Lux Lucet

Cover up is the Name of the Game

In March 2014, over seven years after leaving KTS, I received an email with the subject line “Important Announcement from Knox Seminary.” Opening up the email, I read, “It is with a sense of sadness that I report to you that at the executive committee of the Knox Seminary Board of Directors accepted the resignation of Dr. Warren Gage last Monday night.”

Worth noting is that the executive committee of the Knox Seminary Board of Directors was the same committee that in the late summer of 2007 decided to fire Gage, but whose decision was altered by the full Seminary Board to a suspension with pay for the fall semester. It was that fateful decision which essentially drove the final nail in the coffin of old KTS. The tragic farce which played out over the next few months and ended up, not only with Gage being reinstated to his teaching position, but all his opponents driven out of the school, was inevitable once the Board let Gage off the hook. By their refusal to take decisive action against Gage, in this author’s opinion the Board snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Mind you, even if the Board had stood its ground and gone through with firing Gage, maybe the Session of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church would have vacated his termination the same way they vacated his suspension.  Maybe KTS would have imploded anyway. But a firm stand by the Board would have put them is a stronger position to fight.  More importantly, they would have honored God by appropriately dealing with a false teacher in the school’s midst.

The email continues with a quote from Gage himself,

It is with both sadness and joy that I write this letter. It is sad because Knox Seminary has been a place of tremendous blessing for me for the past twelve years. I have the joy of knowing I have helped to train hundreds of men and women for the gospel ministry by my appointment here by Dr. Kennedy.

About three years ago, however, I felt the Lord was prompting me with the thought that my time at Knox was drawing to a close. I had a growing desire to bring the literary approach to the Bible I had taught there to a wider church beyond the academy. To that end, two years ago I filed for a 501 c3 and last fall the Florida Institute of Humanities and Culture was approved by the IRS. I have a clear sense that the Lord is calling me to give my full attention to this new ministry.

Notice the verbs Gage uses to describe his supposed calling, “I felt, “I have a clear sense.” This sort of touchy-feely language was typical (pun intended) of nearly everything he taught, either in my hearing or in print. He was all about feelings, imagination, intuition, sensation. Logic and systematic thinking, these, on the other hand, he felt free to disparage.

The email continued, “Please join us as we pray the Lord’s blessing upon Dr. Gage and his new ministry. We are excited for him and expect great blessings to be poured out onto his ministry. Please be sure to squelch any rumors that you might hear or have heard…”

Wait, What? Squelch rumors? Now you’ve got my attention. What’s that all about? Inquiring minds want to know.

Taking his own advice, the author continued without any intimation as to what the rumors might be, instead he plowed ahead with the corporate line, writing, “The parting between the seminary and Dr. Gage is a healthy and positive one and we do not want any baseless gossip to injure the testimony of Dr. Gage or Knox.”

This is an incredible statement. Both Warren Gage and, by employing him and promoting his special brand of nonsense, Knox Seminary did far more to injure their respective testimonies than a thousand spreaders of baseless rumors ever could hope to. Yet the writer of this email would have you believe that both enjoyed a good testimony which was being impugned by false witnesses.

What the rumors were, I do not know. Perhaps Gage had been a model seminary professor since he essentially took over the school in late 2007, and the rumors really were baseless. Perhaps everything he said and everything he did reflected the utmost probity and professionalism, and those who said otherwise were slandering his and KTS’s good names.

Perhaps this was the case. But for my part, I doubt it. In fact, given the actions of the Board of KTS and the Session of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (CRPC) during the 2007 controversy involving Gage, I would not at all be surprised if the rumors, whatever they were, turned out to be true and that KTS once again was playing the game of cover up.

Ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, fallen man has been in the business of covering up his sins. Due to our fallen nature we cannot help but sin. But for all that, we also know that sin is wrong and are ashamed of it. Hence we make ourselves coverings of fig leaves, hoping to fool both God and men.

Sometimes cover ups work, at least for a while, at least with respect to our fellow men. But there are times when cover ups are so ham-handed and obvious that the cover up itself raises suspicions. Telling people to, “squelch any rumors,” they may have heard about the reason for Gage’s departure is an example of this.

But apart from the odd language of this email, there’s another reason to disbelieve the official line and to consider the possibility that the rumors, whatever they were, actually were true: KTS has a well-established track record of covering up controversies at the school.

I say this especially in reference to the activities of school officials during the fall of 2007. The Bible requires opens meetings. Secret tribunals, skullduggery and palace intrigue are the stuff of unbelievers and have no place in the church of Christ. And yet despite one Board member writing in an email that it was his heart’s desire to have open communication in all directions, KTS students largely were kept in the dark about the events surrounding the Gage controversy.

From my research, it appeared that only one KTS professor really went to bat for the students, and that was Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, who taught, logic, apologetics and church history. Dr. Beisner wrote an email dated November 30, 2007 and sent to Board members Ron Siegenthaler, Dan Smith and the students at KTS. In his email, Beisner excoriated Siegenthaler, Smith and the Board for their lack of openness with respect to the remarkable events that had rocked the school over the previous three months. In part, this is what he wrote;

I’m puzzled by your saying that you want to provide clarity of communication in all directions.

How is that consistent with the directive the board issued to the faculty in early October “to refrain from publishing or communicating within or outside the Knox/CRPC system an opinion on current events that have taken place between the Board and Session” – a directive that the faculty, by unanimous vote, respectfully refused, though we assured the board of our intent to use discretion in our communications?

How is that consistent with the board’s or someone on it, acting through the Dean of Students to reprimand [name of student withheld by me] as a student when the Student Manual says that “Student conduct is under the supervision of the faculty, acting through the Dean of Students” – and that the faculty (as distinct from any individual member of it working individually) was neither informed of nor invited to take part in the disciplinary proceedings?

How is that consistent with the board’s failure to date to provide to [name of Knox student withheld by me] minutes of board action regarding the reprimands he received as a student and his dismissal as an employee, despite his four requests for them and his having “read receipts” from the e-mail system documenting that at least four officers have received and opened his requests?…

And how is that consistent with Ron’s saying, “We trust that the final decisions of the session will conclude any questions about the Board of Directors and the leadership that the session has determined will lead our ship,” apparently implying that all debate should cease, when, because we are Presbyterians and not Independents, the session is not the final court of appeal in these matters, and actions may well rise through presbytery and the Standing Judicial Commission of the General Assembly – and indeed the session is free to reverse itself in response to complaints filed directly to it?

In this same email, Dr. Beisner also had this to say about the treatment of KTS students during the Gage affair,

[S]tudents have, from the start of the controversy over the session’s relationship with the board and the resignations and return and exclusion of the six board members been given very few facts, and at least some of the “facts” they have been given are, in my estimation, mistaken (e.g., that the six resigned board members requested to return to the board. Since they have been given some false information, I think they have a right to its correction.

I concur with all the points quoted above and believe Dr. Beisner deserves to be commended for writing what he did. Unsurprisingly, not long after hitting the send button on his missive, he found himself out of a job. KTS, it would seem, couldn’t handle the truth.

(To be continued…)