... and decides that it would take a more trusting, deferential person than her to apply.
I mean, I'm sure they love God very, very much and I'm sure that God loves them too and that they're filled with grace and mercy and all good things... but an online tour really was enough for me for now.
Their promotional video is here.
And their student code of conduct is here. Aptly titled "Maybe you wouldn't like". I don't like the thought of requiring a male to accompany and guide and preserve me from my evil inclinations off campus, no. I deep respect female Muslim friends who've said to me that they feel that having a mahram (basically, a male guide/protector/advocate, proposed through various hadith) helps them learn humility and deference and draw closer to God... but I think I was brought up much more to value my, like, independence and freedom.
The main degree open to women, it seems, is the Associate of Science in Marriage and Motherhood (see p84). Whereas I'd very much welcome some guidance on how to be a better spouse to my Beloved and a more welcoming hostess of visitors and a better pastry-maker, I'm sure my antipathy towards sewing would seriously dent my grade point average.... not to mention my intellectual frustration.
What's really intriguing, though, is how such blog and message board and YouTube activity is generated by what is essentially a small and marginal college. Such as below, in which Principal Hyles explains how Satan composed the New International Version of the Bible. I'd always thought it was the 100+ translators working from virtually the same ancient texts as those who wrote the King James Version. But there you go. Compared to what happened to Salman Rushdie (who, in the Satanic Verses made a much milder but broadly similar allegation), Rev Hyles gets off very lightly...
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My family used to attend a church whose pastor admired Jack Hyles and who advocated attending equally strict colleges. (I grew up only about an hour from Crown Point, IN, where this college is located.)
Visiting their web site triggered some very strong discomfort in me. I literally feel like shuddering to shake off restraints. It's amazing, isn't it, that the body never forgets its instinctive response to emotional abuse.
Yes. I think faith things go deep. So how do places like this reconcile a message of the freedom brought by Christian with placing students under such restrictions? I can't get my head round it..
They view the message of freedom purely as freedom from sin or from "the old man." They don't see a conflict at all.
During my last year of college, I interviewed for a teaching position at a high school like this. The interviewer told me, "We wouldn't forbid you from wearing slacks in your apartment, but if the doorbell rang, we would expect you to change clothes before answering the door." She was completely serious.
She was also completely hung up on the fact that Wheaton (my college) allowed us to go to movies because that was once forbidden. "If it used to be wrong, how can it be right now? God's law never changes."
And that's the whole key really. They have this set of concentric fences to keep them from ever getting close enough to God's law to break it. (That philosophy doesn't work, of course, as we have see numerous times.) And they see the whole construction as divinely inspired and eternally unchanging.
At the end of the interview, I thanked her and said I believed I was too liberal for them. She said, "Yes, I think so too."
Well done for getting out! *Grace clicks over to visit Wheaton College website*
I see the logic. But what worries me is how culture-bound it all becomes. In one job I had (in a predominantly Asian area) there was the debate about whether henna body art was acceptable for Christians "because some might think it's an Islamic symbol". (Islam forbids all symbolic representations in art, most of the local henna-wearers were Indian or Christian rather than Muslims - therefore the only ones offended would be the white Christians...) I think the danger is we got lost in keeping up standards for ourselves and one another rather than for God and the world.
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