Engaging with Mormons (Corey Miller) Part 2

Unprepared to engage Mormon missionaries when they knock on your door?

Perhaps the book of Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers mentioned yesterday. I want to move forward, though. You go to college, and you're going to college as a Christian. Could you tell us, tell our listeners, where you went and what you decided to major in?

I decided to go to the Salt Lake Community College in Utah and took some initial classes on engineering and accounting for money and hated those classes. I took one on humanities in the first semester, and the humanities teacher talked about myth for six weeks and lumped Jesus in there as a myth. At the end of the semester, we got an opportunity to give an oral presentation. I did mine on myth became fact, the fulfillment of Bible prophecy in the Old Testament to the New. He kicked me out of the class and gave me an F for the semester for proselytizing.

So I took that one legal. The college president put me back in and gave me an A for the semester as long as I shut up, so I did. That's where I began, but then I ended up at Multnomah Bible College to finish out my undergrad in Bible theology. Whatever happened to this whole idea of having different ideas and discussing them in college? Do you think that that's pretty much gone? Now, you know, I'm throwing that out as a bone because I know your answer on this, but why don't you explain to our listeners?

Right. Well, so then I left from a familiar area of Bible theology at a Christian school and ended up doing an MA in biblical studies there as well while working as a youth pastor. And then I transitioned into philosophy at a school in Southern California with the hopes that one day I might go on to a secular university and maybe I'd go for a doctorate. And so I studied philosophy under J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig while working with the Josh McDowell ministry and being a college pastor. When I graduated, I tried to get a job back in Utah at Salt Lake Community College and at Westminster. Both of them thought my resume was too religious.

So I went back to Oregon. I taught theology philosophy for a little while and was a high school college pastor. I got sick of seeing my students lose their faith every time they'd go off to the University. So like the Trojan Horse Center in the city of Troy, I decided to apply for Ph.D. programs. Again, rejected the University of Utah for having too much of a religious perspective, I guess. But I got accepted at Purdue University and that's where I ended up in the Midwest for the last 15 years. Give us a little bit more information about your experience at Purdue.

I know your story. It's fascinating, but I think it's something that Christians should know, especially Christian parents. One of my burdens for our young people is that all too many times we take our kids, we throw them into the university situation, totally unprepared for what they're going to be facing. I know Christian parents want the best for their children. I know they want them to have a good education, but I'm going to be quite honest with you, Corey.

I'm really worried about what we are doing with our kids when we throw them into the university situation, totally unprepared for what they're going to face. To be quite blunt, the professors that many of our kids are going to face, most of them are not at all going to be friendly to their faith. Could you talk a little bit about that in light of your experiences at Purdue?

Sure. So by that time I had two seminary degrees and I'm not in Kansas anymore, Toto. I'm now at a secular university, Big Ten school, and got to study under William Lane Craig. Now I'm studying under William Rowe, one of the famous atheists in the field of philosophy of religion.

And my experience there was six weeks into it. I'm getting prank calls at three o'clock in the morning mocking me for my faith from fellow colleagues in my department. My funding was through a different department, communications and rhetoric, and I taught classes there for five years. And I learned a lot about rhetoric and the art of persuasion, taught classes out of Indiana University and religious studies and philosophy to blown up my resume for the job market one day too. And I learned how to fish for men in those classes. I learned the value of rhetoric.

I learned how to navigate the classroom. But I faced off with Marxist in first or second semester. I had a Marxist professor put a permanent note in my file that I'm delusional and schizophrenic. I ended up going through legal proceedings as the ethics professor out at Indiana University.

Being said, I created a suicidal environment because I gave both sides to the issue on homosexuality. I lost my first Ph.D. during my fifth year at Purdue for having, quote unquote, too much of a faith perspective. And so I learned a lot about integration and I learned the value of going after the universities, going after the professor in particular, which I started to see as the 1040 window of the Western world, the greatest omission of the Great Commission. If we fail to reach the professor, we're failing our future generations. When you engaged the professors, did they respond in kind or it sounds like from what you've just said, it seems like the response was more ad hominem and logical fallacies than really engaging in content.

What was that like? I mean, it's true for some, even the famous atheist William Rowe, he gave me a letter of recommend, which I used for my second attempt at a Ph.D. through the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Friendly atheist. I was his last student and we got along great. But there are some hostile ones as well.

And the more we have a move toward Marxism, which is growing in the universities, they become more cancel culture like. So I I had some that were friendly, some that were very difficult to navigate around. And again, I unsuccessfully so at Purdue. But at the end of the day, the way I saw this through God's sovereignty is what they meant for evil.

God meant for good. It gave me a bigger platform. Ultimately, I had to learn how to fight and fight for the freedom to defend the faith, not just defending the faith.

And now I'm able to do that and lead an organization with that modus operandi. Well, I hope a lot of our young people listening to this show are taking into account what you have to say, because it is going to be work and it's not going to be something that's going to be easy when they attend a secular university. But as we were talking off air, you see a lot of these same problems infecting even our alleged Christian universities, do you not?

Right. I think we lost the universities early, you know, 1880, 1930. Right now, we're experiencing phase two. And that phase two is coming not from the sciences like it happened a century ago, but from the humanities and infiltrating our new institutions that we had to take a tactical retreat toward and start and found.

And now many of them have cracks in the fissures. There's at least a token representative, if not the administration, backing these new views of critical race theory and some things that we would see as leftism or progressive Christianity. You've mentioned critical race theory twice now. Could you very quickly explain it for our listeners?

Because I don't think a lot of people realize how dangerous this ideology is. Yeah, it's the critical race theory is the built by the twin pillars of Marxism and race. And the idea is that people are in interlocking opposition to one another in identity groups like I'm black, I'm gay, I'm male, I'm this, I'm that. And you're either an oppressor or an oppressed, a victim or a victimizer, a have or a have not in every category, race, class, sex, gender, etc. And since the ultimate problem is inequality in all the categories, inequality just means injustice. So the ultimate goal is social justice. And that takes place in reproductive justice, in abortion, climate justice, racial justice, intersexual justice, you name it. It's becoming entirely radicalized far beyond the left, right, liberal conservative divide of yesteryear. And do you see this ideology bringing this all together? No, it's I mean it's an attack on the foundations of classical, the classical liberal tradition which includes inside of it the liberal conservative divide. This is a Marxist ideology from the outside.

And so I've got, there are more that could be said. People can go to our website, Rashiokristy.org and look up our publications. In particular you could Google engaging critical theory in the social justice movement. We were the first to publish on it in the United States from a critical thinking and a Christian perspective on critical theory in the social justice movement.

Now we've talked about Rashiokristy. How did you become involved in this organization? Rashiokristy, as I was finishing my doctorate for the second time, I had spoken at one of their campuses in the UK in the David Hume Tower on the moral argument for God's existence while I was defending my dissertation at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Two months after I graduated, Rashiokristy had hunted me and they had a position of President CEO available.

So it wasn't the direction I had anticipated, but here I am. What are you trying to accomplish through this organization? The reason I ask that is I want you to explain to our listeners, especially to those who are considering going to the universities, about why they should get in touch with people like you. Our mission is to equip students and faculty with historical philosophical and scientific reasons for following Jesus.

Vision is thoughtful Christianity transforming lives on campus to a changing culture tomorrow. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens in the university does not stay in the university. If you want to clean up the pollution downstream, you've got to go upstream. And that's always at the university. It's the most influential institution in civilization. So if we want to have an impact on our culture, we need to start upstream. And that's the strategic place. That's where we once founded the universities as Christians.

But now we've been kicked out and the only thing they want back in is our tuition dollars and our children. If someone who is listening wants to get involved with Rocio Christi, how can they help? Contact us at RocioChristi.org. Join the movement. You can give financially. You can join as an assistant chapter director or chapter director on a campus. We're on 125.

There are 5,000 campuses. Or you can help make people aware of the movement, what we're doing and why this is, I think, one of the most strategic ministries in the country. We're talking to Dr. Corey Miller. And you may wonder, this doesn't sound like Mormonism. But Corey came from a Mormon background. He uses that Mormon background, really, in what he does today.

It's looking at the issues critically and coming to proper conclusions. And he's with an organization, Rocio Christi, that helps people do just that. He's written a book called Engaging with Mormons, Understanding Their World, Sharing Good News. And we're going to be talking more about this book later on in the week. But I really felt it was important that we kind of veer off in this direction because it is a subject that all of us as Christians better be aware of.

We should not be blindsided by what is going on, not only in our culture, but specifically in our universities. And Corey is one of the best to talk to on this subject. Now, Corey, tomorrow we're going to talk to you more about an article that you wrote for the Christian Research Journal titled How We Lost the Universities and How to Reclaim the Voice of Christ. I hope that you'll be back for our show tomorrow to listen to what Corey has to say about this. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our Web site at www.mrm.org where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.