IVCF kicked out at Tufts University
.
.
This is not some kind of unqualified endorsement for
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
Personally, I have difficulty with "hard sell"
Christianity, viz, our way or the highway.
Yet, should there be any question that even strict
Christian believers deserve a place
on any university campus ? If the students involved abide
by all normal rules of
conduct, maintain sufficient GPA to remain students in good
standing, what
is the problem ?
.
Moreover, if any faith based student organization has a
minimum requirement
that its leaders abide by a common faith tradition's
beliefs, where is there a problem ?
This ought to be true whether a group is Christian,
Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, or
anything else. Except that this does not appear to be the
case at Tufts.
.
While the article is less than clear about this, the crux
of the problem appears to
be a Christian code that, based on the Bible, says that
homosexuality is
incompatible with Christian faith. Which, of course, it is.
After all, 20 books
in the bible, 10 in each Testament , include verses that
condemn homosexuality.
None are abrogated by, say, the Sermon on the Mount, or
Ecclesiastes.
.
It is easy to see the reasons for Tufts policies. Whatever
a tradition believes,
you can't have a religious group say that murder is a duty
for believers, unless,
of course, the religion is Islam, most Moslem countries
produce a lot of oil,
and the mass media has a love affair with Islam. In that
case, jihad doctrine
is perfectly OK. Nothing further needs to be said.
Moreover, even though
the Koran also condemns homosexuality, for the sake of
Tufts policy
everyone should pretend that it does not and all will be
well.
.
Christians, though, face a challenge. They must justify
their anti-homosexuality
stands on non-faith grounds inasmuch as a blatant myth
prevails to the effect
that science "proves" that homosexuality is a genetic
non-choice condition.
This myth happens to be demonstrably wrong. The science
says the opposite
of the assumptions on which Tufts bases its policies and
not only Tufts,of course.
Hundreds of other universities and thousands of businesses
have variant policies.
.
The question, therefore, is why doesn't IVCF get busy and
commission scholarship
that identifies all relevant scientific findings to the
effect that homosexuality is
demonstrably non-genetic, is demonstrably a matter of
"choice" of behavior,
and is demonstrably psychopathological in nature, viz
detrimental to one's
mental health ?
.
Such documented findings would be entirely consistent with
the views expressed
in the Bible. Such findings would be of inestimable value
to many other Christian
organizations, and to society in general. What, then, is
the hold up ?
.
Just thought I'd ask.
.
Billy
.
.
The Tufts Daily
TCF loses official TCUJ recognition, plans to appeal
By Martha
Shanahan
Published: Monday,
October 22, 2012
Updated: Tuesday,
October 23, 2012 16:10
Tufts Christian Fellowship (
TCF) has lost its official
recognition as a Tufts Community Union (TCU) student group
over alleged discriminatory clauses in the group’s
constitutional requirements for its leaders.
TCF leadership says the group
plans to appeal the decision.
The group’s Vision and Planning
Team (VPT)
failed to make revisions to their governing document that
would bring it in line with the TCU Constitution’s
non-discriminatory clause, Judiciary Chair Adam Sax, a
senior, said.
As an unrecognized group, TCF will
lose the right to use the Tufts name in its title or at
any activities, schedule events or reserve university
space through the Office for Campus Life and request and
receive funding allocated by the TCU Treasury, Sax said.
TCF is the Tufts chapter of InterVarsity
Christian Fellowship/USA, an evangelical Christian mission
on college campuses across the country, and also has ties
to the university Chaplaincy.
The group had been operating in
a state of suspended recognition after the Judiciary found
that the group’s constitution can be interpreted in a way
that excludes students from leadership positions based on
their beliefs. The clauses in question require that any TCF member
who wishes to attain a leadership role must adhere to a
series of tenets called a Basis of Faith, or eight “basic
Biblical truths of Christianity.”
The Judiciary last month
recommended that TCF move the belief-based
leadership requirements from the constitution’s bylaws,
which are legally binding, to its mission statement, which
is not.
By the first week of October, TCF had
not submitted any amendments, so Sax set a deadline of
Oct. 18 for the group to do so.
“It was long enough for the
[Judiciary] to say, ‘This is something that needs to start
getting done,’” Sax said.
The VPT
solicited feedback from TCF members and submitted a
proposal for a new draft to be reviewed by the Judiciary.
The revised constitution, among other changes, shifted a
clause requiring leaders to follow the Basis of Faith to
the constitution’s opening article and reworded several
clauses in the article on leadership selection.
After reviewing the revised
constitution, the Judiciary found that the clauses about
leadership selection still excluded students who did not
share a certain belief system, Sax said. TCF
decided to accept derecognition rather than
continue to revise the document.
“In the end, we felt we
couldn’t satisfy their suggestions,” senior Elaine Kim, a
member of the VPT, said.
The group has ten days to
appeal its derecognition, according to
Sax. It must file paperwork with the Committee on Student
Life (CSL)
requesting that a panel of students and faculty re-examine
TCF’s
recognition status and either uphold or strike down the
Judiciary’s decision.
“We’re deciding to appeal this
decision because we feel like just the purpose of our
organization is to...encourage understanding and
celebration of each belief [in the Basis of Faith], and
the best way to fulfill that purpose is to have leaders
that are centered on and unified by these beliefs,” Kim
said.
“We feel like we have the right to be selective
on the basis of belief for our leaders since we’re a student
group that is trying to encourage understanding about a
faith-based set of beliefs,” she added. Her sentiment is
echoed in her Op-Ed, “TCF to appeal derecognition,”
on page 9.
It is a familiar process for TCF, as
the Judiciary derecognized the group in 2000
after a student alleged that she had been denied a
leadership role because of her sexual orientation. TCF
appealed to the CSL, which reversed the
decision and reinstated the group’s recognition.
Kim said that while she cannot
predict the outcome of the planned appeal to the CSL, TCF will
continue to exist as a student group based in the
Chaplaincy should its derecognition
be upheld.
“We don’t know what the results
are going to be but we’ll continue to read the Bible and
pray together,” she said.
