By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
This week I read an excellent blog by Everette Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville, Okla. He noted a student had come to him after a recent chapel service complaining he was offended because the sermon made him feel guilty.
Later in the week I watched a news telecast by a local TV station interviewing a student at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro who was offended every time she walked past the academic building which bears the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest. There is an attempt by some on the MTSU campus to have his name removed from the building.
Name on the building or not, it does not erase who he was or his place in history. If the name “Hitler” was never uttered again, it won’t change what he did. We cannot erase history. Removing any mention of people or events that “offend” us today can’t change what has happened. If anything, we need those names before us to remind us that atrocities have happened in the world’s history and that we should never repeat them. [Read more…]


