Having mentioned the event bringing Willie Dye to Butler University, I want to now post a follow up. At the time I was unaware who was sponsoring the event, but I’ve since found out, in an e-mail that let me know that, after looking further into the details I’d raised questions about, Campus Crusade (the sponsors) have decided to cancel the event.
Here’s the text of the e-mail I received, which I must say really impresses me:
I wanted to send you a quick email to simply say thank you for bringing to light your concerns about Dr. Willie Dye. CRU is the sponsoring organization for this event, so I am grateful for your questions and concerns regarding his talk scheduled for tomorrow night. After doing some more thorough investigation, we have decided to cancel the event. We want to give students and the Butler community an opportunity to engage in this conversation/debate, but we desire to do so in a scholarly and academic manner. We want to bring speakers to campus who are able to speak with authority and from their expertise. In bringing Dr. Dye to campus, we simply did not do our research as thoroughly as we should have. I’m thankful for your willingness to call us out, and ask the hard questions, even before the event occurred. Thank you again for helping us, as we seek to help students engage in issues and conversations that are relevant to life, vocation, faith and God.
It is obviously all too easy to miss when someone’s qualifications may not represent what listings of degrees and studies are usually supposed to. Were this not the case, presumably there would be no degree mills. But I have to say I’m very impressed with the local Campus Crusade leadership’s committment to helping Evangelical and other students explore their spiritual lives and personal faith in a way that also takes seriously the emphasis on academic rigor and critical thinking on a university campus. I think the lines of conversation opened as a result of this occurrence bode well for future interactions between this campus ministry and the university’s faculty.
Let’s face it, there are plenty of people capable of addressing the intersection of religion and science from an Evangelical standpoint, who clearly have degrees that they have worked for, earned and deserved. There is simply no need to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to foster a discussion on campus of a topic like this one. And hopefully when a replacement event is arranged, it will feature someone with whom, whether I or anyone else agrees with their specific conclusions or not, it is possible to have an honest conversation about these subjects in a way that draws on a shared experience of having investigated the relevant evidence and sources in an academically rigorous and serious manner.
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