The CCCU controversy may not be over

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

Earlier this week, a controversy in the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) seemingly died down when two member schools said they would withdraw from the group. Goshen College and Eastern Mennonite University, which recently changed their hiring and benefits policies to include employees in same-sex marriage, announced they were quitting the CCCU the same day the coalition was set to decide whether to change the schools’ membership status.

CCCU president Shirley Hoogstra commended Goshen and Eastern Mennonite for making a “generous, sacrificial” decision.

“It worked out in a way that I think will benefit the cause of Christian higher education moving forward,” Hoogstra said. “I’m very grateful.”

But something should have been done much earlier, said John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Stonestreet attended Eastern Mennonite in 1994.

“They were wrestling with this issue back then,” he said. “They weren’t willing to take any sort of stand. And I’m not just talking about loving those who identify as gay or lesbian, but the act itself of gay sex and the theological position on that.”

Stonestreet called on the CCCU to make a stronger stand for biblical sexuality.

“The CCCU didn’t do anything. It’s letting the institutions decide where it stands, and I think that’s really problematic on an issue of this significance and this importance,” he said, adding, “The major issues need to be clarified. And I think there are still some other institutions in the CCCU who haven’t changed hiring policies like Eastern Mennonite and Goshen did, but they have other policies that are still problematic.”

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