Dad Vs. The "Multiculties"

My father, the religion professor, warned me about the infiltration of the oppressor/oppressed ideology long before "woke" meant anything other than got up in the morning.

My father taught Biblical Studies, Greek and courses on Israel for 25 years at a small college in North Carolina. He won the school’s highest teaching award and was highly respected by students. He took students to Israel for the school’s January term for many years, introducing them to a whole new world. Many of his students were fundamentalist Christians when they came to college, and through my Dad they learned a much more complex way to read the Bible and understand Christianity. Fundamentalists liked to argue with him, and many changed their minds and deepened their faith, even going into the ministry in mainline Protestant denominations. He used to call the Fundamentalist speaker “Deep Faith,” like “Deep Throat” in Watergate.

I remember Dad complaining about how multiculturalistists, whose favorite stance was moral relativism, were gradually taking over. This was the 1980’s. Dad was concerned about the abandonment of the ideas of right and wrong. He was not a dogmatic person himself - he was a real scholar, with a PhD in New Testament, a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology. His undergrad, like mine, was history. All at Duke except for one Masters from UNC. He read ancient Greek, ancient Hebrew, and many other ancient languages, as well as German (pretty well). He was very well educated but excellent at translating intellectual concepts for young people with little background. He also loved to teach adult Sunday school classes and open the minds of churchgoers who had not thought so much about the complexities of their faith.

The “multicultis” as he called them were staging power grabs in universities and even in his small college. Later on he became the victim of one such power grab. He eventually left the college after many years of distinguished service and finished his career as a parish minister in Western North Carolina. He loved the ministry though he was exhausted by the time to retire!

My father was not an activist. That may be an understatement. He was always a combination of proud of and puzzled by/afraid of my activism. But he was an educator. I come from a long line of teachers, and Dad was a teacher above all else. He was rightly alarmed that the ideology that took the values out of the study of history, religion, and literature would leave a morally bankrupt society.

He was right.

Dad didn’t really follow the upsurge in wokeness on American campuses. By the time it took off he was already struggling with the disease the killed him, and he wanted to focus on the things he loved in life: cooking for my step-mother and spending time with his wife of 42 years, enjoying their grandchildren, and deeply diving into his spiritual and devotional life. He spent about four hours every morning in retirement in reading and prayer. One page in Greek from the Greek New Testament, one page in Hebrew from the Hebrew Bible. The Daily Office. Centering prayer.

But he was not surprised when I told him about it. Unlike many who are not of the academic world, he did not say, “Oh, it can’t be as bad as all that.”

I miss having my Dad as someone who backed me up in my Zionist activism and activism against antisemitism. Many times in my life, my Dad and I were not precisely politically at odds, but we were not quite on the same page. It was wonderful at the end to be so strongly aligned. It makes me tear up to just think about it.

He saw what was coming. He would have loved you and your work, Jill. He was so happy to see me meeting and working with all of you.

He warned us.

Rest in peace, Dad. We got this.