***This is part of a series of articles that will be published showing the liberal drift Dordt University has taken in the last decade under new leadership.***
Dordt University was put in the spotlight due to its COVID covenant. The Christian college asked students to refrain from attending in-person church services. It also is forcing students to sign an open-ended covenant before allowing them to attend class.
The college requires at least two-layered masks, random temperature checks that will result in a mark placed on the hand of students, reserves the right to mandate both the flu and COVID vaccines among many other things.
Dordt will also resume its recent tradition of inviting ultra-liberal speakers to present on campus.
The first speaker is slated to talk on Oct. 5, less than one month before the 2020 election.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor of history and “gender studies” at Calvin. She grew up in Sioux Center, the town where Dordt is located and is a Dordt graduate.
Du Mez has built her platform on attacking “white evangelicals.” She recently published a book called “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”
Dordt has taken a sharp left turn the past decade or so under new leadership. So hosting Du Mez is not surprising.
But nonetheless, it is deserving of criticism. Du Mez, after all, blames homeschooling and Christian education for places where “white Christian nationalism and gender traditionalism is inculcated.”
“And it’s not fringe,” she said. “This is pervasive, with many ties to ‘mainstream’ evangelicals.”
Du Mez seems to favor “reducing” abortion rather than making it illegal to kill unborn babies.
“Seems pro-life might entail something other than draconian legal measures. I’d love to see active pursuit of that,” she wrote.
She asked what matters more to conservative evangelicals — restricting abortion or reducing it? Well, let’s call abortion what it is and rephrase her question, using actual terminology…
“What matters more? Restricting the legal killing of unborn babies or reducing the legal killing of unborn babies?”
Any person who actually believes in the Bible and is an actual Christian — “conservative evangelical” or not — will not accept one legal killing of an unborn baby being acceptable. Not one.
Du Mez said that abortion will happen whether it is legal or not. She says pro-life folks are often oblivious to this idea, but it’s more likely these pro-life folks would just recognize that every law on the books is broken at some point. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to outlaw those behaviors.
For example, domestic violence still happens, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be illegal.
Du Mez said she believes it is possible to argue “for access to abortion while also weighing morality of ending even the potential life of a potential human.”
Potential life of a potential human? What else could an unborn baby be other than a human? Why does Du Mez refer to an unborn baby as a “potential human?” Does she believe the unborn baby could be a potential duck? Or a potential cow?
Heck, maybe if the unborn baby were a potential bald eagle she’d suddenly favor protecting them, since it is illegal to harm or injure a bald eagle’s egg in this country — but perfectly fine to kill a “potential human” before it is born.
Du Mez also follows in a long line of speakers at Dordt who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Du Mez called President Donald J. Trump an “unhinged president.”
“Abortion, guns and church closings made Coronavirus a culture war? Nope. Fox News, right-wing operatives, an unhinged president and utter erosion of the common good made this a culture war,” Du Mez wrote.
Du Mez also said that evangelicals were not “tricked” into supporting Trump, but that “family values” don’t mean what people think they mean.
According to Du Mez, white evangelicals voted for Trump because they were seeking someone who would do terrible things so they could be good.
Du Mez also shared Jemar Tisby’s thoughts. Tisby has previously spoke at Dordt. He is also on record as saying churches should pay reparations for slavery and that the American church was built on white supremacy.
Du Mez is obviously committed to defeating President Trump. And giving her a platform in front of Dordt students less than a month before his election is quite coincidental.
But, should it be?
After all, it was Dordt Dean of Chapel, Aaron Baart whose kids pretended to be vomiting outside of a Trump hotel in a photo posted to Instagram.
