Groups affected included the Christian Legal Society, InterVarsity and the graduate chapter of Campus Crusade. These organizations face an uncertain future because of a new policy that prohibits religious organizations from requiring that their leaders share the same beliefs and goals of the organizations they seek to lead. The policy goes one step further by hamstringing Bible studies.One wonders about the focus of the Office of Religious Life. One wonders if we are moving to the point where insisting on a Catholic Priest to say the Roman Catholic Mass on Sunday might not be an affront to the rules? I expect that Professors are still guaranteed to be allowed to teach their courses.
According to a letter from the acting director of the Office of Religious Life, Bible studies are suspect because they "would seem to indicate that officers are expected to hold certain beliefs." The letter goes on to explain: "Vanderbilt policies do not allow this expectation/qualification for officers."
In the comments to the OpEd is this item.
Well, an enterprising group of Vandy Christians could reverse this policy in a heartbeat. Get 200 of your closest Christian friends, and have them join the Vanderbilt Association of Hispanic Students (or other identity group). Then have everyone show up at the annual elections meeting and vote in an entire slate of conservative Christian non-Hispanic officers.One wonders if the University would extent its sway to off-campus organizations if the students abandoned University sanctioned organizations and became GDIs?
Regards &mash; Cliff
Just one more example of a growing and increasingly prevalent enforced restriction on personal freedom, imposed by those who claim to deny that right as foundational to THEIR right to freedom. Today, a much more vocal and well populated anti-Christian movement (an aggregate of many smaller bands of merry men and women and transgenders) insist that one's expression of Christian doctrine is an affront to their freedom. It is a dilemma in which those who profess the celebration of freedom will in fact destroy it.
ReplyDeleteNext to Judaism, Christianity has been the most assailed religion in the history of man. For centuries, Christians were a minority and were compelled to celebrate their beliefs in private, if not in secret. To further reinforce the "dangers" of Christianity was the activities of the Crusades and the domination (if not outright enslavement) of societies by the Church.
Unfortunately, Christianity today does not operate with squeaky clean robes. In far too many instances, the extremists of Christianity have been as repressive of others as the very groups that are repressive of Christians. This only repels those who are "Holiday Christians" and further weakens Christianity's role in modern society. Most of the mainstream Christian institutional churches are suffering from lack of attendance. In my opinion, this phenomenon extends from the institutional church (and actions of local congregations) to drive away the very people who want and need the love and grace of worship.
Ultimately however, Christianity is not an institutional experience. It is intensely personal. It is a one on one relationship with God, and as such, doesn't require the structure of institutional religion. In fact, in the earliest times of Christianity post-resurrection, the "Church" was simply two or more folks who met to discuss their beliefs in an effort to better understand them, and to pray to a God who they profoundly loved and who loves them.
That Vanderbilt rejects formal Christian groups is, on its face, intellectual snobbery at its best and academic fraud at its worst. But, Vanderbilt is only continuing a long tradition of the battle between secularism and Christianity for the hearts of people.
The specter of unrestrained institutional domination of society proclaiming a certain "belief system" to be acceptable, rejecting all others, can be found in the early days of the rise of every dictatorship in the history of man. In early Nazi Germany, the state began to wield its control over society by condemning and banishing "dissidents" who were found in German academia. Of particular interest by the Nazi's were the theoretical physics folks, most of whom didn't embrace any governmental system, and were therefore considered "enemies of the state."