By Jim Brown and Jody Brown
July 10, 2002

(AgapePress) - A Texas university affiliated with the United Methodist Church is drawing criticism for inviting an open lesbian and radical feminist to deliver the school's commencement address.

Last fall, radical feminist Bell Hooks was appointed to a three-year term as the Brown Visiting Scholar-in-Residence of Feminist Studies at Southwestern University in Georgetown. In that capacity, Hooks is on campus 5-6 weeks every fall. In a May 11 commencement address at Southwestern, she unleashed a virulent anti-American tirade. Hooks, who the school calls a "true public intellectual of our time," attacked male patriarchy, capitalism, and America's war on terror, and equated conservatism with death.

Bob Knight with the Culture and Family Institute says Hook's speech was filled with destructive philosophies. "Her speech contained virtually every crackpot, left-wing idea you can imagine -- from the white imperialist, capitalist America being the worst thing on the planet, to homosexuality being the answer to everyone's dreams," Knight says.

Bob Knight

"This is a very radical speaker at a university that was once a Christian university and is now just a repository of radical theories."

According to Knight, Southwestern is no different from Harvard, Yale, Brown, and other fountainheads of radicalism. "Having Bell Hooks, a radical lesbian, as a speaker at Southwestern shows how much they've drifted from their Methodist roots," he says. "This is no longer a Methodist university and hasn't been for some time."

"Unfortunately this is part of a pattern all over the United States where universities that began specifically as Christian institutions soon relinquished that honor and began having the most liberal professors and speakers possible."

Southwestern's board of trustees includes 20 Methodist laity representing six Texas conferences and five United Methodist bishops. Jake Schrum, president of Southwestern, is an ordained United Methodist minister. The college recognizes two homosexual student groups, and offers introductory courses in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and mysticism, as well as several courses in feminist theology.

© 2002 AgapePress all rights reserved.

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