A professor at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School has written an op-ed for The Federalist praising his university president for identifying Charlie Kirk “not as right-wing but as a conservative Christian.”
It is not clear where Samford University President Beck Taylor said anything about Kirk, who was slain by an assassin’s bullet nearly three weeks ago. An internet search for Beck’s comments produced no results, and there is no hyperlink included in the Federalist article.
Mark DeVine
However, in an article titled “College Presidents Better Double Down on Defending Conservative Students,” historical theology professor Mark Devine claims his president set a positive standard other university presidents ought to follow.
“It took courage for Beck Taylor, president of Samford University, to identify Charlie Kirk not as right-wing but as a conservative Christian,” the article begins.
Taylor, who became president of the Alabama Baptist school in 2021, most recently found himself mired in controversy three years ago over prohibiting LGBTQ-friendly ministries from working with students on campus. Critics of the president claim he has forced a massive turnover in faculty leadership and turned the private school in a more conservative direction.
DeVine joined the Beeson faculty in 2008. He is a former Southern Baptist missionary to Thailand and previously taught at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as faculty sponsor for the Turning Point USA chapter at Samford.
His article in The Federalist is built upon his premise that “at college campuses nationwide, Democrats are welcomed, while conservatives are met with the hostility (this is true even of ostensibly Christian colleges).”
Turning Point USA seeks to change that reality, he writes.
“The hegemonic dominance of unbelievers and Democrat-voting Christians in academia is well-known.”
“The hegemonic dominance of unbelievers and Democrat-voting Christians in academia is well-known. Democrats tell us this is so because conservatism, whether political or Christian or both, breeds both stupidity and bigotry. Conservatives, they say, and Donald Trump supporters certainly, suffer no hankerings for the intelligence and open-minded curiosity supposedly coursing through the halls of academe,” he says.
He laments: “Today, conservatives courageous enough to speak are castigated as the evil political progeny of Hitler, Nazis and fascists. And no institutions cultivate subcultures more hostile to conservative speech than do America’s universities.”
Kirk was the antidote to all that, DeVine writes. “Kirk showed up with no college degree championing Jesus Christ, traditional marriage, Christian nationalism and Trump at, of all places, university campuses. … Kirk’s non-violent, free-speech invasion of the universities exposed and challenged the totalitarian suppression of speech that prevails there.”
He compares those who critique Charlie Kirk to supporters of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Maduro and Mussolini.
“Kirk is not dead because he stoked fear or violence,” the professor says. “He was not assassinated because he oppressed or hated anyone. He was taken out because he refused to shut up about what he loved that the Democrat Party hates. He loved Jesus Christ, the traditional family, America and Donald Trump. These just won’t do when totalitarians are loose in the land and have settled most densely and fiercely on the college campuses of America.”
Beck Taylor
He said: “Kirk posed, and Turning Point still poses, a threat to the neo-Marxist, DEI struggle session and cancelation regimes Democrats continue to defend.”
Conservatives are not violent, but Democrats are, he insists. “Even on Jan. 6, it was one of Trump’s dutifully peaceful protesters who lost her life,” a reference to Ashli Babbit, who despite multiple warnings not to proceed, attempted to climb through a shattered window beside a barricaded door into the Speaker’s Lobby and was thwarted when she was shot in the shoulder by a United States Capitol Police officer.
DeVine concludes: “Given many Democrats’ willingness to use violence against political opponents, university presidents will need courage to cultivate free speech for conservatives on campus. Conservatives should help college presidents choose words for their public statements. It took courage for Beck Taylor, president of Samford University, where I teach, to identify Kirk not as a right-wing or far-right anything but as the conservative Christian he was. We can be sure that there are many Democrats in the state of Alabama and beyond who won’t like that. Good for President Taylor.”
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