APPOINTMENT OF A NEW PRESIDENT AT EASTERN NAZARENE COLLEGE: SYMPTOM OF A MAJOR PROBLEM IN THE CHURCH

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University, was recently
selected as the new president of Eastern Nazarene College, which is also
being discussed as a possible merger with Trevecca. He will step in
sometime after Dr. Corlis McGee leaves her current position later in the
summer. The “leaders” of the denomination are cheering, no doubt. They
have always been complicit, or at the very least willfully ignorant,
with everything that has been destroying the Nazarene denomination
spiritually.

I am not surprised at this choice. Dr. Boone and Dr. McGee share some
views that make this selection understandable. To many of us who have
voiced our concerns about the denomination for years, it further
indicates full steam ahead towards a practical marriage between
Nazarenes and Roman Catholics. The only major item that will be missing
soon is to have pope Francis as the keynote speaker at a future General
Assembly. And why not? The prayer stations are already in place, the
Roman Catholic practice of Lent and ashes to the forehead is everywhere,
and the Roman Catholic retreat is scheduled for a pre-Assembly event
this summer.

If you believe in the Bible- truly believe in it, not just parts of
it as Dan Boone does- then I could not warn you any more than I do now.
You are placing your child in danger by sending them to Eastern Nazarene
College, and frankly, there is hardly a Nazarene college now that has a
strong biblical foundation anymore.

So here is why Dr. Boone’s appointment bodes very badly, especially for those who have children of college age.

Ecumenicists Promoting Roman Catholicism

Dr. Boone and Dr. McGee are both ecumenicists. Dr. McGee has
expressed to me in a past meeting with her and the ENC provost that
Roman Catholics are our brothers and sisters in Christ. On the ENC
website, you will find Roman Catholic churches on the list of available
churches to attend in the community. In the ENC bookstore (last time I
visited), you would also find Roman Catholic related books, including a
Roman Catholic bible, along with many books by authors that promote an
ecumenical belief system.

Dr. Boone, as Trevecca president, has long promoted yearly trips for
students to the Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky, a site that was the
spiritual home of the Roman Catholic mystic, Thomas Merton. Here at this
retreat, students from ENC have the opportunity to “practice the
silence”, which is nothing more than Catholic mysticism that has no
roots in biblical teaching. The “spiritual discipline” of silence is a
doctrine of demons. This retreat is scheduled for this year again: https://www.trevecca.edu/community-life/faith-service/spiritual-formation-retreat

Dr. Boone also has promoted the use of prayer labyrinths, and has had
one there for years at Trevecca. After I exposed this more fully, he
made excuses about it, and later re-named the labyrinth and called it
something else. It is not just Trevecca doing this: https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/labyrinths-prayer-stations-yoga-in-the-nazarene-church/

An Uneasy Accommodation To The LGBT Community

At Eastern Nazarene College, an LGBT support group was allowed to be
established at Munro Hall. I sent a letter to Dr. McGee wondering how
Bertha Munro would have felt, knowing an LGBT group was meeting in a
building named in her honor. I received a reply their from former
chaplain, with an excuse that the school does not necessarily sponsor
the group, which was a lame excuse because all they had to do was say no
to a group whose basic premise goes against Biblical values. And this
same chaplain spoke in a chapel service several years ago, all but
promoting a relaxation of biblical standards regarding homosexuality.

For Dr. Boone, all those things at ENC fit right in with his track
record. He is known for accommodating the LGBT agenda at Trevecca,
having allowed an extreme LGBT group to come on campus to have “a
dialog.” https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/a-response-to-dan-boones-report-on-soulforce/

And lest we forget, at the last General Assembly, Dr. Boone was one
of those most instrumental in arguing for postponing an attempt to
strengthen the Church statement on homosexuality. It will be interesting
to see what the arguments for this will be this year. I working on
evidence that indicates that the denomination is in for a very difficult
time regarding the homosexuality issue, which will lead to further
division in the Church.

Hostility Towards Bible Believers

Dr. Boone has an utter disdain for Bible believing Christians, as
shown in this article I wrote a few years ago. He has compared Bible
Believing Christians to Islamic fundamentalists. He says that our
appetites have been whetted “by religious blood in the water.” (https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/dan-boone-goes-after-bible-believers-again/)

Promoting False Teachers

Dr. Boone is certainly no Bible traditionalist. He has very bad
theology, he promotes false teachers, and he does not believe in the
creation as told in Genesis. He was a prominent member of the group,
Nazarenes Exploring Evolution, before it’s website suddenly closed down
for no apparent reason. Until it closed down, folks like Dr. Boone were
heartily endorsing the idea that God used evolution to create us. He was
not alone in that group, and was joined by many well-respected pastors,
professors and national leaders. Very frightening indeed.

In an older profile at Nazarene Theological Seminary, which is no longer posted, he said the following:

“…I am deepening in the mystical forms of prayer.”

Dr. Boone promotes one of the leading teachers of contemplative
mysticism, false teacher Richard Foster. As an example, Foster makes the
amazing claim that non-believers can also practice the Christian
spiritual disciplines: “We need not be well advanced in matters of
theology to practice the Disciplines. Recent converts–for that matter
people who have yet to turn their lives over to Jesus Christ–can and
should practice them” (Celebration of Discipline, 1978, p. 2).

Dr. Boone has called Thomas Merton and Ignatius of Loyola spiritual giants.
Merton was not a spiritual giant- he was a monk who said that he was
“deeply impregnated with Sufism” because he believed that Eastern
mysticism was compatible with and could be incorporated into
Christianity.  He placed Mary high on a level equal to Jesus, he prayed
to many catholic saints.  He was influenced by Aldous Huxley, who found
enlightenment through hallucinogenic drugs.

Ignatius of Loyola was no wiser, and as the founder of the Jesuits he
brutally persecuted Christians and swore complete submission to the
pope.  As most Roman Catholics do, he venerated Mary.  He practiced
extreme asceticism, living in a cave for a year and never bathing.  He
also promoted and taught visualization prayers, breath prayers, and
other unbiblical practices (Source: Way of Life).  Yet, Dan Boone calls him a spiritual giant.

In a Letter to Pastors he wrote in 2009, Dr. Boone not only
erroneously claimed that the Roman Catholic church was the only church
for 1500 years after Christ, but he also exposed more error along with
his ecumenical get along with everyone philosophy.  How is it that we
can “be one” with the Roman Catholic Church?

“While Nazarenes are different from Catholics in very significant
ways, we believe that we will share eternity with them in the presence
of the Christ who prayed that we might be one.”

His philosophy seems to be, anyone who claims the name of Jesus, no
matter their belief otherwise, will spend eternity with Christ. This is
contrary to Jesus’s teaching, and indicates Dr. Boone’s dangerous and
ignorant thinking as he misleads others.

A Symptom Of A Bigger Problem

I am sure Dan Boone is a nice guy. But how long will the denomination
continue to tolerate nice guys who teach bad theology, who do not
believe in the creation account in Scripture, and who promote Roman
Catholic mysticism? Sadly, the appointment of Dan Boone is merely a
symptom of a much bigger problem in the Church of the Nazarene. Dan
Boone is not going anywhere else because I wrote this article. I have no
illusions of that.

It is going to take a huge cataclysmic event of spiritually
challenging proportions to generate any kind of major opposition to the
apostasy in the church. By then it might be too late. Will people only
wake up at the next General Assembly if some earth shattering amendment
is made regarding homosexuality, the next frontier in the Church? Will
same sex relations be blessed in the church? Is it happening already,
and you just don’t know it? Will homosexual “Christians” be a part of
the accepted conversation?

Or perhaps, most of the sheep in the pews will they continue on
pretending that all is well in a holiness denomination that only mouths
the words, but does not live them anymore.

Holiness is becoming heresy right before our eyes.

Additional Documentation:

Dan Boone’s Involvement with Promoting Evolution
https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/nazarene-scholars-continue-to-undermine-belief-in-gods-word-with-evolutions-lie/

Dan Boone’s Dislike of Bible Believers
https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/dan-boone-goes-after-bible-believers-again/

Dan Boone’s Involvement with SoulForce (LGBT advocates)
https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/a-response-to-dan-boones-report-on-soulforce/

My Conversation with Dan Boone:
https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/conversation-with-a-university-president/

A Charitable Discourse?
https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/a-charitable-discourse-or-compromise/

Labyrinths and Prayer Stations
https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/emergent-church-what-is-it/trevecca-labyrinth/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/labyrinths-prayer-stations-yoga-in-the-nazarene-church/