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A fundraising letter from the president of Trinity International University connecting a recent mass shooting in Nashville, Tenn., to the social acceptance of transgender people has prompted sharp criticism from some alumni, Baptist News Global reported.
“It says much about the state of our culture when people barely flinch at a man proudly and confidently claiming to be a woman (or whatever identity happens to be the trend of the month) simply because he declares it to be so,” Nicholas Perrin, president of the small evangelical institution, wrote in a letter earlier this week. “As Western culture becomes increasingly antagonistic to the gospel it also, necessarily, becomes increasingly detached from reality. It is no coincidence that a generation which denies the existence of the Creator and his laws also denies all other fundamental truths. The tragic implications of our culture’s dominant worldview became even more evident after the devastating shooting in Tennessee.”
Perrin added that the founders of Trinity International University “would have hardly believed the extent to which our culture has deteriorated”—and ends the letter with an appeal for donations.
The letter comes less than a month after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, which left six dead. The shooter, a former student, identified as transgender, according to various reports.
The letter has prompted a rebuke from alumni. David C. Cramer, a graduate of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, said on Twitter that he was “aghast and ashamed,” while others called the rhetoric “tasteless.”
College officials did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
The fundraising fiasco comes at a time of turmoil for Trinity International University, which announced in February that its undergraduate program would go mostly online next fall. A letter from college leaders explained that they made the move in response to rising costs for in-person education while enrollment continued to decline. In-person classes will continue for the divinity school and Trinity’s law school in California.
