by | Jun 12, 2023 | Uncategorized
A former dean alleges over $1 million in staff kickbacks and payouts as his case against the university goes to court.
Four months after Liberty University filed a motion to dismiss a whistleblower’s lawsuit, the former dean suing the school amended his complaint with more detail about the alleged fraud he reported to authorities. He alleges that the school offered payouts to third parties and concealed the use of university funding for business expenses.
According to the suit, John Markley made “repeated good faith reports of disturbing violations” of state and federal law at Liberty, only to be terminated from his role as administrative dean for academic operations in June 2022.
“Dr. Markley’s position provided an eye-opening perspective on the inner workings of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that operated to maximize profits without ethics and at the expense of truth and those willing to fight for it, and to the detriment of the students, and professors,” the lawsuit says.
The university maintains that Markley was let go as part of a reorganization and that his allegations are without merit.
Markley’s original suit lists 15 “improper activities” he said he raised concerns about, including potentially fraudulent management of Liberty charitable organizations and corporate subsidies, the intentional misrepresentation of acceptance rates and enrollment numbers for financial gain, and a compensation scheme for LU business executives.
In a public statement obtained by CT, Strelka Employment Law—which represents Markley—said Liberty filed a demurrer to dismiss the case, arguing that Markley’s allegations “were not sufficiently specific.” The Lynchburg Circuit Court filed an order for Markley to amend his complaint.
The update, filed last Thursday, includes specific …
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by | Jun 12, 2023 | Uncategorized
Economic woes halt progress on President Nana Akufo-Addo’s planned cathedral as criticism turns increasingly religious.
The national cathedral was supposed to unite Ghana. Instead, the unfinished project and its ballooning costs have divided the country and become, for some, a symbol of failed policies and presidential vanity.
President Nana Akufo-Addo pledged to build the cathedral before he became president in 2016. He proposed a structure designed by a world-renowned architect, with a 5,000-seat auditorium, a Bible museum, and a garden filled with plants mentioned in Scripture. It would be a place for worship and national ceremonies: inaugurating the president, holding state funerals, and conducting national thanksgiving services.
Now Akufo-Addo is half way through his second four-year term, and construction is still ongoing. Costs have risen from an initial budget of about $100 million to four times that amount, and the country is struggling with an economic crisis with 50 percent inflation. Allegations of misappropriation of funds have only deepened public skepticism.
But Akufo-Addo is not turning back.
“The National Cathedral will be a unifying monument around which to elevate shared conversations on faith and on national transformation,” he said, according to the cathedral’s website. “It will also serve as a rallying platform to promote deep national conversations on how, collectively, we can build the progressive and prosperous Ghana we desire.”
In recent days, however, some of the public criticism has taken on a decidedly religious hue. One outspoken member of parliament opposed to the project, Sam George, cited the New Testament during debate over additional government “seed money” earlier this year.
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate …
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by | Jun 12, 2023 | Uncategorized
No less than her martyred husband, she could be inspiring and frustrating all at once.
Elisabeth Elliot was one of the most extraordinary and controversial evangelicals of the post–World War II era. Anyone even marginally affiliated with the American missionary community knows the stirring and tragic story of Elisabeth and her first husband, Jim Elliot, who was killed in Ecuador by Waorani tribesmen in 1956.
Perhaps even more remarkably, Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint (whose brother Nate also died in the attack) went to live among the Waorani in 1958. Before returning to the US, Elliot had become one of the best-known evangelicals in America, with coverage of Jim Elliot’s death and of her endurance on the mission field appearing in major national outlets like Life magazine.
Lucy S. R. Austen’s Elisabeth Elliot: A Life is a biography worthy of its subject, diving deep into Elliot’s vast body of correspondence and other writings to present an exceptionally detailed and sometimes conflicted portrait. About three-quarters of the book covers Elliot’s story up to 1963, when she returned to the US from South America. By that time, Elliot was a bestselling author whose now-classic books Through Gates of Splendor (1957) and Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (1958) were fast becoming standard reading among evangelicals.
Biographers of figures like Elliot always grapple with finding the right tone. Some Christian authors choose a hagiographical approach, presenting their subjects in a holy, inspirational light. In recent years, growing numbers of iconoclastic authors—especially academics—have gone to the other extreme, reviling once-revered evangelical figures and judging them irredeemable due to their complicity in various sins.
Austen happily inhabits …
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by | Jun 12, 2023 | Uncategorized
Chosen by Sarah J. Hauser, author of “All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry.”
The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path to True Christian Joy
Timothy Keller
When we connect every experience and interaction with ourselves, constantly overanalyzing what we’ve said or what people think, we can easily grow exhausted. In this brief book, Keller shows us the freedom we can experience when we understand our identity and worth in Christ. When there’s no need to perform or manage our ego, we find, as Keller says, a “blessed rest that only self-forgetfulness brings.”
Soul Care in African American Practice
Barbara L. Peacock
In our busy, frantic lives, practices like prayer, spiritual direction, and soul care can end up on the back burner. Using the examples of ten African American faith leaders, this book invites us to return to these practices to find the rest and soul transformation so many of us crave. As Peacock writes in her conclusion, “God has used servant leaders in the African American faith community to blaze paths of internal spiritual freedom that manifest externally.”
Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Priest, professor, and theologian Nouwen writes incisive, convicting words with humble, pastoral gentleness. In this book, he reflects on three scenes in the life of Jesus to show us how communion with God through solitude enables us to live the Christian life with depth and courage. Out of Solitude helps us quit finding our worth in usefulness or accomplishments.
Analog Christian: Cultivating Contentment, Resilience, and Wisdom in the Digital Age
Jay Y. Kim
Our attention is divided now more than ever. With technology and social media, we’re endlessly distracted, constantly comparing, and inundated by outrage—all of which …
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by | Jun 12, 2023 | Uncategorized
For Amos, it depends on whether the God we worship demands justice.
In this Close Reading series, biblical scholars reflect on a passage in their area of expertise that has been formational in their own discipleship and continues to speak to them today.
My mother was Guatemalan, and she went to great lengths to make sure that our family spoke Spanish and celebrated holidays with a Guatemalan flavor. I spent most of my summers as a boy in Guatemala, spending time with family and getting to know that country that is so dear to my heart.
Years later, I found myself back in Guatemala City as a professor at a seminary. It was a time when the 36-year civil war was at its worst. The war had begun when I was a boy, but I had never processed it. I was used to seeing soldiers around and hearing stories, but the fighting was primarily in the mountains. It seemed so far away.
As an Old Testament professor, I taught students from all over Latin America who would be confronting overwhelming poverty, widespread political corruption, and armed conflict; Guatemala was not the only country experiencing civil war. What could the Old Testament offer them? Could I make the Word of God come alive in relevant ways? Clearly, God cared about these things.
Roman Catholic liberation theologians were speaking into this complicated context and offering their own analysis and theological solutions. At the time, Latin American evangelicals were just beginning to venture into discussions of society and politics. Church services largely avoided these topics, as they were thought to be too worldly, but they drove the conversation in the coffee hour. These were the realities of my everyday life.
What would an evangelical approach to these problems—one deeply grounded in Scripture and our tradition—look like? That is …
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