{"id":2348,"date":"2013-09-27T10:56:10","date_gmt":"2013-09-27T16:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=2348"},"modified":"2013-09-27T10:56:10","modified_gmt":"2013-09-27T16:56:10","slug":"moody-bible-institute-lifts-ban-on-alcohol-evangelical-college-lifts-alcohol-ban-in-culture-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2013\/09\/moody-bible-institute-lifts-ban-on-alcohol-evangelical-college-lifts-alcohol-ban-in-culture-shift.html","title":{"rendered":"Moody Bible Institute Lifts Ban on Alcohol: Evangelical College Lifts Alcohol Ban, in Culture Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The New York Times<\/em> ran an article<\/a> today about Moody\u2019s decision to lift the ban on booze:<\/p>\n

Insiders say that this change at Moody, founded by the 19th-century evangelist Dwight L. Moody and a pillar of the conservative wing of evangelicalism, is, above all, a smart business move. The old, restrictive rules made it more difficult to recruit faculty members and staff.<\/p>\n

Jerry B. Jenkins, the co-author of the best-selling \u201cLeft Behind\u201d novels and the chairman of Moody\u2019s board of trustees, said that J. Paul Nyquist, who became president of the school in 2009, first floated the idea of a new policy. According to Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Nyquist discovered that some potential Christian employees were put off by Moody\u2019s strict code.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said that in the hiring practices, they had been running into people responding to the fact that it was kind of pharisaical of us to have a bunch of lists of rules,\u201d Mr. Jenkins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPharisaical\u201d refers to the biblical Pharisees, believed by Christians in the Bible to prefer systemic rules to general principles, like forgiveness and love.<\/p>\n

So about a year ago, Mr. Nyquist convened a committee to explore a change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey brought back a report,\u201d Mr. Nyquist said, \u201cand we decided that this was an area where we wanted to change the standard to reflect no more or less than what God requires. We know the Bible tells us that God gives us our food and gives us our drink. So use your biblically discerned conscience and do what God wants you to in these areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Nyquist was alluding to the fact that there is drinking all over the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. At the wedding at Cana, for example, Jesus turns water into wine.<\/p>\n

Yet in the New Testament, the apostle Paul teaches that our bodies are our temples, and many Christians infer from this and other passages that drunkenness is an affront to God. Proponents of total abstinence conclude that, given humans\u2019 fallen, sinful nature, it is prudent for Christians to avoid alcohol altogether.<\/p>\n

Molly Worthen<\/a>, the author of \u201cApostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism,\u201d said that in recent decades some evangelicals have put distance between themselves and what they see as a censorious, conservative Christian culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cParticularly younger evangelicals and fundamentalists are disillusioned with their parents\u2019 version of the Christian right,\u201d Ms. Worthen said. As part of their attempt to develop a fresh take on evangelicalism, some of them have decided that they can trust themselves to drink.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example,\u201d Ms. Worthen said, \u201cI know young Nazarenes\u201d \u2014 a conservative Christian denomination \u2014 \u201cwho are beginning to drink a little bit, but still have a lot of anxiety about it. What\u2019s happening just now at Moody and at other schools, with the loosening of bans on drinking and dancing, is that conservative Protestants are kind of at a crossroads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, at Moody it\u2019s the grown-ups who now have permission to drink, not the students. But the school is part of a clear trend, in which evangelical colleges try to stay in step with the culture, however gingerly. And these small changes are often prompted by students. For example, both Wheaton College, outside Chicago, and John Brown University, in Arkansas,\u00a0ended dancing bans<\/a>\u00a0in part because of pressure from students.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find it funny that the professors can drink but the students can\u2019t. I also find it interesting that the decision to lift the ban was made on pragmatic concerns about attracting staff members and faculty (not because it\u2019s a dumb rule).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times ran an article today about Moody\u2019s decision to lift the ban on booze: Insiders say that this change at Moody, founded by the 19th-century evangelist Dwight L. Moody and a pillar of the conservative wing of evangelicalism, is, above all, a smart business move. The old, restrictive rules made it more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[787],"class_list":["post-2348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-moody-bible-institute"],"yoast_head":"\nMoody Bible Institute Lifts Ban on Alcohol: Evangelical College Lifts Alcohol Ban, in Culture Shift<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The New York Times ran an article today about Moody's decision to lift the ban on booze: Insiders say that this change at Moody, founded by the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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