CRYING IN THE CHAPEL

 There's a concept formulated in 1967 called "the long march through the institutions." What this long march involves concerns how subversive groups "can gain control of the organs of culture — churches, education, newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, literature, music the visual arts, and so on. By winning cultural domination, the subversive group can achieve control of the deepest wellsprings of human thought and imagination. 

"One need not control all information itself if one can gain control over the minds that assimilate that information. Under such conditions, opposition would disappear since men are no longer capable of grasping the arguments of their opponents."

And this brings us to a simple plaque and the simple statement inscribed thereon. You can find this plaque on the chapel wall of a well-respected and admired Christian university named Wheaton College, the school associated with Billy Graham, the Southern Baptist Convention, and, most important of all, the five missionaries who became martyrs at the spear points of the Auca Indians. The Aucas were a tribe with whom the missionaries had been the first in history to make contact with them other than the Spanish conquistadors and, more recently, sporadically with a few Shell Oil explorers, some of whom they also attacked.

The missionaries had been cultivating the Aucas by giving them gifts until they, on  Jan. 8, 1956, massacred the unarmed and unsuspecting men. That slaughter made headlines all over the United States in newspapers and magazines, both secular and Christian.

The most well-known of the five murdered missionaries is Jim Eliot, a member of the Wheaton Class of '49, the class, that, in 1957, gave their alma mater a plaque dedicated to the five martyred missionaries. 

On the plaque, displayed in Edman Chapel, are these words: “For generations, all strangers were killed by these savage Indians. After many days of patient preparation and devout prayer, the missionaries made the first friendly contact known to history with the Aucas.”

If you were to look for that plaque today in Wheaton's chapel, there's no way you could see it and read its famous words. The long march through the institutions in America is almost complete as evidenced by the fact that some students and some faculty have deemed the plaque offensive, as the school's President Ryken claimed, ["The word 'savage'] is regarded as pejorative and has been used to dehumanize and mistreat indigenous peoples around the world.” 

As a result, the school’s senior administrative cabinet will appoint a committee to review the plaque’s wording and make a rephrasing recommendation by May 1, then restore the plaque to its place in the chapel.

 
"Ryken and other members of Wheaton leadership have received about a dozen comments about the plaque this school year from students and members of the campus community," said Joseph Moore, Wheaton’s director of marketing communications. He said "The president released the statement because the plaque has been temporarily removed, and leadership wanted the campus community to know about its review, rewording, and return.” (From "Christianity Today")

If you were to head for the dictionary to learn the meaning of "savage" as an adjective, you would read, "fierce, ferocious, or cruel; untamed." That sounds like a fitting description of the Aucas who set upon and stabbed to death five unsuspecting men, all unarmed and unable to defend themselves. By what definition was this not savage behavior?

So what we have here is not only the devaluation of language but also the question, "What is the esteemed committee going to put in the place of 'savage'?"

This is yet another example of the poison of multiculturalism whose main tenet is that one culture is not to assume a judgmental position over another. "On the contrary," says the multiculturalist, "all cultures must be accepted, even both the Greek and Roman which practiced child abandonment, physically removing a child from the nurturing home of the parents, and leaving them to die outside."

 Multiculturalism won't allow us to adjudge this practice as evil.

But common sense (which isn't so common any more) would tell us that not all beliefs and practices are good an noble. Were the Nazis just a different culture that should be respected? No one would argue that Nazism is a moral philosophy and worldview, thus not all values and beliefs should be respected.  And what about the practice of foot binding in China? That practice is unfathomable in our Western culture. It is explicitly immoral. (Skylar Hillman)

"For centuries, young girls in China were subjected to an extremely painful and debilitating procedure called foot binding. Their feet were bound tightly with cloth strips, with the toes bent down under the sole of the foot, and the foot tied front-to-back so that the grew into an exaggerated high curve. The "ideal" adult female foot would be only three to four inches in length according to that culture. These tiny, deformed feet were known as 'lotus feet.'" (Kallie Szczepanski)

Any sane person would call this practice child abuse. 

Thus, may we conclude that the long march through the institutions is now inside the walls of Christian institutions? As the long march through our institutions, continues there should be crying in the chapel.