Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University and an evangelical, refuses to align himself or his institution with other evangelical leaders who have endorsed Donald Trump for president.
Piper has been criticized of “hurting” fellow evangelicals after voicing his negative views of Trump, but this only made him speak louder, demonstrating he is not subject to group pressure. Piper says he is “almost ready to stop calling himself an evangelical,” as he is “confused and disappointed” watching some evangelicals support the business mogul.
In this 17-minute video interview filmed at CPAC March 4, Piper says, “A man who calls women ‘fat pigs’ is not one of my own. A man who is a misogynist is not one of my own. It’s not my cause. A man who mocks the handicapped is not on my side. I will not sell my soul or my university’s for someone who seems to stand for the antithesis of the Christian virtue and Christian values I hold dear. I want to vote for a conservative, someone who conserves the time-tested truth of God, not someone who sidesteps them. I want to vote for someone who has Christian virtue, not someone who … owns casinos, has strip clubs, calls women fat, calls them pigs with such misogyny and doesn’t apologize for it is not on my side. I’m not a Trump fan.”
Piper has endorsed Sen. [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] for president because “he has told me what he would do and he has not broken his word.” Piper says critiques of Cruz’s politics end up being “an endorsement, rather than a condemnation.”
“The animus of your enemies might tell you about as much as to who you are, and what your values, your virtues, your direction, your character is, as the praise of your friends.”
Dr. Piper, who was honored with the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom award at CPAC last week, condemns the troubling emergence of “ideological fascism” on American campuses. He says, “Disagreement is becoming synonymous with hate.” In a powerful critique of higher education last month, Piper cut through the fog of the fundamental transformation of higher education and its culture.
“When we teach that communism is good and capitalism is bad; when we teach that self-actualization is the goal of the academy rather than selflessness, sacrifice and confession; when we teach arrogance and narcissism rather than humility in the classroom, why are we surprised to see a culture that’s acting badly?” Piper asks.
His suggestion for parents and grandparents is simple: “Stop sending your kids to these institutions teaching this pabulum.” He goes on to recommend that the bill-payers sit down with any college president who receives tuition funds and ask two questions: their view of truth and their view of Scripture.
Piper also strongly condemns President Barack Obama for being excessively silent in the face of brutal Christian beheadings, crucifixions and drownings in the Middle East. He also believes a Christian president would speak out against the silencing of Christians on their strongly held, longtime moral belief of traditional marriage. Obama’s silence “speaks volumes,” Piper says. It is either “a lack of conviction” or he “disagrees” with those he is silent about.
Calling himself counter-cultural but an optimist, Piper believes truth will eventually prevail. With the coarsening culture and fundamental transformation of America, Piper believes we are called to intellectually engage our culture and be “salt and light” and “engage, confront and challenge, not coddle,” the “spiritual dyslexia of our time where we reverse definitions, and we turn truth on its head and we make truth a lie and lie a truth, darkness light and light, dark, bitter sweet, and sweet bitter.” He adds, “When we do those things, our culture is going to be bound to suffer.”
For more on Dr. Piper, see his college’s website or Facebook page. His viral writing, “This is a University, not a Daycare, CPAC speech and the freedom of speech panel he participated in at CPAC all further highlight his political convictions. His Twitter handle is @dreverettpiper.
(This author has endorsed Ted Cruz)
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