Professor Targets Trump Nominee for Religious Beliefs

Veronica Neffinger | iBelieve Contributor | Updated: Oct 12, 2017

Professor Targets Trump Nominee for Religious Beliefs

Raymond Barfield, a professor of pediatrics and Christian philosophy at Duke University, has taken issue with Michael Dourson, President Trump’s nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety office.

Despite Dourson’s credentials for the position as an environmental health professor in the University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine and his title as a “board-certified toxicologist with an international reputation for excellence in environmental risk assessment,” Barfield believes Dourson’s Christian faith will negatively interfere with his potential tasks working for the EPA.

In his work with chemical analysis, Dourson has said that he has found evidence that may support the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin--the famed burial cloth said to have been imprinted with Jesus’ face. Barfield took issue with this conclusion and with other aspects of Dourson's work.

This incident is reminiscent of another incident which occurred when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders accused Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget nominee Russell Vought of being unfit for office due to his Christian beliefs.

Sanders took issue with a response Vought had written to the Wheaton College controversy when former Wheaton Professor Larycia Hawkins had said Christians and Muslims serve the “same God.” In that response, Vought wrote: “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, his Son, and they stand condemned.”

Sanders implied that Vought had made an Islamophobic statement and said, “I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.”

 

Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/DenKuvaiev

Publication date: October 12, 2017



Professor Targets Trump Nominee for Religious Beliefs