meeting at a church.

Last month, under pressure from concerned parents, the 24,500-student school district decided to end a decade-plus practice of conducting high school commencement ceremonies at the same church, Prestonwood Baptist, a Southern Baptist megachurch in nearby Plano.

The change outraged Prestonwood Pastor Jack Graham, one of President Trump’s evangelical advisers and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“It appears religious freedom is under attack at the McKinney Public Schools,” Graham said in a Twitter post. “It was our refusal to remove the cross from view that created this cowardly decision.”

In a follow-up post, Graham added, “Just wondering on what planet a church,synagogue, or mosque would be expected to cover its religious symbols to host a public school graduation.”

And in another tweet, the pastor alleged that school administrators had “yielded to the pressure of atheist groups and their supporters.”

McDaniel’s prayer drew the ire of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which demanded that the school “temporarily cover iconography” to keep graduation ceremonies secular.

Its co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, said in a statement after the school district’s decision: “We are pleased that the school has moved its graduation to a secular location rather than attempt to modify a house of worship into a place that appears secular. The district’s decision to change its tradition to protect its students’ rights of conscience is anything but cowardly.”

Across the nation, church-state clashes like the one in McKinney “are happening more and more,” said Charles Haynes, founding director of the Newseum Institute’s Religious Freedom Center in Washington, D.C.

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR. The Houston Chronicle was among newspapers that published this story.

Christian universities feeling the pinch as Churches of Christ shrink

January 2, 2018

Sharp decline seen in number of freshmen who identify with the numerically declining fellowship.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

Since today’s college freshmen were infants, roughly 1,200 Churches of Christ in the United States have closed, and the number of men, women and children in the pews nationally has shrunk by 200,000.

In the same 18-year period, universities associated with the fellowship — from Abilene Christian University in Texas to York College in Nebraska — have seen a 51 percent decline in students who identify with Churches of Christ.

Just 2,177 freshmen who enrolled at 14 such universities in fall 2017 gave their religious affiliation as “Church of Christ” — down from 4,411 in fall 2000, a national survey found.

At the start of the 21st century, two out of every three freshmen at those dozen-plus universities — 66 percent of 6,643 total first-year students — cited their heritage in Churches of Christ.

Now, that figure stands at two out of every five freshmen — 39 percent of 5,603 total first-year students — revealed the annual survey conducted by Trace S. Hebert, a higher education researcher at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn.

“In previous generations and during much of the 20th century, Church of Christ affiliated institutions were beneficiaries of a certain type of ‘brand loyalty’ from C-of-C congregations, church leaders, church members, and alumni from affiliated institutions who would encourage young people to go to an affiliated institution of higher education,” Hebert wrote in a recent report to the Christian universities’ presidents.

“The C-of-C enrollment data revealing declining numbers of C-of-C enrollees in affiliated institutions suggests that the era of brand loyalty has substantively diminished from what it once was,” added Hebert, associate dean of Lipscomb’s College of Education.

Read the full story.

Expanded interviews: Q&A: Christian university leaders on recruiting students in a declining fellowship

Related story: Christian higher ed challenges: Parents of college freshmen weigh in

These stories appear in the January 2018 print edition of The Christian Chronicle. 

 

Closing doors: Small religious colleges struggle for survival

November 20, 2017

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

SHAWNEE, Okla. — Duncan Tiemeyer chose St. Gregory’s University because he wanted a faith-based education that would teach him more than how to succeed in a career.

The 550-student Catholic liberal arts college in Oklahoma traces its roots to French monks who moved to Indian Territory in 1875, intent on developing the bodies, minds and souls of Native American and settler children.

“Here, we are taught not only to focus on our five-year plan but also our 100-year plan and our 500-year plan,” said Tiemeyer, 22, a senior business and theology major from Houston. “What are we preparing for? Are we living our lives in a way that is getting us to the next life? Are we going to be able to go to heaven?”

However, the brand of education offered by St. Gregory’s — where Benedictine monks still pray multiple times daily in a chapel beside a cemetery filled with the remains of their predecessors — will come to an abrupt halt at the fall semester’s end.

“It’s just a tragic and sad loss, and I’m grieving for our students and faculty and staff who are working through this loss,” said St. Gregory’s President Michael A. Scaperlanda.

The financially strapped Roman Catholic institution, 40 miles east of Oklahoma City, is just the latest small religious college to close in an increasingly competitive higher education marketplace.

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

Amid scandal, Baylor’s first woman president brings fresh start to Baptist university

June 27, 2017

Linda Livingstone has a history of bucking tradition.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

WACO, Texas (RNS) Two decades before she took office as the first woman president in Baylor University’s 172-year history, Linda Livingstone helped break down a different barrier in this Central Texas city.

Then and now, Livingstone — who first nurtured her Christian faith in a little white church building in small-town Perkins, Okla. — insists she wasn’t trying to make history but simply to follow God’s direction.

In 1998, as a business professor during her first stint at Baylor, Livingstone served as co-chair of Calvary Baptist Church’s pastor selection committee.

“I remember very distinctly that we were given the resume of Julie Pennington-Russell and her sermon tape,” Livingstone, 57, said in a recent interview on Baylor’s tree-shaded, 1,000-acre campus on the banks of the Brazos River. “I can remember I went home, and I listened very closely to her sermon tape, and I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s really good. She’s a really good preacher.’”

But Livingstone, whose Methodist upbringing familiarized her with female pastors, worried that Pennington-Russell’s status as the only woman candidate might be biasing her perception. So Livingstone, who first joined a Baptist church while playing basketball at Oklahoma State University from 1978 to 1982, listened to the tape again. She liked it even more the second time.

A majority of the congregation agreed, voting 190-73 to hire Pennington-Russell as the first female senior pastor in the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The decision, as Livingstone recalls, caused “wonderful families” to leave the church and drew protesters on the first Sunday that Pennington-Russell preached.

“It was controversial in the church,” said Livingstone, who left Baylor in 2002 to oversee the business school at Church of Christ-affiliated Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. “But I have to say it is one of the things that I’m most pleased to have been involved in, because she was absolutely the best person we had in the pool for that church at that particular time. She did amazing things in the church.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

‘Join in with us to save Southwestern,’ prays new president of historically black Christian college

May 16, 2017
Terrell, Texas, institution works to overcome declining enrollment and beleaguered finances.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

After nearly half a century with Jack Evans at the helm, Southwestern Christian College — the only historically black higher education institution associated with Churches of Christ — has a new president.

Ervin D. Seamster Jr., senior minister for the 450-member Light of the World Church of Christ in Dallas, assumed the top post at the Terrell, Texas, college in January.

Seamster told The Christian Chronicle this week he’s praying that “all of our brethren across racial and cultural lines would join in with us to save Southwestern.”

In recent years, beleaguered finances and declining enrollment — which the new president said had fallen to just 43 students before he arrived — have threatened the college’s future. Less than a decade ago, enrollment stood at 227.

Seamster is a Southwestern alumnus who for nearly two decades has used an event called the Fab Five Revival to raise funds to support students.
From 1999 to 2002, he served as a special assistant at Abilene Christian University in Texas to the former president, Royce Money.

Besides his Bachelor of Science degree from Southwestern, Seamster holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.

Originally known as the Southern Bible Institute in Fort Worth, Texas, Southwestern Christian College moved to Terrell — 30 miles east of Dallas — in 1949.

Evans had served as president since 1967, after four years as academic dean. He helped Southwestern obtain its full accreditation as a two-year junior college in 1973. In 1982, the college began awarding four-year bachelor’s degrees in Bible and religious education.

In an interview with the Chronicle this week, Seamster discussed his new role at Southwestern and the opportunities and challenges facing his alma mater. The discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Read the full interview.

This interview appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Ph.D. optional: Why a Christian university with doctoral programs chose a preacher president

May 5, 2017

With the selection of minister David Shannon, Freed-Hardeman trustees emphasize spiritual leadership, communications skills and connections with Churches of Christ.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

When trustees of Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., first identified preacher David Shannon as a candidate for the Christian university’s presidency, a key alumnus voiced concern about Shannon’s lack of academic credentials and higher education experience.

That alumnus: Shannon himself.

“I didn’t want to do anything that would show disrespect to the university or to the academic community that is so strong here,” said Shannon, who has served for 18 years as minister for the Mt. Juliet Church of Christ, a growing congregation 20 miles east of Nashville.

“It wasn’t a quick process for me to overcome,” the 1989 Bible graduate told The Christian Chronicle. “After the first meeting, I told them I would have to think about it. … My wife (Tracie) and I prayed over and over about this, and never once did we pray for it.”

But eventually, the couple came to the same conclusion: God was leading them to return to their alma mater.

“We finally just reached a point where we said to each other and (to God) in our prayers, ‘If this is what you want, we’ll do it, but your will be done,’” said David Shannon, who traces his Freed-Hardeman roots to the mid-1980s, when former President E. Claude Gardner walked into a Centerville, Tenn.-area sawmill and recruited him.

Freed-Hardeman, which is associated with Churches of Christ, has 1,900 students from 33 states and 20 countries. It offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, known as SACS.

However, as Freed-Hardeman’s trustees searched for current President Joe Wiley’s successor, they weren’t worried about Shannon’s absence of a master’s degree from an accredited university — much less a doctorate — or his unfamiliarity with the inner workings of Christian higher education.

They were more interested in his spiritual leadership, his communications skills and his close ties with — and affection for — both Freed-Hardeman and its faith heritage, board Chairman John Law said.

Read the full story.

This story appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Religious freedom in public schools

July 1, 2013

Yes, it’s constitutional to teach the Bible during the school day.

First Place, Education Reporting, Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

SIMPSONVILLE, S.C. — Eight middle school students gather around a classroom table at the Holland Park Church of Christ.

Teacher Becky Mays asks if anyone has a prayer request.

“My grandma,” one student says.

“My uncle,” another says. “He might be paralyzed.”

“My dad because he lost his job a while back,” a third student adds. “He’s still going through a hard time.”

This is no extraordinary scene, except that these are not Sunday school pupils.
Instead, they are students from the public school across the street, studying the Bible during the regular school day on a Friday — and it’s totally constitutional.

Read the full story.

• Related story: Christian education program takes director back to her roots (reporting from Greenville, S.C.).