| Concordia Portland’s outgoing Schlimpert has a long of history of looking the other way. The same week that the House passed the baby-sacrificing “Equality Act,” further entrenching groundwork for trans-education coming soon in a preschool near you, Charles Schlimpert, retiring President of now-liquidating Concordia University, Portland, (one of several Universities of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to close of late,) told the once-independent-ish Oregonian, “It came out of the blue, I don’t know that it had to happen.” Crocodiles do have tears. “It makes me sad. After investing 35 years of my life there,” he is quoted as saying near the end of an obvious click-bait-hit-piece intended to stimulate those unmarried forty-somethings who hate the New Yorker but worship Portlandia instead, she being the second light fallen goddess of micro West coast-style. Trashing conservative, biblical institutions who are incapable of ever hitting back is one very substantial way the news cycle works. Understanding that both Black Lives Matter™️ and critical race theory are contingent on the idea that “black people are not really people like other people” ought to bother every human being alive and needing to reread this if you haven’t had coffee yet. I mean it. That matters. Reread it. As for switching the bait to get the clicks? Of course any reptile will do. But even better if the bloke works for the bad guys and comes out against them! Enter Chuck, who came to little pre-seminary Concordia College to save it from Reaganomics era stagflation, an institutional crisis made all the more problematic by the early demographic effects of the LCMS admission of federally propagated birth control measures a generation prior. As a child, I rode horses on the Schlimpert’s new family farm out east of the city at a shindig for the faculty. It was a toasty spread, no small piece in an era where NE Portland homes like mine were going for $95K. That’s what we got for the pink-slate Victorian on the corner of 59th and not-quite-Klickitat when my father, a choral director who was gently forced out of his “divine call” through the backdoor channels of stripping department funds under the common expectation that church workers should be thankful to serve the Lord, left for a gig in California. I’m not bitter. Well. You aren’t allowed to check out, so it don’t matter. Less straw for your bricks is not an uncommon discipline within the LCMS rostered banks and fraternities. And we are all Californians now, thanks to the House. You know, the casino. But Schlimpert saved the school. They were going to go bankrupt. He came. He minimized the arts and built up the sciences. Then, they didn’t go bankrupt. Kinda. Till now, when they did, conveniently after his retirement and with a virtue-signal-scape-goat story to tell. Of course, the school really closed because mean Missouri Synod and big bad Matthew Harrison said that Christians can’t run schools where there are orphans, or something fly-over like that, so we should burn them. Who cares that saving a school by minimizing arts and maximizing sciences really just means taking out loans to build new facilities with a fancy name from donors who footed the deposit on the loan? I haven’t looked into the receipts myself. I just know that after the dorms, the fields, the more dorms, the law-school, retirement and then bankruptcy, the Division II NAIA school looks a lot more like 76 trombones and a real estate game than anything resembling religious education. But why did the school close? Because the federal regime’s trans-religious agenda is picking off a limb of mean old Missouri while it can, aided and abetted by the many fine mediums of the united teachers’ unions of Portland.Watch out, Christian. Having all but lost my Christian faith after and because of attending freshmen bible classes at Concordia Portland, in which the professor directly and intentionally undermined my foolish youth, I’m not going to go on record as whining about Jesus’ temporal judgment on that odd little cultic Concordia, or any other institution founded in his name that willfully overlooks godless perversions. You know, like the scandals with female athletes in the 80’s. That was bad. Who knew? Or there was the get-her-drunk pass-her-around culture with the foreign soccer players who were going to put the school on the map in the 90’s. I think more people knew. And the JV stood toe to toe with the varsity in a scheduled match the fall of 1997 with yours truly somewhere around centerfield as a sophomore walk on. The scrimmage was one of the best nights of my life. Knowing now how college culture grooms young men and women on campuses both sacred and profane, but always far from home, makes me thankful I was too dumb to realize what most of it was about at the time. Even my own adulteries could have gone much, much worse for all parties involved. But forgetting we did it and looking the other way is not what Lent is about. Jesus Christ always casts down idols raised in his name. You can bank on it.—- This piece is not easy for me to publish. I will be cursed by some for it. Two proverbs have been on my mind as I pondered whether or not to write this.He who loves trespass, loves to stir strife; He who exalts his own gate invites invasion! (17:19) Why is there in the hand of a fool the money to buy wisdom, since he has not the heart for it? (17:16) Till angel cry and trumpet sound, Jonathan Fisk |
