Dr. Jamal-Dominique Hopkins, a Fuller Seminary graduate, who
earned a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of Manchester (United
Kingdom) and who has distinguished himself in his research, writing and lecturing on the Dead Sea Scrolls, was summarily fired from his faculty
position at the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta. The
administrative action came after he filed a grievance according to school
policy upon learning that some of his students’ grades were changed by the
administration. He had discovered that eight students with low grades were specifically
chosen and interviewed by the administration about his teaching methods and
style. They then changed Ds and Fs to Cs, with one F student receiving an A-. Dr. Hopkins was the target of Rev. Margaret
Aymer, ITC’s chair of the Bible Department and a high profile Presbyterian
Church (USA) leader known for bellicose orations touting “justice,” “human
rights,” “inclusivism,” and “academic freedom.”
Aymer succeeded in having her colleague fired because she
disliked his evangelical positions and more specifically because he was in a
room where a student was given a book of which she did not approve. The controversial
book was one of a number of books brought into a Bible study gathering of Dr.
Hopkins by his guest speaker, Dr. Alice Brown-Collins, a regional director of
the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s Black Campus Ministries. She encouraged
the students to take, free of charge, any of the materials that they might find
useful to them. The book that Aymer particularly detested was The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and
Hermeneutics by scholar Robert A.J. Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She charged that the
book is “homophobic literature” and that her colleague, Associate Professor Hopkins,
tacitly approved of the book by being present when another person in the room
shared it with one of his students.
Aymer, the darling of the PCUSA establishment was the
keynote speaker at the national convention of the liberal Covenant Network of
Presbyterians. In her speech she claimed with vigorous rhetoric that the New
Testament had little to say on the subject of sex and sexuality. Interestingly
enough and contrary to Aymer’s polemic, Gagnon’s book demonstrates that the New
Testaments does speak to these issues. Aymer was also a member of the PCUSA
General Assembly’s special committee on marriage that recommended to the 2011
Assembly to redefine marriage to encompass more inclusive pairing.
Aymer objected not only to Gagnon’s book, but to the
presence of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship on ITC’s campus. She disagrees
with evangelicals and has no fondness for Intervarsity, a campus group she has
detested since she was a student because the organization takes stands contrary to her principles,
which are now evidently the ethics of ITC. Aymer’s theological liberalism and
intolerance to conservative theology is indicative of the drift of the PCUSA
denomination. No longer does the Bible play a preeminent part in their
teaching, counseling, and exhortation. Rather, cultural issues and personal
rhetoric are more important than the question, “What does God say?” Polemical
diatribe is now more important that proclamation of truth. This is what happens
when men exchange truth for a lie (Romans 1:25) and redefine the old
immorality as the new morality. Woe to
those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for
sweet and sweet for bitter! Isa. 5:20 ESV
