Last year I wrote about Ozark College and its mandatory god, guns, and flag worship sessions for Freshmen, arguing:BREAKING: I sent @JerryFalwellJr a sincere request to pray with us at the #LynchburgRevival. His response? A letter threatening up to a year in jail and a $2500 fine if we attempt to pray on campus @LibertyU, even with students and alumni. Here are both letters. pic.twitter.com/hiGq3C0Zh5— Shane Claiborne (@ShaneClaiborne) April 5, 2018
This course is pure indoctrination. In fact, schools such as the College of the Ozarks explicitly demand homogeneity and fealty to religious and nationalistic ideologies. They punish divergence, and they aren't alone. There's a whole class of schools, some wealthy and influential, that demand obedience and conformity. And we are in a national moment when far too many influential voices are characterizing liberal arts institutions as hotbeds of politically correct intolerance. It's true that many schools do push students to think about diversity, but the "Patriotic Education Fitness Class" ought to give us a little perspective.Here's another example of the ways that these religious schools aspire create precisely the kind of rigid ideological sameness that they accuse liberal schools of seeking. A Christian group (focused on the specific words of Christ as written in the Gospels) wants to pray on Liberty's campus, invites Falwell to pray with them, and is rebuffed and threatened with arrest.
Imagine that news cycle played out about Oberlin threatening to arrest people who were coming to pray. Just go ahead, imagine all the takes sprawled across legacy media.
These colleges can do what they like. But if the big fancy "PC run amok" people cared about young minds being exposed to diverse viewpoints, they'd turn their attentions to Liberty and its like.
