Sunday, February 24, 2013

David Barton Steps In Yet Another Mess

Read about it here.

1 comment:

Tom Van Dyke said...

Barton appeared at the college, apparently for a commencement address, back in 2009.

The turmoil at Louisiana College at the moment is more about Calvinism* [especially the doctrine of predestination] than the Founding, about college president Joe Aguillard's financial stewardship, and as always, looming in the backgroud [as here] his GOP/Religious Right leanings. Interesting, though.

http://thedailybleat.com/while-louisiana-college-burns-president-aguillard-condemns-calvinism/

I'd like a better idea of the players, but this looks to me like yet another liberal v. conservative institutional culture war per

O'Sullivan's First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don't like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world. At which point Michels's Iron Law of Oligarchy takes over — and the rest follows.

Admittedly, that's a guess, but the odds are on its side. That Joe Aguillard's opponents are conservatives, say Bush voters, is unlikely.

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*The Baptists have always made their own way, sitting astride Calvinism without being a Calvinist sect. Unity on the essentials, diversity on the non-essentials, including, presumably, Calvinism's "Five Points."

"We welcome all students to study here," Aguillard said. "We have the greatest faculty in the world here. But, we have never and will not begin now to, advocate hyper-Calvinism, or new Calvinism, or agenda Calvinism, or Arminianism, or any other 'ism's' -- just Christ. There is no division over this."