Freedom to Organize Ministries on College Campuses

The writing has been on the wall for years.  We've known this was coming.  It was just a matter of time before some of these things came to a head.  The future of Christian campus ministries hangs in the balance, with our Supreme Court hearing a case today that will have a ripple-down effect for years.

Here's what is at stake:  Can an official campus ministry determine its leadership and membership based on certain standards of belief?  There is a summary of the proceedings on the website for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  (Thanks to Mike Buckley of Knoxville, TN, for sharing this link.)  This court case deals with a Christian group for law students at the University of California's Hastings School of Law in San Francisco.  They were banned from campus because their statutes "discriminated" on matters of faith.

A similar, recent story is brewing with World Vision, a Christian relief organization, who denied employment to a man when they learned he was Muslim.  Of course, this group distributes millions of dollars in aid from the US government, so some believe that World Vision needs to offer equal employment opportunity to any qualified applicant regardless of faith.  But their policy is to hire only Christians.  Here's one of many articles that talk about this.

I recall a meeting between campus ministers and administration officials at West Virginia University.  WVU is one of the most secular universities in the country -- odd for a state that is generally conservative and relatively religious (at least in theory).  They keep religious groups at arm's length.  Religious workers have no official status at WVU unlike at other major universities (Univ of Illinois, Auburn Univ, Clemson, Texas A&M, etc.).  Campus ministers were tolerated but not often welcomed.

On this occasion, however, they needed to visit with us about an ultra-conservative "Christian" group that was coming to town.  This group out of Kansas loved to garner publicity by provoking people.  They would picket churches deemed too liberal.  Their banners shouted out hateful slogans against homosexuals.  They have picketed funerals of soldiers, saying that God killed that soldier because of sin.  They would bait law enforcement personnel and file lawsuits if any officer touched them or insulted them in any way.

Needless to say, the university wanted to avoid any headline-grabbing incident with this group's visit, so they asked for our help in thinking things through.  In the course of the discussion, the Director of the President's Office for Social Justice talked about the need to respect homosexuals.  No one argued with the statement, but the tone of the comment made several of us uncomfortable.  She seemed to believe that they would come down on our groups if we in any way discriminated.  "How might we discriminate?" you ask.  By not letting individuals join or even lead our Christian groups because of their sexual lifestyle.  This was an unsettling thought, and the Lutheran campus pastor most clearly expressed our displeasure at the implications of this.

How does this affect our ministry? Will collegians be prohibited from being Christian or from practicing their faith? No. But it may mean that Christian groups will have to function in the shadows or on the fringes of state university campuses. They may not be able to enjoy the privileges of being officially sanctioned and sponsored by the administration.

Would this be such a bad fate?  Would it kill us to move away from the sanction of our universities?  Probably not.  As a matter of fact, it may actually be a blessing.  I'll paint the potential picture in a future post.  But for now, we await the Supreme Court's verdict.  Campus ministers, beware!