Francis Schaeffer on Teaching at Christian Colleges

Schaeffer writes,

And for those who are professors at evangelical Christian colleges, the responsibility is awesome. Yes, you must clearly and carefully present the full range of learning in your discipline. But this is barely the beginning of your responsibility. Will you then go on to explain the points at which there are fundamental conflicts between the ideas in your discipline and biblical truth? Or will you--in the name of academic freedom, or tolerance, or neutrality--let it all slip by without confrontation? This is not the way the world works. The Marxist sociology professor at the secular university is not interested in neutrality, but will make sure that his ideological position gets across in the classroom. Again I would say, in the area of academic scholarship the evangelical world has often failed to take a clear stand. This of course has not been true of everyone, and we can be thankful for those who have taken a stand. But there has been and is a growing accommodation to the spirit of the age as it finds expression in the various disciplines. And because of this, how many will have come to our schools looking for the bread of life, and leave with only a handful of pebbles? This danger is present in the colleges which are thought of as the best Christian colleges. The problem is not future but present.

The Great Evangelical Disaster in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer. Vol 4. A Christian View of the Church. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1982. p. 386.