| Boundless readers will recall that Tufts University in April decertified a Christian group, the Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF), as punishment for its refusal to allow a lesbian to run for president. The group was not only defunded but forbidden to use the Tufts name, to meet in any room that required a reservation, to advertise any events on campus. "On the Tufts campus," an Office of Student Activities administrator reportedly told the group, "you do not exist."
As it turns out, TCF’s stay in limbo didn’t last long. Word of the university’s action spread quickly, and it didn’t go over well with the public. So on May 15 the Committee on Student Life — a faculty/student group that reviews campus judiciary decisions — unanimously repealed TCF’s banishment.
Score one for the good guys. Unfortunately, score just one.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports that similar doings are afoot on other campuses. Ball State, Williams College and Middlebury College have all adopted "language and policies aimed at forbidding groups to bear witness to politically incorrect views while choosing their leaders." Grinnell College in Iowa and Whitman College in Washington State have banned evangelical groups on comparable grounds in recent years, the group adds.
Think that’s bad? Things are even worse in Canada, a country that’s ahead of the U.S. in silencing Christians — though perhaps by only a few years.
North of the border, comments merely assessing from a biblical standpoint can be banned from the airwaves under "hate speech" laws. A Canadian government agency recently exercised this power to censor Dr. Laura. But wait, there’s more: The Canadian Supreme Court is now weighing a case which may determine whether Christian colleges can be essentially shut down out of the teacher-training field.
The case in question involves Trinity Western University, a college which met all academic qualifications but which was nevertheless decertified by the British Columbia College of Teachers in 1996. TWU’s offense will, by now, sound familiar: Because it opposes homosexuality, the school is an "inappropriate environment" to train teachers. Two courts have since sided with TWU, but if the Supreme Court — which will hear the case in late 2000 or early 2001 — weighs in against the university, any Christian college in British Columbia (and potentially any other part of Canada) that dares adhere to the Bible will be effectively excluded from sending students into public education.
The problem here isn’t really the courts, however; it’s the culture. Canada’s Supreme Court may well come down on TWU’s side, but it remains the case that key cultural institutions — like the body that accredits colleges in British Columbia — are in the hands of people who, at bottom, hate Christianity and are eager to expel Christianity from society.
Not many of them will put it that way, of course. The preferred strategy is to say that biblical standards don’t represent "real" Christianity, but merely the corruptions of unpleasant and unenlightened men like the Apostle Paul. Real Christianity, in their cosmology, always (with remarkable convenience) turns out to be in perfect harmony with "progressive" opinion.
The greatest concern for Christians in the cases mentioned above isn’t homosexuality or even freedom of speech, though both of those are important. What’s at issue, on the most fundamental level, is the truthfulness of Scripture itself. Christians find themselves in the midst of an ongoing cultural pressure campaign to modify (read: jettison) views that aren’t congenial to — well, pretty much anyone who might take exception.
Christians face the temptation of buckling to the pressure, muting words that might be unpopular and telling ourselves we’re doing it all to "reach out," "build bridges" or "avoid alienating people." But before starting down that path, we’d do well to consider its predictable end point.
The other day I got an e-mail from a professed Christian which began by urging the church to express itself in terms that were agreeable to today’s culture. By the end he’d reached the point of saying Christianity is "not the only or necessarily the best manner of worshipping God," but merely a reflection of our "traditions and roots." This, obviously, isn’t an expression of Christianity, however the author may choose to identify himself. It’s relativism, pure and simple — a denial of Christ’s central claim to be the only path to the Father (John 14:6).
If we stand firm for truth, on the other hand, we can safely expect to face at least unpopularity and some degree of persecution; Christ told us as much. But we’ll keep our souls — and maybe, by God’s grace, help others do the same.
|
