Written by P. Jesse Rine |
Thursday, November 30, 2023
This is the diversity we need: Christian colleges and universities that are unafraid to pursue their distinctive missions regardless of the spirit of the age. When acting in accordance with its trademark commitment to curricular intentionality, faith integration, and programmatic integrity, Christian higher education offers something different in the marketplace than the vast majority of educational options available to prospective students. Professional handwringers may lament the lack of conformity to regnant ideologies, but the rest of us should applaud principled independence as a buttress to academic freedom, religious autonomy, and freedom of association. In an age of capitulation, American higher education—and the public it serves—are better for it.

Have you heard? Writers for The Chronicle of Higher Education are concerned. Very concerned.
It turns out that not all colleges and universities are exercising their academic freedom in the same way. In fact, some have even proposed alternative approaches to engaging diversity contra the antiracism of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi.
Now, you may be thinking this sounds exactly like what academic freedom should entail—different people approaching important issues from their own considered perspectives. But don’t worry, the higher education commentariat will set you straight.
You see, the only way for colleges and universities to foster success for all students is to implement Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Gender Ideology. It’s just a fact. People who question this fact are dangerous to democracy.
One such person is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Keith E. Whittington declares that DeSantis has unleashed a “terrifying plot against higher education” via his Stop WOKE Act, which threatens majors in Gender Studies and CRT. Presumably the threat to democracy also includes the 6 in 10 state lawmakers who voted for the bill, as well as the 6 in 10 Floridians who returned DeSantis to the governor’s mansion for a second term after the bill became law.
Lest you conclude that the problem could be limited to just one state, Megan Zahneis is here to alert you to the insidious consequences of anti-woke activity. She reports that the spread of anti-DEI legislation “is having a chilling effect on the recruitment of faculty members and administrators in Florida and Texas.” Even more worrisome is the totally real threat of brain drain from these states—plus Georgia and North Carolina—where a staggering one-third of faculty “said they were actively considering employment in another state.”
Conditions are so dire that colleges have begun building a modern-day underground railroad for beleaguered students. Amita Chatterjee profiles Colorado College’s Healing and Affirming Village and Empowerment Network (HAVEN), a program targeting students from the anti-DEI states of Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. This altruistic initiative aims to give refuge to as many as 10 transfer students, each of whom will receive credit for previous coursework, guaranteed campus housing, and full consideration for financial aid.
A clear picture emerges from these stories. Threats to democracy have so damaged American universities that faculty and students alike must seek shelter in the remaining academic enclaves that still know how to properly honor diversity. The situation is bleak, or so we are told.
By this point, you may have developed the sneaking suspicion that a certain political agenda is directing the reporting of one of our nation’s leading trade publications for higher education. Unfortunately, the next story will do little to disabuse you of that notion.
Helen Huiskes, herself a senior at Wheaton College (IL), reports that the woke wars have claimed another casualty—the integrity of Christian higher education. It seems many Christian colleges are reacting to the DEI controversy in ways both cynical and craven. Some are policing the content professors teach in class. Others are writing statements on CRT to attract more applicants. Few will host Jemar Tisby on campus anymore, and one can only assume that Tisby’s former boss, the aforementioned Kendi, won’t be receiving many more speaking invitations either.
In Huiskes’ telling, these developments point to Christian higher education’s willingness to abandon racial justice in pursuit of stronger enrollment. Hers is a shopworn progressive framing: “Don’t subscribe to critical theory’s worldview of power, privilege, and intersectionality? You must care more about the bottom line than about loving your minoritized neighbors.” Against the backdrop of recent trends in American higher education, however, the institutional behaviors she describes should be viewed as praiseworthy acts of courage and conviction, not recalcitrant avoidance of the real issues surrounding race in America.
For decades, leftist ideology steadily advanced through key American institutions, laying the groundwork for the cultural revolution that erupted in the summer of 2020. Colleges and universities were central sites for this advance, the activist spirit of which became more aggressive and transparent after the election of President Donald Trump. The trajectory of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), a national organization of scholars of postsecondary institutions, is illustrative.
The 2016 ASHE Annual Conference commenced the day after Trump’s election, which sent shockwaves through the left-leaning association. The following year, ASHE President Shaun Harper described American higher education as an enterprise conceived in racism and declared that scholars must fight the abuses of white power in the academy. The 2018 ASHE conference theme, “Envisioning the Woke Academy,” was promoted by an eight-minute video of scholars declaring that “current higher education research is in an awakening process.” The ultimate goal? To cultivate a critical consciousness that recognizes existing forms of systemic oppression, such as inequality and microaggressions, and brings about institutional “transformation for justice.”
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Although the best comfort comes from God’s word, Christians have for centuries reflected on the hardships of life in light of the truth of God’s word in those seasons and written beautiful poetry shaped by the ideas and principles of the Scripture to find perspective and hope in God.
God’s people have never been strangers to sorrow and suffering. In His final instructions in the Upper Room, our Saviour warned us,
Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world (John 16:32–33).
Those words had particular application to the scattering of the sheep after the Shepherd was struck (cf. Zech. 13:7, Matt. 26:31) in His arrest by the Jewish Priests and condemnation by the Romans, but nonetheless we have come to know all to well the abiding application and truth of the Saviour’s words: In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
Affliction and tribulation are not unique to the New Covenant Church. The faithful in the Hebrew Church suffered greatly at the hands of their pagan neighbors and the wicked within the Old Covenant Church as well.
The ancient foe of God’s people works with hateful cunning and power to drive God’s people to despair. In the face of the rage of the devil and his minions, God’s people have for millennia cried to Him in song seeking both aid and solace, for they have learned: He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.
During my time at Grove City College, I spent many hours in Harbison Chapel playing hymns and psalms. Apart from reading the Scripture, there are few things more spiritually fruitful than meditating upon the prayers and praises offered by God’s people from of old.

I. Comfort from the Psalter
Growing up Lutheran, we chanted from the Psalter each Lord’s Day, but Presbyterians have a special love for the Psalter and singing from it is an essential part of the worship of God. It is right that in sorrow we turn first to the Psalter for words to sing and pray, since they are words given by God’s Holy Spirit to the Church expressly for our use in prayer and singing.
The Old Covenant saints were often acquainted with affliction at the hands of the wicked, and their experiences can teach us how to suffer and grieve well as God’s people. In their sorrows, the Old Covenant saints found comfort from God’s coming victory. The Trinity Psalter Hymnal provides an excellent resource for Christians who are grieving and lamenting to call out to God in faith and hope.
Psalm 68
Although the enemies of God’s people may have their day and inflict horrible wounds upon God’s holy ones, the psalmist instructs us to draw comfort from the certain glorious triumph of our God.

In Psalm 68, David looks forward to the day when all those who hate God and His people will be scattered and perish and God restores joy to His people in His glory:
God shall arise, and by His might Put all His enemies to flight;In conquest shall He quell them. Let those who hate Him, scattered, fleeBefore His glorious majesty, For God Himself shall fell them.Just as the wind drives smoke away, So God will scatter the arrayOf those who evil cherish. As wax that melts before the fire,So vanquished by God’s dreadful ire, Shall all the wicked perish.
But let the just with joyful voice In God’s victorious might rejoice;Let them exult before Him! O sing to God, His praise proclaimAnd raise a Psalm unto His Name; In joyful songs adore Him.Lift up your voice and sing aloud To Him who rides upon the cloudsHigh in the spacious heavens. The LORD, that is His glorious Name.Sing unto Him with loud acclaim; To Him be glory given.
The Trinity Psalter Hymnal uses a setting from the Genevan Psalter for Psalm 68, which is both profound and powerful in the way it emphasizes the words and gives hope that God will set all things right.
Psalm 80
As Book III of the Psalter (Psalms 73-89) draws to a close, the psalms seem to focus increasingly on the plight of God’s people as the pagans from the nations come in and oppress the servants of the Living God. Book III (Psalm 89) even seems to end with the question, “Is God still King?”
Psalm 80 calls out from deep anguish to God as the “Shepherd of Israel.” The psalmist (Asaph) reflects on God’s mighty throne “above the cherubim” and on God’s past grace toward His Church: “you who led Joseph like a flock.”

While God had planted His people in a good land and shown great care for them in the past, the psalmist quickly turns his attention to the urgent need for restoration and help, because the nations have come in and ravaged God’s helpless people (organ setting):
A strife you have made us to neighbors around,Our foes in their laughter and scoffing abound.O LORD God of hosts, in your mercy restore,And we shall be saved when your face shines once more.
When the enemies of God have come into the Church, His people can be assured their Redeemer will restore His people and give them peace afresh.
Psalm 94
In our grief and sorrow at injustice, God’s people’s thoughts inevitably turn to vengeance. But God has reserved vengeance for Himself (Cf. Deut. 32:25, Rom 13:4), and so He has provided psalms and prayers for His people to use for this very purpose. One of them is Psalm 94. The Book of Psalms for Worship contains an excellent setting (Tune: Austria):

We have already witnessed the media transition from reporting on events to now seeming to imply the victims of a mentally ill woman are somehow to blame for an act of unspeakable horror because she comes from a more culturally acceptable community of people than those who are part of a Christian school.
As the wicked use the slaughter of children and elderly to advance an agenda of demonic mutilation of the human body and effacing of the imago Dei, God has provided in the Psalter words both of abundant comfort and prayer:
God, the LORD, from whom is vengeance, God, Avenger, O shine forth!Judge of all the earth, O rise up! Pay the proud what they are worth.O LORD, how long will the wicked, How long will the wicked gloat?From their mouths they pour out violence, Of themselves all wicked boast.
Who the ear made, can He hear not? Who formed eyes, can He not see?Who warns nations, will He strike not? Who men teaches, knows not He?All the thoughts of men the LORD knows; Knows that but a breath are they.Blessed the man whom You reprove, LORD; Through Your law You point his way.
God is aware the wicked seem to be on the ascent and they sit in power for too long. But the saint can take heart, God sees, hears, warns, and teaches. And one day God will give His people rest:
Give him rest from days of trouble Till the wicked are brought down.For the LORD stays with His people, He will not forsake His own.Righteous judgments will be rendered, Justice will return again;Those of upright heart will follow In the way of justice then.
The psalter is our best comfort in affliction, because the words come from God Himself. It is said that when Martin Luther, when he received news of his father’s death, he took his Psalter and went to his room for the rest of the day, and there he found the sufficiency of God’s comfort.
As we sing the Psalter in affliction, we are joining a great company of God’s people stretching back thousands of years who looked to God and His word when they lack the strength to press on.
II. Comfort from the Hymnal
Although the best comfort comes from God’s word, Christians have for centuries reflected on the hardships of life in light of the truth of God’s word in those seasons and written beautiful poetry shaped by the ideas and principles of the Scripture to find perspective and hope in God.
This Is My Father’s World
A well-loved hymn whose third stanza seems especially appropriate for the past week (organ setting):
This is my Father’s world: O let me ne’er forgetThat though the wrong seems oft so strong,God is the Ruler yet. This is my Father’s World!The battle is not done. Jesus who died shall be satisfied.And earth and heaven be one.
The reign of God does not immediately nullify our sadness and sorrow. But Christ who died will make all things new and will have the last say. These words point us forward to one of the closing visions of the Scripture:
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:2–4).
The Scripture does not tell us our grief is something to suppress or to dismiss as “worldly,” but God does promise us there will come a day when all the causes of grief and sorrow are removed forever. That is something to sing about!
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If ‘Defenders of the West’ is our new, Christian ‘Plutarch’s Lives’, then let us recognize the truth of our ancestors’ greatness, and piety and let us validate their sacrifices and imitate them. The Crusades were good and right. The myths have been rewritten with our people as the villains because the powers of the air fear a Christendom with muscle. At some point, we must all decide if we will believe the stories about our ancestors from people who hate us and our King, Jesus, or if we will believe what our ancestors said about themselves.

Western Christians have forgotten the meaning of the word persecution. They have also forgotten that once upon a time Christians, when they had the power, prestige and wealth to put a stop to persecution, resisted persecution with violent, military force. Raymond Ibrahim is on a quest to remind us of both of these forgotten truths. 
In his book Defenders of the West, Ibrahim continues the work he started in his previous book, Sword and Scimitar. In Sword and Scimitar, Ibrahim chose to focus on events, specifically on battles that shaped the Crusades and the conflict that he believes must be continuous between Muslims and Christians. In Defenders of the West, he has chosen to go a different route by focusing on the men themselves. Each chapter is a succinct biography of one of the heroes of the Crusades.
After a very good forward by Victor Davis Hanson (whom Ibrahim studied under), Ibrahim gets into his introduction to set the stage for his work. His introduction takes a militant stance right away and sets out to right the wrong of intentionally misrepresenting the Crusades, Crusaders and their Islamic counterparts. Ibrahim has already established himself as a historical and contemporary expert on Islam. In Defenders, he lays out the true historical account of the misdeeds of the Muslims of the era in order to clarify the stakes and motivations of the Crusaders. He also has a secondary goal of clarifying actual Islamic beliefs about how non-Muslims are to be treated according to their writings. The misunderstandings of the modern media regarding Islamic doctrine are so ubiquitous that even some self-professing Muslims believe they are a “religion of peace,” clearly in opposition to their history and teachings.
Ibrahim has a strong desire to get a complete picture of each man he is highlighting in his book and so he considers sources both friendly to and opposed to each subject. This pays dividends later on when seemingly outlandish historical claims are made about the appearance, piety or fighting prowess of one of the Crusaders, only to then have those hyperbolic claims be confirmed begrudgingly by their enemies in private communiques or official records. 
The Great Men
Ibrahim’s work is like a medieval, Christian version of Plutarch’s Lives. A book in which Plutarch set out to strengthen the Roman ethos by linking the heroes of Rome to a heroic Greek counterpart. Americans understand this in a way because of the hackneyed trope in politics of appealing to the founders. Sometimes this is warranted and accurate and sometimes it is absolutely false. A reversal of this is to accuse enemies of being “nazis” or “literally hitlooor.” These things are nearly universal in the way they are regarded. Most Americans give at least lip service to agreeing with the Founders or regarding Hitler as a villain. To connect a cause with them is to have instant ethos. This is the way many of the Romans viewed their Greek predecessors. Plutarch set out to write the definitive biographies of these men and show why Romans were equal to and surpassed their exploits.
Ibrahim doesn’t seek to pair each Crusader to another or to a predecessor in such a direct way. But many comparisons are easy to make within the book among the men he has chosen to write about and in some cases their Islamic adversaries. They are able to be grouped by region and temporal proximity for the useful purpose of comparing and contrasting and offering a wide range of personalities and physical types. If Ibrahim set out to present the men in the book as figures worthy of imitation, he has succeeded brilliantly. If he did not set out with that goal in mind, then these larger-than-life figures have overshadowed whatever other goals he had. Unlike the Romans who appealed to the greatness of their civilizational forebears the Hellenists, when the Crusaders walked the Earth, they considered all the great men of their day to have already bowed the knee to the Cross of Christ. They were of one Kingdom. They sought to imitate biblical warrior kings, pious ancestors, and Christ Himself. 
After telling my 5-year-old son a few anecdotes about Richard the Lionheart, he laid siege to our sofa and started ordering his stuffed animals to convert to Christianity. (Ongoing discussions of Soteriology are clearly necessary.) It is very difficult for a man to read this book and not find himself inspired by the men within. He wants to have a Crusader birthday party. He found a snapping turtle shell near the creek and was hoping I could make him a shield out of it with a lion on it.
Ibrahim knows that the study of the lives of great men is recalling a former way of studying history that has been neglected. Classically trained and educated people are generally more aware of the historiography of the individual because of exposure to older historical works (like Plutarch) which are focused on people’s lives, not merely a series of events. A dry history of mere events can be interesting enough if you find the period compelling, but there is a reason why our best stories have characters in them. To enter history, you must do so through the life of a character who lived it. In that way, even boring periods of history have proved quite captivating to readers.
Surveying the Field
Each chapter, except the introduction and the conclusion, covers a specific Crusader. Ibrahim chooses to highlight Crusaders from each of the major fronts of war with Islam in the Middle Ages and they are presented in chronological order, some overlap each other. The Holy Land in the war with the Saracens and Egyptians, Spain and the war with the Moroccan Moors, and the Balkans in the war with the Ottoman Empire. The crusaders featured are Godfrey of Boullion (French/Frankish), Rodrigo “El Cid” de Vivar (Spanish), Richard the Lionheart (English), Ferdinand III (Spanish), Louis IX (French), John Hunyadi (Hungarian), George “Skanderbeg” Castrioti (Albanian), and Vlad Dracula (Yes, that one. Romanian).
The chapters have a formula that does not get old even though it is routine. First, the situation is explained. In virtually all cases, Muslims have achieved the upper hand politically and are using their power to extort Christians, enslave them, steal their children and murder them. This is a dark part of each chapter. The atrocities committed by the Muslims against their Christian subjects are nearly too heinous to mention. Mass murder, enslavement, brainwashing, forced conversion and forced circumcision, mass pedophilic rape, routine covenant breaking, destruction of churches and holy sites, and forcing captives to fight against their own people. This is an important chronology to understand. The Christian Crusaders always set out to recapture Christian lands and put a stop to the abuse and persecution of other Christians, or to actively defend lands under threat of Muslim invasion. The Crusaders did not invade Muslim lands unprovoked.
As an aside here, this realization is probably a revolution to some people on its own. All of us, even friends of mine who were homeschooled by based parents and myself (private Christian school educated), believe that, at best, the Crusades were a conventional land war meant to expand the control of Islam or the Roman Church. They believe that the Pope dispatched troops to the Holy Lands to expand his personal influence and if the Christians didn’t go then they got excommunicated or deposed. While there is no doubt some questionable doctrines being bandied about at this time in history, such as indulgences for Crusaders, that is not the reality. The Pope requested Christian kings to help in response to outrages beyond count.
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