LU won't renew Caner's contract as dean of seminary

Liberty University said Friday that Ergun Caner would no longer be dean of its seminary, following an investigation into some of his claims about being raised as a Muslim.

Caner has signed a contract to be a member of the seminary’s faculty next year, the university said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Four members of Liberty’s Board of Trustees who conducted the investigation found that “Dr. Caner has made factual statements that are self-contradictory,” the university said.

The panel, however, basically supported Caner’s testimony of being a former Muslim who converted to Christianity.

The contradictions came in “matters such as dates, names and places of residence,” the LU statement said.

Although LU didn’t provide any more details about the discrepancies, Caner said in several speaking engagements in 2001 and later that he was raised in Turkey before coming to the United States as a teenager.

He also said he was trained in Islamic jihad, a term associated with terrorist activity, according to recordings made in 2001 of his comments at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., and Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.

However, his parents’ divorce papers, on file in a Columbus, Ohio, courthouse, indicated the family moved from Stockholm, Sweden, to the U.S. when Caner was about 4 years old, and continued to live in the Columbus area.

Caner’s father was a Muslim who sought to raise his children in the Islamic faith, although he had only part-time custody after the divorce, the documents indicate.

“Dr. Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review,” the LU statement said.

The investigating committee “found no evidence to suggest that Dr. Caner was not a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager,” the statement said.

LU spokesman Johnnie Moore responded to requests for further comment by saying, “Liberty will not be making any additional comments or giving any interviews at this time.”

The university announced May 10 that it would investigate Caner because of questions from news media, including Christianity Today, The News & Advance and the Nashville Tennessean.

Christianity Today was the first mainstream news outlet to report the Caner controversy.

The media raised questions after bloggers had spent several months questioning Caner’s claims about his being raised in Turkey, and about his defending Christianity in debates with Muslim scholars and other religious leaders in 13 countries and 35 states.

James White, one of those bloggers and a specialist in apologetics, the practice of defending Christianity against other faiths, said Friday that he would like to know more about what the investigating committee found.

“I think they had to act in light of the documentation that had been provided,” White said.

“But the many questions that have been raised really aren’t being answered.

“Simply removing him as dean and allowing him to continue teaching the same subjects he was teaching before really isn’t going to lead to a conclusion of the controversy,” White said.

The LU statement, White said, “raises all sorts of questions about what did he apologize for.

“This really requires a second statement from Dr. Caner himself, and I am really hoping that what we are going to see is full disclosure on his part,” White said.

“Students at Liberty deserve an open response,” preferably one delivered to them by Caner in the LU chapel, White said.

Tom Rich, another blogger who frequently wrote about Caner, said Friday that, “I am pleased that Liberty has taken this action. It will help to salvage their reputation, and it shows the world that a high-profile preacher who speaks lies from the pulpit will eventually be held accountable by his peers.”

Rich said he was present in the Jacksonville church on Nov. 20, 2001, when Caner gave an account of having been in Islamic jihad.