It’s another day, with yet another Religion News Service story about Christian higher education that fails to add one or two sentences of crucial material about ongoing clashes between centuries of Christian doctrine and the Sexual Revolution.
The setting for this news story, once again, is Seattle Pacific University — a Free Methodist institution in the progressive Pacific Northwest. Click here for flashbacks to GetReligion posts about news coverage of what is clearly a bitterly divided campus.
Once again, RNS readers never learn whether students and faculty on this campus sign — at enrollment or employment — what is usually called a “doctrinal covenant” or “lifestyle agreement.” This is a document in which members of a voluntary community pledge to support, or at the very least not openly oppose, a private school’s beliefs on a variety of moral and theological issues.
Many faith-based schools (on the religious left or right) have these covenants, but many do not. Thus, it’s crucial for news readers to know if students and faculty involved in a doctrinal conflict have chosen to sign covenants and, of course, the details of what is contained in the documents. This brings us to this RNS update, with a double-decker headline:
SPU board members seek dismissal of lawsuit over LGBTQ exclusion
The lawsuit, board members say, is an effort to 'intimidate and punish leaders of a religious institution for the exercise of protected First Amendment rights.'
This is a short story, based on documents linked to the lawsuit. Here is the overture:
Members of Seattle Pacific University’s board of trustees are asking a Washington state court to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the body by a group of students and faculty at the school, arguing that the suit is an effort to “intimidate and punish leaders of a religious institution for the exercise of protected First Amendment rights.”
Seattle Pacific is a 130-year-old private Christian university associated with the Free Methodist Church, which teaches that “homosexual behavior cannot be seen as part of God’s intended role for human sexual expression, regardless of a person’s attraction, and which does not accept marriage between people of the same sex.”
The faculty and students sued the board in September in Washington’s superior court for continuing to uphold a policy that bars people in same-sex relationships from being hired to full-time positions at the school. The plaintiffs claim the policy threatens to harm SPU’s reputation and worsen an already shrinking enrollment. By possibly jeopardizing the school’s future, they argue, the board is breaching its fiduciary duty.
The trustees say they are simply trying to defend the teachings of their church, as in “assembling and speaking about institutional religious beliefs, policies, and church affiliations.”
The crucial fact in this story is that SPU’s FACULTY is divided on these doctrinal issues. This leads to a simple question: Why are these professors teaching at this school if they reject its core doctrines?
Now, I know quite a few Christian academic institutions that do not require students to sign covenants. Why? To be blunt, many (1) need the tuition dollars. Others believe their “missions” work (2) includes evangelizing students who enroll, even if they do not share the school’s faith commitments. In many cases, trustees say (2), when the reality is (1). This leaves these schools in vague, dangerous territory when defending their First Amendment rights as a voluntary, doctrinally defined community.
Is that the case at Seattle Pacific University? Readers need to know the facts about that.
I noted this exchange in reader comments on this RNS story. One reader noted:
If the board wants to destroy SPU as an institution, they are going about it the right way. The world has changed. A substantial majority of young people today know lgbtq people personally, and do not accept homophobia/transphobia as legitimate.
Another responded:
The institution has its baselines. You don't like them, enroll somewhere else. This is not that difficult.
Ah, but does SPU have “baselines” that are clearly stated — with a chance for students and faculty to endorse or reject these doctrines? Again, readers need to know.
The RNS material quoted above does include — look for the word “teaches” — a hyperlink to a Free Methodist Church document from a “Study Commission on Doctrine.” A digital link is useful on websites, but not much use to the few (I guess) readers who will encounter this report in a newspaper.
Does the document address the issue of doctrinal covenants at the denomination’s schools? At best, it is unclear. Here is one statement that may, or may not, apply to SPU life.
We commit to receive into church membership only those who have received Christ’s forgiveness and redemption, are committed to a life of growing discipleship, acknowledge God’s pattern of health for the believer and commit to live out the membership covenant of the Free Methodist Church. Membership involves not only the commitment of the believer to Christ, but his church. It is also the church’s acceptance of and commitment to the believer. Membership is a privilege, not a right for all who attend Free Methodist Churches. Membership is a privilege appropriate to specific levels of Christian understanding, commitment and maturity. Membership instruction should be both rigorous and thorough. In the Free Methodist Church all members are eligible to lead the church in some capacity if so elected or assigned. And, as such, leaders and members must not only agree to keep but live out a life that is in harmony with our Articles of Religion and Membership Covenant.
This appears to apply to churches. But a university is not a church. Again, if readers are going to understand what is happening at SPU, they need to know factual details about what kind of voluntary covenants faculty and students do or do not sign. Otherwise, what is this story about?
If readers want to know more about the SPU clash, and issues surrounding it, they can turn — let me be blunt — to an astonishingly one-sided report from the Associated Press and RNS with this headline: “LGBTQ students wrestle with tensions at Christian colleges.” While this feature does include a few sentences from conservative sources, they are swamped in material coming from the Christian left.
It is totally appropriate that the report contains information about how doctrinally progressive schools handle LGBTQ issues, which much of the material centering on life at Saint John’s University, Catholic school with a complex past, which AP/RNS does not mention, on issues of sexuality and Catholic teachings.
The voices from the left are important. The question, once again, is rather basic: Why would AP/RNS all but ignore voices on the other side of the story?
That’s rather obvious in this crucial chunk of material, which serves as a thesis statement:
Among Protestant institutions, a few are pushing the envelope, and most are hoping to stay out of the messiness, said John Hawthorne, a retired Christian college sociology professor and administrator.
“Denominations won’t budge, so colleges will need to lead the way,” Hawthorne added. Otherwise, they might not survive, because students are used to values far different from churches’ teachings, as highlighted by last week’s Senate passage of legislation to protect same-sex marriage.
“Today’s college freshman was born in 2004, the year Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage,” Hawthorne said, suggesting there might not be enough conservative students in the future for some of the universities to survive.
The story notes that many students at “Christian” schools enroll “not because of faith but academics, athletics or scholarships.” Also, many enroll because of the faith commitments of their parents or home churches — which these students may or may not affirm.
Once again: What do these students sign when they enroll? What promises do they make? Signing on a dotted line is crucial, in cases based on voluntary freedom of association (think First Amendment).
Once again, AP/RNS does a great job of handling this from the perspective of progressive Christianity. At one point, readers do learn this:
New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ Catholics, keeps a list of over 130 Catholic colleges it considers LGBTQ-friendly because they provide public affirmation, including courses and clubs, said its director, Francis DeBernardo.
“Catholic colleges and universities were … and still are the most LGBTQ-friendly places in the church in the United States,” DeBernardo added.
The Cardinal Newman Society, which advocates for fidelity to church teachings on all Catholic education issues, maintains its own list of recommended schools, a little more than a dozen the organization considers “faithful.”
“For these colleges, being ‘Catholic’ is not a watered-down brand or historical tradition,” Newman president Patrick Reilly said via email.
Ah, once again we see the new normal — a wide variety of valid interview material from people on the good-religion side of a story, matched with a tiny bite of email or website information from those in the bad-religion pews.
Here’s an exercise readers may want to try: Print out this AP/RNS story. Then get two highlighter pens with contrasting colors. Mark passages from progressive Christian sources with one color. Then mark material from conservative Christian sources with the other. Let me stress that it doesn’t count when AP/RNS offers second-hand material about conservative beliefs, drawn from an interview with a progressive source.
What will you see when you use this simple exercise? Let me know. Remember that we are not dealing with clearly labeled analysis copy here or a column in the large world of RNS opinion features.
Now, let’s end with a final question, and it’s a crucial one for those who have been following church-state debates at the U.S. Supreme Court.
What happens when government agents get involved in these theological and legal disputes in private higher education?
At that point, the existence of clear printed statements of doctrine — signed by faculty and students — will be crucial. Vague statements about church “mission” will not be enough.
Hollow threats? No, we are talking about the next state of this national story.
Note this passage, including an AP/RNS reference to “federally funded Christian schools.” Is that a reference to student loans at private schools or even the tax status of religious, private nonprofit institutions? At some point, would schools with government-approved doctrines be granted one legal status, while those with ancient doctrines are given another? Could government officials get entangled in doctrine, making decisions about which doctrines receive the state’s blessing and which ones do not?
The AP/RNS story warns (I added bold type to the pivotal undefined term):
Last year, 33 LGBTQ students or former students at federally funded Christian schools filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, claiming the department’s religious exemption allows schools that receive federal dollars to unconstitutionally discriminate against LGBTQ students. The plaintiffs have grown to more than 40.
In May, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights launched a separate investigation for alleged violations of the rights of LGBTQ students at six Christian universities — including Liberty University.
The independent evangelical university is one of several that have greatly expanded their rules prohibiting students from identifying as LGBTQ or advocating for such identities.
Want to hear from students and experts on both sides of this big, complex story?
Sorry, it appears old-school journalism of that kind isn’t in favor at the Associated Press these days, even when — or especially when — working in partnership with Religion News Service. Turn, turn, turn.