By Isaac Price | Staff Writer and Samantha Holm | Arts and Culture Editor
Whitworth students piled into the Hixson Union Building (HUB) ABC room on Thursday, March 16, to hear from Andrew Greene, Leadership Institute’s (LI) deputy assistant to the president, donor services officer and starter of the nonprofit Students for America. The title of the presentation, “The First Amendment from a Christian Conservative” was splashed across the screen below a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) heading as students took their seats.
Greene spoke for approximately 45 minutes, had a 15-minute question-and-answer segment and then answered lingering questions while mingling around the room.
TPUSA Club President, Grace Stiger, ‘23, said she asked Greene to speak because of his biblical stance on the First Amendment. “I wanted a strong Christian to come and remind us what God says about how we should use our mouths when speaking,” Stiger said in an email interview.
The values Stiger mentioned are the bedrock of the Leadership Institute, an organization that “identifies, recruits, trains and places conservatives in government, politics and the media.” Through LI, Greene worked on conservative political campaigns in his home state of North Carolina. Since then, he has become an ardent defender of and activist for conservative politics.
The Leadership Institute introduced Greene to Stiger while she interned there last summer. Stiger said, “LI inspired me to start clubs on campus . . . so we can have more civil discourse and diversity of ideas. . . They [LI] helped give me the courage to put myself out there and risk being hated for my conservative values.”
Greene’s involvement in conservative politics and his association with Turning Point USA (TPUSA) ultimately led Stiger to invite him on campus as a guest speaker.
The Thursday event opened with an introduction from TPUSA officers, Mazie Castagnetta and Vanessa Flowers, and a round of applause. Greene proceeded to explain the historical context of the First Amendment, and how he believes free speech is currently under attack.
Greene said that he believes in recent years, left-wing institutions have implemented “cultural Marxism” as a mechanism to suppress free speech. The basis of Marxism is an ever-present struggle between the upper and lower classes. A reporter from TPUSA, Morgan Zegers, says cultural Marxism applies this same idea but is about “dividing people by religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation and. . . race.”
Greene then likened the experience of modern Christians to those living in the Soviet Union. While Christians living under the Soviet Union were free to hold their beliefs, they could not profess them publicly. In the same way, Greene believes that modern Christians cannot share their opinions on a myriad of issues without being attacked or branded as “fascists” by left-leaning individuals.
He pointed to Matthew 10:22, which in the New International Version (NIV), reads, “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
In his lecture, Greene called the audience to lean into their beliefs and follow the Christian principle of being “the salt and light of the earth.”
Greene believes one of the most significant obstacles conservatives face is the liberal biases he believes are present in the school system, from pre-kindergarten to graduate school. “There’s this influence and this power dynamic [toward Christian universities] to embrace the same policies of secular universities that are out there,” Green said in an interview.
In the lecture, Greene expressed how grateful he is for TPUSA and the variety of viewpoints he believes the organization represents. “[Turning Point] allows for open discussion with people that differ,” he said, noting that these viewpoints include neoconservatives who may not be socially conservative.
Stiger highlighted the importance of organizations like LI. “It is important for young leaders in the conservative movement to be equipped with the tools they need to succeed on college campuses everywhere because we tend to be the minority,” Stiger said. “Political preference aside, the knowledge they give you can be used in many walks of life that do not concern politics at all but just general qualities of leaders.”
Third-year Calista Hall, a member of TPUSA, said she appreciated that Greene’s presentation included “multiple different viewpoints.”
Hall believes this reflects the principles Jesus would uphold. “[He] would talk with people and learn about who they were and ultimately care about the heart of who they are.”
To learn more about TPUSA and its upcoming events, email Grace Stiger at gstiger23@my.whitworth.edu.