Cedarville Magazine, Fall 2014

TM – I think we’re even countercultural within evangelicalism in America. In the last few decades, we’ve seen evangelicalism veer left politically and embrace a liberal ideology in today’s America. We’re suggesting that biblical principles run against that grain. We’re hoping to speak to the Church in America about a proper understanding of Scripture and why that has often led to conservative positions and calling them to account for why that shifted. MC – That implies a particular approach to theology and a particular approach to interpretation that we might call traditional, orthodox, maybe even classical. And it’s not something we’ve done as a knee- jerk reaction, We’re not conservative just because we’re supposed to be conservative, or theologically conservative because that’s the way everybody else is. We see that coming from the way we approach the Bible. JH – Perhaps the principal area where this divergence occurs is the understanding of Christian freedom. Culture at large seems to embrace freedom that goes against where freedom in Scripture would want us to go, all the while denying the very freedoms that God would have us enjoy to grow into the people He wants us to be. What kind of responses have you gotten from the blog? MCS – We get hits from Europe, South America, South Africa. We have a fair number of students, faculty, and administrators. We’re seeing it grow, but it’s not where we want it to be yet. We don’t have a lot of people coming up to us saying, “Hey, I love your blog.” BW – My wife is embedded in the community a little bit more than some, so she hears from people in Cedarville who do follow the blog. That may not show up [in the numbers], but they do read it and make comments. MC – My wife posts our blogs on Facebook, and she gets responses. TM – We’ve gotten four or five speaking requests at churches this fall because of interactions on the blog. MCS – We’re trying to integrate it in our courses, so our students are interacting with the blog. That helps us disseminate ideas and connect our classroom to what we’re doing online. It’s a holistic enterprise. Most of our commenters are students or former students. JH – Many times in Christian discussions, people automatically think you are a conservative and you’re trying to defend that stance with your Christian values. Or, you’re a liberal and you’re trying to drape a scriptural verse on your views. The blog allows us to go a little bit deeper than a 50-minute class will allow. Many of our students will resonate with it; some of them won’t, and we need to be able to respond to that. What are some of the most satisfying interactions? JH – My adult daughter read it and said, “That was really good, Dad.” She wasn’t just puffing me up. She’s a young Ph.D. student, so she’s fairly bright, and when she thought it was good, I was happy. MCS – Two things for me: My 13-year- old son reads and enjoys all my movie reviews. Most interestingly, though, was when Dr. White (President of Cedarville University) subscribed to the blog. That came across my email: “You have a new subscriber, Dr. Thomas White.” It was nice to see administrative support for what we were trying to do. MC – One of the most satisfying is when I have a chance to respond to someone who doesn’t quite agree, but who is civil about it and articulate. I have a chance to respond in depth. I enjoy that. You want something educational going on here. BW – I had a meaningful interaction with someone who is much more politically left than I am. He wanted me to read his blog, and I read it and there was some really out-there stuff, but it was a really good interchange. This may have been a former student, someone very much on the political left, wanting to know what in the world I was thinking and why I was thinking like that. MCS – We all try our best to be very civil. You don’t see a lot of sarcasm, and you don’t see a lot of mean-spirited personal attacks in our blogs, so I think that promotes civil responses. I’m sure if we grew we could get plenty of people who would come on and just hammer us, but so far we’ve been blessed with people having legitimate disagreements and making arguments. Mark Smith is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville. He received his Ph.D. in political science from The University of Georgia. Marc Clauson is a Professor of History and Law at Cedarville. He earned his J.D. from West Virginia University College of Law and his Ph.D. in intellectual history and policy from the University of the Orange Free State, RSA. Tom Mach ’88 is the Chair of the Department of History and Government and Professor of History at Cedarville. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Akron. Cedarville Magazine | 19