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Byran University |
The latest in our “what is going on at…” series focuses on Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee. Bryan is an evangelical (fundamentalist?) Christian college named after William Jennings Bryan and located in the same town where he attempted to defend creationism at the famous Scopes Trial.
I have actually been to Bryan College. In 2008 I was doing a week-long Gilder Lehrman Institute seminar in Bledsoe County, Tennessee and drove over the mountain to Dayton on an afternoon off from teaching. I toured the courthouse where the Scopes Trial took place and then drove through Bryan’s campus.
I am guessing that the Bryan campus is a lot less peaceful these days than it was on that warm summer afternoon in 2008. According to a large group of student protesters, it appears that the Bryan administration has been clamping down on faculty who do not hold to a strict creationist view of human origins. Here is a taste of an article from the Chattanooga Times-Free Press describing the student protest:
Hey John,
The older I get the more convinced I am that many so-called Evangelicals did not make a clean break from Fundamentalism. They may position themselves as being different, but the feet on the ground realities look quite similar.
I think I lean toward Kurt's interpretation, but “evangelical” is such a slippery category I'm skeptical anything could be identified as an “evangelical mainstream.” Increasingly, evangelical renewal and fundamentalist reaction look t me like two sides of the same coin.
Finke and Stark would predict the opposite; “stricter” religious groups solve the free rider problem and out perform “looser” groups.
What's happening at Bryan College (not “University”) has little or nothing to do with the cultural politics of evangelicalism or fundamentalism. The creationist kerfuffle is pretty much a smokescreen that masks a lot of deep dysfunction within its administration and on its board, some emerging and serious concerns about its accreditation, tanking enrollment numbers, and profound financial struggles. Perhaps there was a thought that becoming a bastion of Creation-Museuem-Style-Conservatism might turn the ship. But they have lost (or are in the process of losing) some of their best faculty members, angered their alumni, and alienated their students. It's a sad story, and some worry that Bryan will not survive.
Solid analysis, Jay. Thanks for this comment.
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