I came to Briercrest College in the fall of 2002 to teach in a one-year sabbatical-replacement position. Prior to accepting the position, I asked about the dispensationalism in their statement of faith but I was assured that the school was actually going to be removing that as a requirement to teach at Briercrest, and so they did. That was part of a larger trend of many conservative schools revisiting confessional statements that had been written decades earlier and had required conviction on idiosyncratic eschatological minutiae. That was a positive trend, a rejiggering of confessional statements to focus on that which truly unites (e.g. the second coming) rather than that which unnecessarily divides (e.g. the interpretation of the millennium).
But not all schools are moving in the right direction. Case in point: Christian apologist Clay Jones just announced that he’s leaving Talbott (graduate school of Biola) because he is not persuaded that (progressive) dispensationalism is definitely true. In my humble opinion, that is a Board of Trustees that has chosen to major on minors and strain theological gnats. Very sad. I have been a critic of Jones (particularly his defense of the Canaanite genocide) but I respect his intellectual courage and principled determination not to blur his conviction for secure employment.
