Norman Geisler Still Defends Ergun Caner (formerly President of Liberty Seminary)

Recently I did a post on the Liberty Baptist Seminary Board's findings after investigating Ergun Caner, their President. They removed him from the Presidency but retained him on the faculty. Norman Geisler, the well known Christian apologist, posted the following on his facebook page:

An extensive independent investigation has exonerated Dr. Ergun Caner of all the false charges made against him by extreme Muslims and others and has been retained as a Professor at Liberty University. In spite of a few misstatements (which we all make and he has corrected), nothing has diminished his testimony and orthodoxy as one of the great Christian voices of our time. I totally support him.

Frankly, I am not surprised because Geisler and Caner are friends (see the picture below where they are "cutting-up" with each other). People, even Christians, will excuse their friends from behavior that they would condemn in other people. While this is understandable from a human point of view, does it make it right? Does it make it okay for a Christian, who is supposed to be committed to the truth, to excuse lying on the part of a fellow Christian who happens to be a good friend? I don't think so. I think it only shows the duplicity of Norman Geisler.

Update on the President of Liberty Baptist Seminary's Case

Last month I reported on the strange case of Ergun Caner, the President of Liberty Baptist Seminary (founded by the late Jerry Falwell) in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was being investigated by the Board of the Seminary for making false statements about his background. It seems that after 9/11, he became a popular speaker on the Bible conference circuit claiming to have been a Muslim until his late teenage years and having trained as a Islamic Jihadist in Europe where he lived. It turns out that his Muslim father and Christian mother divorced when he was 4 years old and she moved him and his brother with her to the USA. He was definitely "stretching the truth," apparently to make his "testimony" more interesting and to sell books and get speaking engagements. Several people on the internet began researching his story and found the falsehoods. It turns out he has also lied about having debated certain Muslim scholars.

Well, on Friday the 25th, the Seminary board announced their findings:

After a thorough and exhaustive review of Dr. Ergun Caner’s public statements, a committee consisting of four members of Liberty University’s Board of Trustees has concluded that Dr. Caner has made factual statements that are self-contradictory.

However, the committee found no evidence to suggest that Dr. Caner was not a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager, but, instead, found discrepancies related to matters such as dates, names and places of residence.

Dr. Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review.

Dr. Caner’s current contractual term as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary expires on June, 30, 2010.

Dr. Caner will no longer serve as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

The university has offered, and Dr. Caner has accepted, an employment contract for the 2010-2011 academic year. Dr. Caner will remain on the faculty of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary as a professor. ("LU won’t renew Caner’s contract as dean of seminary").

Here is the report done by the local TV station in Lynchburg:



Longtime critic of Caner, James White, himself a Christian apologist, was not satisfied with the statement issued by Liberty University. On his blog on Friday, he wrote this response:

1) When was the issue ever whether Caner had been a Muslim? How many times does this canard have to be put down?

2) Factual statements that are self-contradictory. Is that the same as a "lie"? If I said to my kids (when they were young), "Did you lie to me?" and they responded, "No, we gave factual statements that are self-contradictory," would that save them from discipline? It seems the folks at SBC Today think so, since they say Caner has now been exonerated.

Seriously, I can't make that kind of thing up. In other breaking news, Nixon was not a crook, and "is" actually has 48 meanings, just as Bill Clinton said.

3) "Discrepancies about dates, names and places of residence" is the PC way of saying, "Ergun Caner lied to everyone and their second cousin about being a jihadi from Turkey, and we all bought it, hook, line, and sinker, until...THOSE people pointed out the obvious."

4) If Dr. Caner has cooperated, then I call upon the Board of Liberty University to release the entirety of its findings, not a short statement, including providing answers to the questions I sent to them in my open letter of May, 2010.

5) Dr. Caner has apologized for exactly what? For lying about his past, making up an entire persona that catapulted him to national prominence and gave him the position he enjoys, claiming to have done debates in at least eleven countries and 35 states against Muslim clerics and others? Is that what he apologized for? These questions must be answered, and Liberty cannot afford to be silent.

6) All Liberty teaching contracts end on June 30th. This is merely a non-renewal of the contract, replacing it with a lesser contract to teach. But to teach what? Apologetics? Upon what basis? Will he honestly tell his students that he has lied about his experiential expertise in that field for nearly a decade? Or is Liberty hoping their students do not surf the net very often?

Aside from the "we really have no touch with reality" responses of Ergun Caner's supporters, we are still left with a non-statement here. I have said for months: Liberty must answer the real questions, the questions about integrity (not just Caner's, but now, their own) openly, fully, and honestly. A seven sentence statement is not enough. Answers must be given. Honesty and Christian integrity demands it, and the ministry of the gospel to Muslims demands it as well.

It is interesting to see how church and school officials will often "spin" the facts in order to minimize the PR damage to their institution. I can understand this with regard to secular organizations but how can a Christian insitution which claims to be concerned about the truth justify not being completly open and honest? We saw the same thing with the rape case in the NH church and frankly these two examples are merely the tip of the iceberg. If you care to see more of this kind of cover-up, go to Jeri Massi's blog or Christa Brown's website.

President of Liberty Baptist Seminary (founded by Jerry Falwell) Under Investigation

Ergun Caner is President of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia. It is part of Liberty University, the fundamentalist school founded by the late Jerry Falwell.

On May 5th, the Seminary announced on its website that Liberty University Provost Dr. Ron Godwin is forming a committee to investigate a series of accusations against Ergun Caner, president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. The Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today,  has run a couple of articles on the situation (see here and here).

In an article published May 17th, the local Lynchburg newspaper, The News and Advance, stated:

When Liberty University begins the investigation it announced last week into the background of Ergun Caner, president of its seminary, the panel doing the work could explore several questions.

Where did Caner grow up — in Ohio or in Turkey?

When did he come to the United States — as a teenager as he has said, or at age 4 as his parents’ divorce documents indicate?

Did Caner have a nominal Muslim upbringing, or was he raised in Islamic jihad, “trained to do that which was done on 11 September” as he told an audience in Jacksonville, Fla., in November 2001?

Did he formally debate scholars of other faiths, including Islam, as his online biography once claimed?

Is Caner’s middle name Mehmet, as it’s shown on the cover of books he’s written — or is it Michael, as it’s listed on the concealed-weapons permit he got last year in Lynchburg?

It appears that shortly after 9/11, Caner decided to embellish his Muslim background. The News and Advance article continues:

Ergun Caner gave vivid accounts of his Muslim upbringing to church audiences in Florida and Texas shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“I was raised as a Sunni Muslim” in Europe, Caner said at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., according to a recording of his talk there on Nov. 20, 2001.

“I was the son of the muezzin, the one who does the call to prayer at the top of the minaret,” Caner said, describing himself as being similar to a “preacher’s kid.”

“May I submit to you, until I was 15 years old I was in the Islamic youth jihad. And so until I came to America; until I found Jesus Christ as Lord, I was trained to do that which was done on 11 September. As were thousands of youth,” Caner said on the recording.

That same month, at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, Caner gave this description of his Islamic background:

“And coming to America I had lived under the misconception that you hated me, as a Muslim,” Caner said in remarks that were rebroadcast by Focus on the Family in April.

“That really affected a lot of what I did in my younger years,” Caner told the Texas audience.

“I’m not really proud of the fact that I am part of, was part of, Islamic Jihad. I’m not proud of the fact that it actually was my people who were involved in what took place, the horror,” he said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The committee's report is due on June 30th. It will be interesting to see the results. I hope, for his own sake, that Caner doesn't take the line that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal recently took when he was caught lying about serving in Vietnam. Blumenthal said he "misspoke." As Sen. John Cornyn of  Texas said, Blumenthal made matters even worse by downplaying his lies as a "mistake":  "The only worse thing, I think, is then coming on and saying, 'Oh, I misspoke,' after you've been caught red-handed," Cornyn said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's as if he shot himself in one foot, then reloaded and shot himself in the other."

Just as Blumenthal knew whether or not he served in Vietnam, that is not the kind of thing you would make a mistake about, Caner knows whether or not he was reared as a Muslim in Europe.