Education officials across America, including at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, are refusing to fully recognize Christian organizations, such as Intervarsity Christian Fellowship that requires leaders to adhere to Biblical beliefs -- a violation of state law, officials say. Colleges and universities are insisting that students who advocate deviant sexual behavior be included in the Christian organization leadership.
UPDATE 9/9/14: California Boots Christian Clubs Across the State
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
Colleges Ban Student Groups for Christian Beliefs
Florida College Drops Exclusively Christian Club
Michigan Univ. Boots Christian Club for Being Christian
North Carolina Univ. Rules Student Club Not Christian Enough
Stripping Freedom of Religion from Vanderbilt
Buffalo Univ. Favors Gays, Suspends Christian Organization
Colleges Celebrate Homosexual Indoctrination Month
Also read how the Supreme Court outlawed Christian evangelism while forcing the Gay Agenda on campus.
-- From "Colleges and Evangelicals Collide on Bias Policy" by Michael Paulson, New York Times 6/9/14
After this summer, the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship will no longer be recognized by the college.
Similar conflicts are playing out on a handful of campuses around the country, driven by the universities’ desire to rid their campuses of bias, particularly against gay men and lesbians, but also, in the eyes of evangelicals, fueled by a discomfort in academia with conservative forms of Christianity. The universities have been emboldened to regulate religious groups by a Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that found it was constitutional for a public law school in California to deny recognition to a Christian student group that excluded gays.
At Cal State, the nation’s largest university system with nearly 450,000 students on 23 campuses, the chancellor is preparing this summer to withdraw official recognition from evangelical groups that are refusing to pledge not to discriminate on the basis of religion in the selection of their leaders. And at Vanderbilt, more than a dozen groups, most of them evangelical but one of them Catholic, have already lost their official standing over the same issue; one Christian group balked after a university official asked the students to cut the words “personal commitment to Jesus Christ” from their list of qualifications for leadership.
The evangelical groups say they . . . welcome anyone to participate in their activities, including gay men and lesbians, as well as nonbelievers, seekers and adherents of other faiths. But they insist that, in choosing leaders, who often oversee Bible study and prayer services, it is only reasonable that they be allowed to require some basic Christian faith — in most cases, an explicit agreement that Jesus was divine and rose from the dead, and often an implicit expectation that unmarried student leaders, gay or straight, will abstain from sex.
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From "Religious club discriminates, state university system says" by Dan Reidel, Chico Enterprise-Record 6/11/14
A Chico State University club faces losing recognition because the California State University system says it discriminates.
The Intervarsity Christian Fellowship is an Evangelical Christian group with a club constitution that requires its leaders to sign a doctrinal statement of faith. According to an executive order from the university system in 2011, no university-recognized organization may discriminate based on, "race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, color, age, gender, marital status, citizenship, sexual orientation, or disability."
Club leaders said it isn't discriminating, since anyone, no matter their religious beliefs or sexual orientation, can be a member. The problem is that student leaders are asked to sign a statement that says they believe in the divinity of the Jesus Christ, the Bible and the Holy Trinity.
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From "InterVarsity: Colleges Take Non-Discrimination Policies to 'Illogical Extreme' Against Christian Student Groups" by Alex Murashko, Christian Post Reporter 6/12/14
Greg Jao, national field director for the Northeast InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, told The Christian Post that college institutions such as California State University (Cal State), the largest university system in the U.S., that are prepared to withdraw recognition from certain evangelical clubs this summer, are an example of a nation at a crossroads.
"You can no longer ignore the fact that multiple universities are doing this and it's a sustained trend rather than one administrator acting oddly," Jao told CP.
He added, "InterVarsity welcomes all students to our meetings, programs, and events, and we think by and large the non-discrimination policies are actually good things for the universities, just taken to an illogical extreme. I don't think there is a large conspiracy working against religious groups, but I do think it shows the bankruptcy of the current tolerance conversation."
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From "Bowdoin rebuts New York Times report that college stripped Christian group of campus status" by Beth Brogan, Bangor Daily News Staff 6/12/14
Bowdoin spokesman Scott Hood told the Bangor Daily News on Wednesday that the college had “taken no steps to ‘unrecognize’ Bowdoin Christian Fellowship. The error — it’s semantics, I suppose — is that they reported that we have cut their recognition.”
In February, The Bowdoin Orient reported that Robert and Sim Gregory, who served as volunteer advisers to the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship for nearly a decade, declined to sign a new volunteer agreement introduced by the college last fall that requires volunteers to comply with college policies, including prohibiting discrimination based on race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, among other factors.
On Wednesday, Robert Gregory would say only, “We’ll honor the college request. We’re going to do our work off campus if that’s what they want.”
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Bowdoin College Says Gays Must Be Allowed to Join and Vie for Leadership in Christian Groups on Campus" by Leonardo Blair, Christian Post Reporter 6/13/14
In an interview with The Christian Post Friday, Robert Gregory, an attorney and volunteer adviser from Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, said Bowdoin officials told them using biblical standards to select leaders of their Christian group would be a violation of state law.
"We were told that state law would override biblical standards of leadership so the non-discrimination policy prohibited the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship and Intervarsity from discrimination from any student," said Gregory. "For example, whether they were Christian, whether they were serious about following Christian patterns of belief and practice as it related to sexuality and other matters, that there could be no discrimination made."
"This fellowship doesn't have formal admissions standards. These are students who meet on a regular basis and invite all of the students who come," said Gregory. "Students who lead, however, have to sign a charter that expects them to follow a set of Christian behavior."
When asked why a homosexual would want to join a Christian group and continue with that lifestyle knowing that orthodox Christianity does not support homosexuality, Hood said he didn't know but Bowdoin still maintains homosexuals should have the right to join and compete to lead Christian groups if they wished.
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In addition, read Notre Dame Rejects Students for Natural Marriage and also read Baltimore College Denies Entry for Being Christian as well as Iowa Univ. Removes Religious Propaganda (Bibles)
Also read Obama Administration Muzzles College Students' Moral Speech
