Keeping the faith on campus

Every week seems to bring news of another attack on religious liberty, often in the form of commands that Christian student organizations either change their membership rules or get off campus. Stephen V. Monsma and Stanley W. Carlson-Thies explain why this is important in Chapter 2 of their book Free to Serve: Protecting the Religious Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations (Brazos, 2015), which I reviewed favorably in WORLD Magazine’s April 2 issue. —Marvin Olasky

What if one morning you opened your favorite blog and read the headline, “Democratic Club May No Longer Require Its Leaders Be Democrats”? Most of us would conclude that the world had indeed gone mad. Yet on campus after campus, Christian student organizations are being denied official recognition and on-campus privileges because they have Christian belief and behavior standards for their members or leaders. And Christian humanitarian organizations have been challenged in court over policies to hire only persons who support their religiously shaped missions.

These situations have emerged out of the nondiscrimination laws our nation has rightly enacted to protect persons against discrimination in the form of exclusion from employment or membership in organizations. Persons may not be told to look elsewhere because of their race, ethnic background, religion, disabilities, gender, and—in some jurisdictions—sexual orientation. No employer may hang out a sign reading, “No blacks need apply” or “No Catholics need apply.”

This is good and proper. But nondiscrimination laws do raise some questions. May an on-campus sorority limit its membership to women and a fraternity to men? We have easily answered that question with a yes. We have also easily answered the question of whether a synagogue may only hire a Jew as its rabbi or an Episcopal church only an Episcopalian as its priest. But may laws forbidding discrimination based on religion prevent a faith-based organization that is not a religious congregation from limiting its members, leaders, or staff to persons in agreement with its religious beliefs? Differences of opinion, and at times bitter controversy, have arisen. Here we present [a] case [study] of … such [an instance].

Must a Christian Student Organization Admit Atheists?

San Diego State University recently withdrew official on-campus recognition from the Alpha Delta Chi sorority, an evangelical sorority, and from Alpha Gamma Omega-Epsilon, an evangelical fraternity, and stripped them of the privileges that all other on-campus student organizations possess. The problem according to the university was that these Christian student organizations were engaging in discrimination because they restricted their members to Christians in agreement with their statements of faith. The students took their case into the federal courts but lost on both the District Court and the Court of Appeals levels. The Supreme Court refused to hear their case.

Three crucial observations testify to the violation of religious freedom in this instance. One is that San Diego State University allows student organizations to impose belief or philosophical conditions on their members and leaders and still retain official university recognition. No one disputes this fact. Both the university and the decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit openly acknowledged that student organizations may restrict membership to those who support the group’s purpose and “agree with the particular ideology, belief or philosophy the group seeks to promote.” The court’s decision went on to state, “For example, the Immigrant Rights Coalition requires members to ‘hold the same values regarding immigrant rights as the organization.’ The San Diego Socialists at San Diego State require students to be in ‘agreement with our purpose.’ The Hispanic Business Student Association opens membership to those ‘who support the goals and objectives’ of the organization.” The net result of this policy is—as it was expressed in a brief filed before the Supreme Court asking it to review this decision—that the university’s policy “allows Democrats to bar Republican leaders, Vegans to bar hunters, African-Americans to bar white supremacists, but not Christians to bar atheists.”

This is deeply troubling. It has the effect of discriminating against Christian and other religiously based student groups. Belonging to a religious tradition involves holding to certain beliefs and certain perspectives on the world and how to live one’s life in the world. In that sense it is akin to holding to certain political or philosophical beliefs. To grant on-campus recognition and the privileges that go with that recognition to those holding secular beliefs and perspectives but to deny them to those holding religiously based beliefs and perspectives is a clear instance of discrimination against religious student organizations.

A second observation is based on San Diego State University’s very public commitment of encouraging diversity on campus. Its website has a separate tab labeled “Diversity” that proudly proclaims “Diversity Starts Here.” But at San Diego State, diversity ends at religion. The university fails to see that its policy of not recognizing religious student organizations works against diversity. It, in effect, says we welcome and encourage racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and gender diversity but not religious diversity.

The goal of any university’s commendable push for greater diversity on campus is not simply having isolated individuals of differing racial, ethnic, economic, sexual orientation, or gender backgrounds enrolled in the university. Instead, the goal of diversity necessarily involves persons of differing backgrounds being able to band together in order to gain mutual support and encouragement, to make their voices heard, and to be recognized as part of the university community. As already seen, one of the Court of Appeals judges acknowledged that San Diego State University’s policy “marginalize[d] in the life of the institution” evangelical Christians and other religious groups by refusing their organizations on-campus privileges that other student organizations are given. The university thereby violated its own stated goal of greater on-campus diversity.

It is important to note that deeply committed religious students on a state university campus—and this is especially true of evangelical students—can sometimes feel they are in a minority position. A recent nationwide study of college and university faculty by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research found that of all religious groups, evangelicals elicited the most negative feelings by faculty members. Some “53% [of faculty] said that they have cool/unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians. Faculty feelings about evangelicals are significantly cooler than any other religious group. … These negative feelings are noted across academic disciplines and demographic factors.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that evangelical and other deeply religious students on secular university campuses at times may feel they are in a marginalized position similar to other historically marginalized groups, such as racial and ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, and the physically disabled. Yet, while San Diego State University encourages and makes allowance for certain students to band together to better express themselves and their beliefs, it actively discourages and sends off campus organizations based on religion. As Tish Warren, a staff member for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a national association of Christian student organizations, has asked, “Do we want different communities with conflicting narratives and ideologies to be authentically represented on campus or not?” San Diego State has clearly answered “No” in the case of religiously based narratives and ideologies.

A third observation notes that the Court of Appeals’ decision stated that the Christian student groups are still “free to express any message they wish, and may include or exclude members on whatever basis they like; they simply cannot oblige the university to subsidize them [by on-campus recognition] as they do so.” This is true, of course. What is also true, however, is that other student organizations can receive advantages that go with on-campus recognition, such as “access to campus office space and meeting rooms, free publicity in school publications, and participation in various special university events.” Meanwhile, religiously based student organizations are denied these same benefits officially recognized student groups receive. Religious student organizations are thereby put at a disadvantage compared to secular-based student organizations. Religions and religious groups are free to do what they want, but they must stick to their own private world. They must function without the benefits other, nonreligious student groups receive, such as on-campus meeting rooms and use of campus communications. This most definitely is not consistent with full religious freedom.

… [T]he situation at San Diego State University is anything but unique. In 2014 the entire California State University system with its nineteen campuses enforced a policy that now requires all on-campus, recognized student groups to accept all students as potential leaders, whether or not they agree—in the case of a religious student organization—with the religious basis and mission of the organization. As a result all the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship student groups on these campuses, as well as other religious student groups, now must operate without the advantages that go with official recognition. Vanderbilt University, the Hastings School of Law, Rollins College, the University of Michigan at Dearborn, Rutgers University, the University of North Carolina, and Tufts University have all refused to recognize and grant on-campus status to Christian student organizations or have threatened to do so. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship counted some forty campuses as of 2012 where their chapters have been threatened with derecognition because of religious standards for their leaders.

It takes no great insight to recognize that if an organization—whether an environmental, LGBT, political, or religious organization—cannot require its members, and surely its leaders, to adhere to the beliefs around which it is organized, that organization faces the prospect of losing its distinctiveness and thereby its reason for existing. This is no minor matter. …

One final note is that different faith-based organizations will differ on the importance for them and their identity to have members, leaders, or employees in agreement with their religious beliefs and standards. Some believe it is important that its leaders be in religious agreement but will welcome members and staff with different religious beliefs. Others will believe it important that all its employees be in agreement with its religious beliefs. Faith-based organizations also differ on how they define being in religious agreement. Rarely in the Christian tradition do faith-based organizations believe it important their members or staff belong to one certain church or denomination. What is important is that the faith-based organizations themselves be free to decide what religious standards to insist upon and to whom in their organizations to apply them. That is crucial in order for a faith-based organization to maintain its distinctive nature and identity.

From Free to Serve: Protecting the Religious Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations by Stephen V. Monsma and Stanley W. Carlson-Thies. Published by Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group. ©2015. Used by permission.