Beginning in 2012, Campus Crusade for Christ International (CCCi) will officially rename their U.S. operations to “Cru”. When the news of this broke on twitter, I was kind of confused. I couldn’t figure out why the organization would be dropping “Christ” from their name, since it seemed to be at the very core of the mission. I would know about the mission, I spent 4+ years heavily involved at Ohio State on a nearly daily basis and at the regional level for our annual Christmas Conferences. My weeks in college were generally 12-15 hours of classes, 20 hours of paid work, and 20-50+ hours spent doing volunteer work for Crusade — depending on what we had going.
I had a few tweets back and forth with a couple of people about the subject, including Todd Starnes. While his name was familiar, I didn’t know who Todd was, just seemed like a guy on twitter scratching his head like I was. I pretty much forgot about it until the next morning on my way into work when Glenn Beck opened his show talking about the change. I replied to the conversation from the previous night and mentioned that Beck was kind of going off about it.
Todd responded and asked me to send him a quick email @foxnews.com and said that he was working on a story for this topic. In twenty minutes or so, I thumbed out an email on my phone answering Todd’s questions about what I thought about the change. I was pretty up front that it didn’t make much sense to me, and I explained why it didn’t make sense and how I saw it in the larger context of political correctness’s war on Christian faith. I figured a sentence or maybe two would end up in a blog post on FoxNation somewhere.
A portion of my email ended up in the article that Todd wrote, which went up on Foxnews.com. To be completely fair, I do not believe that Todd took anything I said out of context or tried to twist my words. He asked if it would be okay to quote me and I didn’t have a problem with it. My words are mine and I own them.
The unexpected fallout from what was published hit home when an old friend who stays in touch with the CCCi staff called to explain that I and the article were the topic of conversation among CCCi leadership yesterday, and that the article was posted on the front page of Foxnews.com. I never expected my comments to reach so far. I’m a single insignificant person, with an insignificant voice.
Unfortunately, in part because I know at least a handful of the staff, my published statements were taken as a personal attack. They were never meant as such. We just disagree on this matter. That being said, much of my understanding of my own faith comes from the time spent under wise teaching of campus staff. I want to extend my heartfelt apology to any of the CCCi folks who were hurt by my words. I know from working along side you in the past that you are sincere in your efforts to reach the world for the Kingdom.
I will have more on the subject, as well as thoughts from my email that weren’t published which may help explain my position a little bit better than the FNC article does. That, however, is for another day.
Edit: It was pointed out that the change, as per CCCi’s website, only affects U.S. operations. The first paragraph was changed to reflect this. (h/t Eric Seymour)
One solider. One sailor. Two twenty-one gun salutes. Two trumpets playing taps. This is a sobering reminder that our freedom is not free.
