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Benjamin remembers when this was a bird app Profile picture
@BenjLesLantz
Oct 31, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
So far this culture of silence and “loyalty” at BCS has stifled anything resembling scandal. But the school cannot suppress its toxicity forever. @reachjulieroys, watch for something ugly to break open at Bethlehem College & Seminary in the coming years.
More could be said. But I may have said enough here to later get threatened with a lawsuit myself! The bottom line is, stay far away from @BCS_MN. Thank you @KyleJamesHoward for speaking up about BCS. And thank you @scotmcknight and @laurambarringer for writing this book.
To finish up, my words here are not about Piper (I actually respect him, to some extent). It’s not about Calvinism (I’d still steer Calvinists away from BCS. Go to...somewhere else. TEDS? Haha) It’s about people, truth-telling, and doing what’s right. BCS has failed in all three.
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More from @BenjLesLantz

Benjamin remembers when this was a bird app Profile picture
Aug 26, 2021
Whew. I'd heard *about* Piper's letter against Jonathon Bowers after Johnathon's resignation. But today is the first time I've read the letter. It speaks for itself.

And yet...

I want to underline some things I notice from Piper's response. 🧵
First of all, as I was explaining to someone the other day: Bethlehem has a "weird" way of talking about things, its own brand of Christianese that it inherited from Piper. The professors and people at Bethlehem are some of the smartest people I've ever met, in terms of IQ.
However (and this is on full display in this letter as well as in Joe Rigney's recent tweets), the EQ of many of the professors and leaders is incredibly low. And that "Bethlehemese" with proof texts can easily be weaponized against people who won't toe the Bethlehem line.
Read 17 tweets
Benjamin remembers when this was a bird app Profile picture
Aug 20, 2021
Knowing many of the stories behind this article (and having my own stories of spiritual abuse at Bethlehem as well), I am very disappointed with how the stories of abuse were treated in this piece. And I’m not the only one 👇🏼
Ann was quoted in the article. Here’s her thoughts on the piece:
Karl was quoted in the article. Here’s his take:
Read 7 tweets
Benjamin remembers when this was a bird app Profile picture
Mar 28, 2021
How could a professor's lack of emotional intelligence result in suppression and trauma for students in the academic arena? What happens if a whole institution shares this lack of EQ?

Another 🧵 from my experience at @BCS_MN. A case study in two Scenes, with some screenshots.
Scene 1: In April 2020, I turned in what was essentially my capstone paper for seminary. The prompt for the paper was to answer the question, "What does the whole Bible say about _______?" And the fill-in-the-blank could be something related to ecclesiology, i.e., the church.
I wanted to write on the topic of "Women in Ministry." I had been thinking about that topic for +/- two years. The professor pre-approved my topic choice back in February, though he must have known that for a 3500-5000 word paper, I would have to be selective in what I included.
Read 25 tweets
Benjamin remembers when this was a bird app Profile picture
Mar 14, 2021
I’ve thought for awhile now that John 9 is a key text for survivors of abuse that occurred in a Christian, or religious, context. There’s insight and there’s encouragement here in this mind-blowing chapter of John’s Gospel.🧵
Jesus performs a miracle—giving sight to a blind man—in verses 1-7, then from verses 8-34, Jesus is conspicuously absent.

In Jesus’s absence, a war of narratives emerges between Pharisees and the blind man:

Either we have a brazen sheep,
or we have blind shepherds.
The Pharisees are always shifting their narrative as the evidence trickles in. First, they doubt that the event happened at all (v. 18). And even when confronted with the evidence, they force the (formerly) blind man to stand on trial as a “sinner” (v 24 is an ANE swearing-in).
Read 17 tweets
Benjamin remembers when this was a bird app Profile picture
Mar 13, 2021
I hear a critic in my head.

He says: If I have so many negative things to say about BCS, why did I go there in the first place? If I don’t like John Piper’s theology, why did I sit under it for four years?

The short answer is that going into seminary I was incredibly naive. 🧵
As a teenager, I found myself wanting more out of God, frankly. The G/god that I’d encountered in my church was authoritarian and tribal. And that left a vacuum in my soul. Then I discovered Piper’s sermons, etc., and I was immediately drawn to the “bigness” of Piper’s vision.
After college, I knew I wanted to go to seminary. I was leaning toward Calvinist theology, and I held vaguely complementarian views from my growing up years. I had gleaned from Piper here and there, and my wife was from MN, and things came together so that I could attend BCS.
Read 17 tweets
Benjamin remembers when this was a bird app Profile picture
Mar 13, 2021
In case we’re tempted to think that the “empathy is sin” mindset is a fringe thing for evangelicals, let me connect some dots based on my experience.

I’ve got the names of an individual and an institution for us. John Piper, and Bethlehem College & Seminary. 1/
Let’s start with the institution. I attended @BCS_MN’s M.Div program from 2016-2020. In 2019, yes, I heard BCS’s president-elect Joe Rigney say that “empathy is sin.” But I also heard the same thing from at least one other BCS prof on several occasions, with *no* qualifiers. 2/
Some profs like Rigney were willing to die on that hill. But too, when I raised concerns about this “empathy as sin” doctrine to other BCS profs, they shrugged it off. They neither confirmed, nor denied the sin. But...they were clearly afraid to say that empathy *wasn’t* sin. 3/
Read 12 tweets

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