Written by Melanie A. Howard |
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
The Bible highlights a wide variety of (often disruptive and disobedient) activities that it describes without censure. The implication for student life staff and college administrators, then, might be to help channel students’ energies for dissent in positive directions that align with the biblical witness rather than to be quick to quash dissenting activity, even if it interrupts the status quo.

Late in the spring 2024 semester, several college campuses were rocked by student (and faculty) protests over the conflict in Gaza. More recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education broke a story about an instructor whose contract was not renewed after he had publicly opposed an increase in parking fees. On the surface, these events could appear to have little in common. However, despite what might appear to be radically different issues, both scenarios raise the same fundamental question: What is the place of critique or dissent on college campuses?
While this question has implications for all institutions of higher education, I would like to put a finer point on it: What is the place of criticism or dissent on Christian college campuses, and what resources from the biblical text might lend themselves to answering this question?
Rather than try to address larger questions about the freedom of speech or academic freedom on campus, I would instead like to inquire how the Bible itself might serve as a conversation partner in considering such questions. In doing so, I suggest that the Bible’s provision of multiple examples of dissenters can offer a valuable resource for Christian college communities as they consider the place of protest on their campuses. By implicitly condoning dissent, highlighting a diversity of methods for dissent, and offering parameters for appropriate dissent, the Bible offers a rich resource for Christian colleges discerning how to encourage and/or limit expressions of dissent on their campuses.
The Bible as a Resource for Considering Dissent on College Campuses
In the Bible, Christian campuses can find a resource to support conversations about dissent on campus. Based on the rich collection of examples of dissent found in it, Christian universities that look to that text as their ethical foundation have an additional source, beyond those drawn upon by secular institutions, for informing moral reflection about the ethics of protest and dissent.
There is a wide diversity of dissenting activities illustrated throughout the pages of the Bible. Although each of the following biblical examples deserves more consideration, a brief overview demonstrates the array of biblical examples of critique, civil disobedience, and/or protest:

Micaiah (1 Kings 22:1–40): The account of the prophet Micaiah provides an example of a figure who refuses to go along with the status quo, even when he has been instructed to do so (1 Kings 22:13). Instead, Micaiah vows to speak only the word that the Lord gives him (1 Kings 22:14), even though this word contradicts what his superior wants to hear. Ultimately, Micaiah points out that the positive (albeit false) prophecies from the other prophets were the result of spirits of deception that the Lord permitted to deceive King Jehoshaphat. Micaiah alone was faithful to the word of the Lord in declaring the truth about the forthcoming disaster.
Esther (Esther 4–8): The well-known story of Esther recounts Queen Esther’s daring quest to save the Jewish people from certain destruction. At a risk to her own life, Esther beseeches the king to spare the Jewish people. Although her action was risky and ran contrary to the plans that the leading rulers had made, Esther took it upon herself to resist and speak out against what she saw as a destructive course of action.
Shiphrah & Puah (Exodus 1:15–22): The Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah receive an order from Pharaoh to kill any newborn boys whom they help to deliver (Exodus 1:16). However, they disobey this order and allow the babies to live. The text specifies that this action of protest against a direct order was due to their fear of God (Exodus 1:17).
The Magi (Matthew 2:1–12): The unnamed foreigners who are the first in the Gospel of Matthew to meet the young Jesus receive a direct order from Herod to alert him to the whereabouts of Jesus (Matthew 2:8).

Read More
Related Posts:

If God says sound doctrine is good for us, then that’s the way it is. If He says meditating upon His law day and night is what makes a man prosper and mature (Ps. 1:3), then that’s simply what we’ve got to do. It matters very little if our flesh objects otherwise. God’s Word sets the standard. Our part is to believe and obey. So what does this look like practically? In short, it looks like giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the means God has supplied for the instruction and upbuilding of His church. 

…being nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. (1 Timothy 4:6, LSB)
If you were to ask the average Christian today how they are “nourished” in the faith — that is, how they are strengthened, fed, built up, or trained in spiritual maturity — what do you suppose they would say? Many might answer something along the lines of: community, fellowship with other believers, listening to worship songs, or putting on a good podcast, all of which of course are good and helpful things.
But if you were to ask the apostle Paul, it might surprise you to find he had quite a different answer to this question. According to him, the way we are trained in spiritual maturity is not primarily through any of these means, helpful as they are, but rather through the plain yet powerful instrument of words: “…being nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following” (v. 6).
Words. Teaching. Sound doctrine. These are the building blocks of spiritual maturity, according to the apostle. They are the means God has supplied for nourishing and strengthening His saints.
Now, this is a very helpful thing to point out, especially since, for us, none of these things seem at first to be very nourishing. In fact, few things might sound more drab to our modern ears than “sound doctrine.” And yet, there it is, right in the text.
What we have to remember, then, in order to not be at odds with Scripture, is that we are creatures of our age.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Raymond J. de Souza |
Saturday, February 25, 2023
There was a time when it was fashionable in self-consciously progressive Christian circles to incant the slogan that “the world sets the agenda for the Church.” In relation to homosexuality, for the likes of Martin and McElroy, it is the Court that sets the agenda for the Church—and not only the agenda, but the strategy and tactics as well. 

Two prominent American priests recently made important statements that indicate an attempt to shift the Catholic discussion about homosexuality.
Taking their lead from former Justice Anthony Kennedy, the father of constitutional rights for same-sex couples, Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego and Fr. James Martin, S.J., have both spoken recently of “hatred”—even the “demonic”—animating those who uphold traditional Christian teaching on human sexuality and chastity in regard to homosexuality. They chose a fitting model; Kennedy’s technique was massively effective.
Over several years, Kennedy wrote the majority opinions that established the Supreme Court’s same-sex jurisprudence. The first was Romer v. Evans in 1996, in which the majority overturned a Colorado ballot initiative prohibiting antidiscrimination laws on the basis of sexual orientation. Kennedy there first played the animus card: “the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.”
Colorado’s voters were, lacking reason, motivated by “animus.” That’s a neat maneuver, discrediting motives before getting around to the legal arguments. That would sustain Kennedy for nearly twenty years. In his final triumph, Kennedy adopted a gracious posture in Obergefell, which created a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. “Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here,” wrote Kennedy.
Yes and no, for Kennedy continued that when “sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the state itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied.”
“Animus” returns again, this time rooted in a supposedly “decent and honorable” desire to “exclude,” “demean and stigmatize.” It is clear that Kennedy thinks decent and honorable people really think the way that he does. Those who don’t are motivated by something other than reason.
Fr. Martin writes at Outreach, “An LGBTQ Catholic Resource” run by the Jesuit America magazine, which is more or less an LGBTQ Catholic Resource itself.
Read More
Related Posts: