Church of God Pastors Lost Their Credentials for Affirming What Anderson University Professors Still Teach Freely

An open letter to President Scott Moats and the Anderson University Board of Trustees

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24).

For decades, faithful Church of God people have waited for that river. They waited while resolutions were passed and shelved. They waited while leaders explained why nothing could be done. They waited so long that many stopped believing anything would ever change.

Then, in Indiana, the river rolled.

Justice rolled down in Indiana

The Rev. Carma Wood and other credentialed Church of God ministers aligned themselves with Church of God Affirm, a network promoting the acceptance of same-sex relationships inside our movement. I do not believe they ever expected to lose their credentials. For years, no one had paid a price for that kind of thing.

But courageous Indiana state minister Jeff Matas did what so many others would not. He acted. The credentials were removed. For the first time in a long time, words about biblical sexuality had consequences.

What followed was historic. This September, the Ministries Council of the General Assembly approved a framework on biblical sexual ethics. It says plainly that credentialed ministers may not teach that same-sex relationships, same-sex marriage, or the rejection of one’s biological sex are consistent with Scripture. It says a noncreedal movement is not a convictionless one. I thank God for it.

Words on a page

But I have lived in this movement for fifty years, and I have watched many General Assembly resolutions come and go without changing a thing. In 1993 the Assembly declared that a Church of God college should not endorse or promote homosexual behavior as an acceptable Christian lifestyle. Anderson University placed those words in its Faculty Handbook. Then nothing happened. No one was held to them. They became words on a page.

Unless there are real consequences this time, this new framework will go the same way. Heads must roll, or nothing will change.

And there is one place where the consequences have not reached at all.

An untenable double standard

Think about what is true today. An Indiana pastor can lose his credentials for affirming same-sex relationships. Yet a professor at Anderson University, or at its School of Theology, where our future pastors are trained, can teach that very thing to our sons and daughters, in a classroom that bears the Church of God name, under the banner of academic freedom.

That is untenable. A movement cannot strip a pastor’s credentials for a teaching and then pay a professor to teach it. Scripture sets the bar higher for teachers, not lower: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).

This is not a new problem at Anderson. In the 1960s a tenured professor told his students that homosexuality is an acceptable alternate Christian lifestyle, and the college would not correct it. In 2023, Anderson University’s public Title IX policy extended its protections to gender identity, language that departs from the male-and-female design of Genesis. A retired AU professor and department head told me about a faculty meeting led by then-President John Pistole. A colleague asked a simple question: shouldn’t a Christian university support traditional marriage? Many in the room laughed. For sixty years, too many at Anderson have thumbed their noses at what the Bible plainly teaches, and they have paid no price for it.

I tell the full story of Anderson’s drift in my book The One Tree, available on Amazon: amazon.com/dp/B0GS5V8D87

What must happen now

Let me be fair. Anderson has faithful professors who love Jesus, stand on Scripture, and have fought for this school’s soul, some of them for their whole careers. I know several of them personally. AU has also written a biblical sexuality standard into its student handbook, and President Moats has spoken of recommitting the university to its mission. Those are real steps, and I am grateful for them.

But a standard for students is not enough. The people who teach the students must be held to it too. That means the Board of Trustees should adopt the Ministries Council framework as a condition of employment for every administrator, professor, and staff member at Anderson University and the School of Theology. It should apply in hiring, in contracts, and in tenure. And those who will not teach within it must go. There is no other way to bring lasting change.

This is not cruelty. It is integrity. A Christian university has every right, and every duty, to require that those who teach in Christ’s name do not teach against Him.

The trust is broken

Anderson University is already paying for sixty years of drift. Its donations fell by nearly two-thirds in two years. Its enrollment is less than half what it was in 2010. It has sold millions in property to cover its losses and depends on its lenders’ patience.

The numbers are only a symptom. The disease is broken trust. Families like mine, whose roots run four generations deep in the Church of God and in this school, cannot in good conscience send our grandchildren to Anderson as it stands. That trust has been badly broken, and nothing short of radical change will restore it.

What would John Morrison say?

Near the Welcome Center on Anderson’s campus stands a bronze statue of John A. Morrison, the first president of Anderson College. He wears his academic robe and holds a book at his side. Every student and visitor walks past him.

John Morrison was a personal friend of my grandfather, E. A. O’Dell, a Church of God church planter and pastor in Missouri and Iowa. They belonged to a generation that built this movement and this school on the conviction that the Word of God is true and that God can make a person holy, heart and life.

I believe John Morrison would turn over in his grave if he knew the direction Anderson has gone. The men who founded this school did not build it so that its professors could teach against the Scriptures it was founded to proclaim. His statue still stands on that campus. The question is whether what he stood for will stand there too.

Choose this day

President Moats and members of the Board: the stage is set. The Church of God has drawn a clear line for its pastors. Indiana has shown that the line can be enforced. Now the question comes to your door.

Peter wrote, “For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household” (1 Peter 4:17). Joshua put the choice plainly: “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).

You can demand change, and Anderson can become again what it was founded to be: a school that trains faithful men and women for Christ and His church. Or you can let the drift continue, and the day of reckoning will come another way. Either the university will change, or eventually it will close its doors.

Change or close the doors. I pray you choose change.

Your turn

Did you attend Anderson, teach there, or send a child there? Would you send your grandchildren there today? Tell me in the comments. I read every one.

Soli Deo gloria. To God alone be the glory.