When the university punished Dr. Meriwether, its message was loud and clear: You must endorse the university’s favored ideology or be punished. There is no room for dissent. But universities are meant to be a marketplace of ideas, not an assembly line for one type of thought. With its actions, Shawnee State ignored this fundamental truth as well as the Constitution. And the 6th Circuit’s decision sent a strong message to universities: you must respect the First Amendment rights of all professors, and that means you cannot force them to say things they do not believe. Dr. Meriwether took a stand for his First Amendment rights and secured a victory for every American’s right to speak in accordance with their beliefs.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether enjoys a spirited debate. As a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, there is plenty of that to go around in his classroom. And he is not afraid to voice his disagreement or bring up an entirely different viewpoint.
That’s part of what makes him a great professor. In his class, students are exposed to new ideas and opposing viewpoints. They have the opportunity to grapple with what they believe and why they believe it.
Most people think that’s what universities—the “marketplace of ideas”—are supposed to be.
But not according to Shawnee State officials. Now, the professor finds himself involved in a very different kind of debate—on the opposite side of the courtroom from his university, after it tried to shut down the free exchange of ideas by forcing him to endorse an ideology that he does not believe.
Let’s take a deeper look at his case and the freedoms at stake.
Who is Dr. Nicholas Meriwether?
Dr. Meriwether has served as a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University for over 20 years with an unblemished record. He is serious about creating an atmosphere of mutual respect in his classroom.
He is also serious about his beliefs. As a Christian, he strives to live and work consistently with his faith. In fact, his core beliefs are why he’s devoted his career to education.
Many of Dr. Meriwether’s students appreciate how he challenged them in the classroom and brought ideas to the table that were different than their own. As one student wrote:
You and I saw eye-to-eye on very little and that made those arguments all the more valuable to me. If you had only made a half-hearted attempt at a counterpoint or (far worse) neglected to even mention an opposing position in order to spare my feelings, you would have been fundamentally undermining my education. I thank you for showing me enough respect to bring your “A-Game” to every in-class debate.
Unfortunately, not every student felt the same way about encountering differing viewpoints in Dr. Meriwether’s class.
Read More

a

I probably wouldn’t have deconstructed my faith if it wasn’t for YouTube. On the other hand, I don’t know if I would still be a Christian today if it weren’t for podcasts.
Growing up as an only child and experiencing tremendous suffering, I dove into my faith early looking for answers, meaning, and anything that could help me make sense of what I was experiencing.
I would come home after the final school bell rang and instead of hanging out with friends or doing homework, I would spend hours in my room watching YouTube videos of pastors, teachers, scholars, and scientists talking about the things I was wrestling with in my faith (this explains why I was terrible at school). I wanted answers and I knew someone had to have them.
One night I stumbled upon one of the original deconversion stories on YouTube. It was a series of twelve videos that chronicled the systematic deconstruction of someone’s faith from Christianity to atheism. At the time, it was more than my brittle faith could stand. My house of faith collapsed and I began a long journey through deconstruction.
My deconstruction was spurred along by many podcasts including, as I’ve written before, The Liturgists. I watched countless hours of talks from Pete Rollins, Rob Bell, Richard Rohr, and many more. I all but dropped out of my youth group and replaced my pastors with podcasters. I stopped trusting those who knew me in real life—my struggles, my propensities, my sorrows—and only trusted those who delivered spiritual goods to me in the form of .mp3s and .wav files.
Soon, however, the exact opposite path also took place. I knew my faith couldn’t be built solely on the critique of what is wrong with Christianity, but had to be built on the good, the true, and the beautiful. For all that might be good in regards to mystery and mysticism, I needed a sure and firm foundation to anchor my soul. I needed a real, bodily resurrection. I slowly but surely changed my media diet to include less The Liturgists and more Bible Project, less Rob Bell and more John Mark Comer, less Richard Rohr and more NT Wright. I realized that there was much of the Christian tradition I missed because I jumped straight from the fundamentalist environment I was raised in to the progressive side that has no use for institutions and sacred texts. My eyes were being opened—through media—to a way of being Christian that I never knew was possible.
This new media diet of mine made me hungry for more. The church I was attending, progressive and therapeutic, had no resources available for those wanting to grow in their faith. I had to enroll in a theological training program at a different church that was an hour-long drive from my house in order to begin a theological journey that would change my life. Ultimately, my faith would be rebuilt stronger than before and I now find myself a member of a local church.
It was media that took me out of the church and media that sent me back to the church.
It was media that undermined my faith and media that helped rebuild my faith.
It is impossible to understate—for better and for worse—the role of digital content in my faith.
Devices of Deconstruction
All of this was before “deconstruction” was part of the mainstream conversation in the church that it is today. Much of it was before most people even had an iPhone. In many ways, my story was a precursor for much of the way that tech and faith interplay with each other today.
Now, I make digital content for Christians full-time. I am on the other side of the screen from where I was all those years ago, partly because I know full well the power of media for discipleship. Our media diets have the power to form our faith and deform our faith. And the algorithms that feed us our content diet aren’t neutral. They know exactly what questions we’re asking, what life stage we’re in, what fears we have, where we live, and who on the internet is speaking to those things.
Read More
Related Posts:

Our walk of faith will not be without missteps or suffering. But still we must carry on. We can’t run from hurt forever. It’s faster than us and refuses to be outpaced. Faith is the way forward, the way out of shame and isolation. Onward! Life beckons. So, faith — in God and others — is a gift we have been given, a virtue to cultivate, that liberates us to move and love in a world filled with both pain and pleasure.

My favorite definition of faith comes from the late pastor R.C. Sproul who described the virtue as “well-reasoned trust.” I like that because it tethers our beliefs to reason. Only a fool believes that for which he has no reasons at all. But faith also transcends reason.
You likely put your faith in people who have given you good reasons to do so. You trust them. But your trust leaves room for them to disappoint you, to hurt you even. You don’t know with absoute certainty they won’t betray or abandon you. Yet you have faith. In the same way, you can’t rationally prove God’s existence beyond any reasonable doubt. Faith is required for trusting people and God alike.
In the last post, I said that faith gives us roots. If we refuse to trust anyone in this world, we will never thrive. Like tumbleweed, we will nowhere be at home. C.S. Lewis said it best in his description of the heart that refuses faith in others:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.”
Read More
Related Posts: