Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, made headlines a year and a half ago when he published a viral statement decrying the current cultural condition of American college campuses.
Titled, “This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!” Piper’s proclamation warned that “our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic” and took aim at so-called “trigger warnings,” safe spaces and other modern-day campus dynamics.
Now, Piper is out with a new book titled, “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth,” in which he dives deep into his belief that true freedom can only exist if one takes into account the Judeo-Christian ethic and its proof-positive impact throughout human history.
“If you can live by 10 simple laws, and Jesus narrowed it down to two, then you’re going to have a lot more freedom, academically or otherwise than you will ever have if you get rid of those 10 or two,” Piper recently told The Christian Post. “And then basically subject yourself to the millions of little laws that will rush in to fill the vacuum to be imposed upon you by government and other sources of human power where they actually start telling you how to use the bathroom.”
He continued, “I mean, this is lunacy, it’s crazy.”
In the end, Piper said — as he did in his viral statement 18 months ago — that colleges are not meant to be “safe spaces” and that they are, instead, intended to be locations of higher learning. His school, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, refuses to compromise on its Christian values, as educators there seek to hire faculty with a biblical worldview. Overall, though, he’s concerned about U.S. colleges.
“We don’t have academic freedom any longer on our campuses,” Piper told the Post. “We have ideological fascism.”
And he warned that bad ideas can often breed cultural chaos, with good ideas that are based on the Christian gospel offering up a realistic and positive environment for all.
“When you teach bad ideas, you’re going to get bad culture, bad community,” Piper continued. “You’re going to get a bad government and you’re going to get a bad church.”
Unfortunately, the academic said that some Christian schools have begun to hire faculty who don’t adhere to scripture, meaning that some of the ideas that run counter to the gospel have started to seep into the academic sphere.
“I do contend that [the gospel has been badly compromised] if you can’t get some basics right, such as the definition of human life — that God defines it and you and I don’t — and the definition of marriage, that it is a sacrament of the church and not a function of government,” he said, adding that humans are not defined by the sum of their penchants and inclinations, as the Post noted.
Read more about what Piper had to say here.