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Leave it to Liberty University to come up with a statement like this regarding Liberty’s seminary president Ergun Caner:
After a thorough and exhaustive review of Dr. Ergun Caner’s public statements, a committee consisting of four members of Liberty University’s Board of Trustees has concluded that Dr. Caner has made factual statements that are self-contradictory.
How can factual statements be self-contradictory? Doesn’t that mean at least one of them are not factual? Maybe they’re leaving things open for parallel universes.
However, the committee found no evidence to suggest that Dr. Caner was not a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager, but, instead, found discrepancies related to matters such as dates, names and places of residence. Dr. Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review. Dr. Caner’s current contractual term as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary expires on June, 30, 2010. Dr. Caner will no longer serve as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. The university has offered, and Dr. Caner has accepted, an employment contract for the 2010-2011 academic year. Dr. Caner will remain on the faculty of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary as a professor.
Here’s some background on this issue:
On April 26 Focus on the Family radio rebroadcast a sermon preached shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, in which Caner said he was born in Sweden, grew up in Turkey and did not learn English until moving to America in 1978. He claimed he was part of “Islamic Jihad” and said it was “my people” who carried out the horrors of the day.
The problem, according to various Internet sites, is that none of that is true. [...]
“We are on the verge of an evangelical crisis over Caner’s embellishments and the refusal of the evangelical leaders and evangelical press to hold Caner accountable for his decade-long deception over his upbringing,” Rich wrote May 4.
Liberty officials downplayed the whole controversy as the kind of pulpit exaggeration euphemistically characterized as “ministerially speaking.”
“It’s not an ethical issue,” Elmer Towns, co-founder of Liberty University and dean of the School of Religion, told Christianity Today. “It’s not a moral issue. We give faculty a certain amount of theological leverage.”
But why would someone lie for Jesus? Surely no one would ever do that!
Gwenny: Absolutely not! The world has plenty of people having kids. A child consumes HUGE amounts of resources, which from both a... 
Siberia: Or maybe they know they have neither patience nor inclination to deal with the fruit of their loins and thus, rather than be... 
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DarkMatter: And funny that most of them are huge in size in the vid. 
27 Comments
How can factual statements be self-contradictory? Doesn’t that mean at least one of them are not factual? Maybe they’re leaving things open for parallel universes.
Factual statements are a class of statement so called as to distinguish them from value statements. They are statements purportedly about how the universe is, rater than how it ought to be. A factual statement can be true (in which case, it corresponds to the actual facts of the matter) or it can be false, (in which case, natch, it doesn’t), but a false factual statement is still, technically, a factual statement. It’s just an incorrect one.
[/takes long shower after defending Liberty University in even this small lexical matter]
I don’t understand how saying he was born in Sweden and Turkey can both be true statements. Do you?
A “factual statement” just means that he stated something as a fact. It doesn’t necessarily have to be true.
I love that Liberty U think it’s okay for religious floks to lie for Jeeeebus, though. “Ministerially speaking” MY ARSE.
They’re not both true. They’re considered factual as opposed to value statements, like elemenope said. Saying you were born in Turkey when you were born in Sweden is classified differently. Basically, factual self-contradicting statements are lies about facts you can check, at least hypothetically. I’m pretty sure that’s what is meant. I’m not sure why it’s later excused as “pulpit exaggerations” and “theological leverage.” Those sort of excuses sound more like the kinds of things ministers might say while they are preaching – a lot of bluster to get the point across, not for things like where you personally were born.
Ah, okay, I see the point. But who cares if they are factual statements if they are not true?
That’s actually kinda the whole point. Factual statements can be shown to be either true or false. That’s what makes them special; they can be tested against reality, and we can assign a truth value to them based on how well they match up with that reality. Non-factual statements are, for lack of a better metaphor, all up to opinion. Two value statements that contradict are merely a disagreement, whereas two factual statements that contradict are, well, a contradiction, a clue that at least one of them is definitely false.
I think there’s a big difference between a statement OF fact and a statement AS fact. Then again, we’re not talking about semantics. The point is one of honesty vs. dishonesty, or truth vs. lie.
“Weasel words” for ‘lied on his resume.’ Rather than admit they are keeping a liar hired, they say ‘factual self-contradictory statements,’ a lot of syllables that look like it’s not the same thing at all. On the one hand, however, I could make up a fabulous adventure to tell on a job interview that would really have no bearing on the tasks and just make me seem interesting to work with, or otherwise exposed to the material I’ll be working with (like traveling to museums in Europe and painting with some really impressive-sounding teachers because it sounds a lot better than “did extensive internet research and painted every Tuesday and Thursday)… while if found out, I think my employer would wonder what else I lied about. It worked in “My Cousin Vinny”’s favor, and I’ve been told Oprah lied to get her first break into broadcasting.
Think about it this way, Daniel. A factual statement can be false just as easily as a counterfactual statement can be true.
Is it possible that Christians can allow their leaders to lie, cheat, be hypocritical and otherwise manipulate reality, because they know that they are leaders from a basis of authority that is derived from mythology?
Basically:
If you believe in Mythology to begin with, and you wish the world to operate on rules set up to support a fantasy, it is easier to accept leaders who behave as though factual reality can be debated.
What if we all stopped acting surprised by this, and instead, called them on it vigorously? I do not suggest that we disrespect them, but instead, insist out loud, in their churches, at their rallies, online, in schools and in public places where religion and God are held up as truth, that their “truth” line up with objective reality?
What if we ask our journalists, our politicians, our educators, our bosses and our neighbors to (politely, mind you) provide proof of “blessings that they attribute to God”? When God is interjected into speech, ask for clarification. When an assertion is made from self-imposed ignorance, confront it with a question. This is not a time for “snarkiness”, but for clarity. Just because you don’t believe in the supernatural, doesn’t mean that these people haven’t built their lives around these uncanny, untenable thoughts, and we must be decent to them if we are to disabuse them of these unsustainable myths.
Those among us that “cling to God” for meaning, and deny the part that man plays in the define history require gentle reminders that reality, in all of it’s glory, will not be denied.
This is not a battle of wills. The idea that religion will eventually fade, and decisions will be made by men, with no pretense of divine inspiration, is an eventuality. Not just a possibility.
We will be free, but not unless we insist upon it. We must be diplomatic, but firm in this insistence.
I find this lone comment on the site of the original article hilarious!:
Now, aren’t you all ashamed of yourselves for picking on this man?
I love that last quote:
““It’s not an ethical issue,” Elmer Towns, co-founder of Liberty University and dean of the School of Religion, told Christianity Today. “It’s not a moral issue. We give faculty a certain amount of theological leverage.”
You secularists and your bizarre ideas of ethics – that lying about things is wrong! This is how they can support those who hire “rentboys” to “carry their luggage”, or support “family values” but have no problems with people on their 4th or 5th marriage (after their divorces, natch, often after shacking up with a mistress).
He was just “ministerially speaking” – in other words, inventing facts and history in the same way that all ministers do when they preach on sundays. If ministers were required to tell only the truth, they would be rendered mute. (and moot, to coin a pun)
It makes perfect sense to me that Liberty U. would not find his lies to be unethical or immoral. They are just tools of the trade.
It was an attempt to show how jesus can “save” and “alter” a person’s life as dramatically(more like comedic) as his. Once a Muslim Jihadist, now a servant of god. It sells more tickets! Did he mention Turkey? Isn’t it some place that Jihadists are not popular? What could he be hiding? Maybe he led a boring, uninteresting life that wouldn’t make his life transformation story a plug nickel! After all, a “gay” turning “straight” sells more tickets than an Alabama Baptist jesus-loves-guns convention!
“And so at dawn, on the morning of the first day of the week after Passover, Mary and the other Mary and whoever else was with them (“ministerially speaking”) went to the tomb and found it empty (“ministerially speaking”), for he had risen (“ministerially speaking”). In the days and weeks that followed, the risen Christ appeared to hundreds of people in many places (“ministerially speaking”), and those who heard these eye-witness accounts (“ministerially speaking”) told others of their truth (“ministerially speaking”), and so was born the everlasting church through the everlasting free gift of grace, forgiveness, rebirth, and eternal life in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (“ministerially speaking”)” Whatever 25:28-29
Now THAT clears up the chain of evidence really quite well. I guess it’s time for Josh McDowell’s next book– ‘Ministerially Speaking that Demands a Verdict’.
Most brilliant.
Which Pope wrote these words/ We think that the gospel was written by “god”, but I’ll bet it was one of the crooked popes(aren’t they all?) or even by Constantine’s wife’s cousin’s nephew that penned the nuisance passage!
I liked the certain amount of theological leverage you used there …
“The Lord is my rod and my staff– surely theological leverage and truthiness shall follow me all the days of my life.”
By the tenets of their own Bible, the Devil is the father of the lie.
This is multi-layered deceit. Not only do they claim to believe in fiction as fact, they can make it up or change it on the fly, contradict it, lie about what it says, lie about what they themselves have said, and pretty much bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate it to their black hearts’ content.
I don’t believe in God or the Devil, but I do believe in good and evil. These people are the face of evil.
I am absolutely appalled by this whole thing. I just retired from a huge international company where “ministerally speaking” on a bio or resume would result in immediate termination. And folks, this is the standard of the “world”, a standard far higher than Liberty’s. I learned another word for it several years ago when the church I was in was in a race for attendance records. Evangelistically speaking, the attendance takers were looking at the clock while counting the attendance report. They saw 10:36 on the clock and so, evangelistically speaking, the attendance count began: 1036, 1037, 1038….on to a new, evangelistically speaking, record. Of course, I wasn’t personally there, but I heard the story told, evangelistically speaking. I have 4 points: 1) He should have been terminated immediately as dean. 2) He should not be employed by the school in any capacity. 3) Elmer Towns has lost my respect with reference to his comment about theological leverage. 4) If I were a student, would my research projects, or my doctoral thesis, with “data” and “evidence” which clearly were not supported by verifiable information but were spoken ministerially, be acceptable and receive commendation?
To 4) – presumably so or no-one would ever graduate.
Yeh, I came across Ergun via some other sites recently. Like Mike Warnke, he should just apologise for lying and quietly bow out of the limelight, imo. There are chr1st@n commenters also saying the same thing.
Well done.
Jonathan :)
Strictly speaking when he said he was born in Sweden he does seem to have been telling the truth. He may also been telling the truth when he said he didn’t learn English until coming to America (but as he was not yet 4 at the time and quite a few years before 1978 that is not too surprising).
Also it has been mostly fellow evangelicals who have been digging up the contradictions and taking him down (with some help from a Muslim who pointed out all the inaccuracies about Islam that Caner has been saying [e.g., mixing up various Arabic phrases or claiming something is Arabic that isn't]). Caner’s supporters have not been too appreciative hence they claim he is ‘exonerated’ in that it is shown he was a Muslim who converted (something no one has denied except some Muslims who feel that someone who obviously knows so little about Islam can never have been a real Muslim).
It’s the Marcus Garvey approach. We need people to be redeemed, uplifted, and confirmed in their core beliefs, so we’ll tweak the past a bit to fit the story line they want to hear. Cleopatra was a Black African, John Kerry did nothing to merit his medals, and one email disproves all the science of global warming.
The poor bloke’s life’s been such a bore he felt he needed to spice things up a bit. Sadly, a little meth and a visit to Ted Haggard would have been a lot more effective.
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