My understanding is that the University later recognized the group as a student
organization:
http://www.michigandaily.com/news/intervarsity-reinstated-university-club
From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu]
On Behalf Of Brad Pardee [bp51...@windstream.net]
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 6:40 PM
To: ReligionLaw
Subject: Christian groups on secular campuses
I was reading an article about another Christian group, this time at Michigan,
being forced off campus because their constitution requires the leadership to
be Christian. I was thinking about it and I was wondering if this would be a
workaround that would withstand the anti-discrimination charge. Suppose a
group has a mission statement that states the groups mission to be to advance
the gosepel or something of that nature. The constitution could simply require
leaders to state that they affirm and support the mission of the group. They
wouldn’t be barring non-Christians from leadership. They would simply need to
know that the non-Christian would affirm a Christian evangelical mission.
(This would also work for other groups. For instance, Campus Republicans could
have a mission statement to support and elect Republican candidates. They
wouldn’t be banning Democrats from running for leadership position. The
Democrat would simply need to make the case that they support the mission of
electing Republican candidates.)
In order to prevent this, the campus administrators would then be required to
say that campus organizations are not allowed to have an evangelical mission,
which would be more difficult to defend than an across-the-board
anti-discrimination requirement.
Would that be an approach that groups like Intervarsity, etc., could take that
would likely pass muster?
The article about Intervarsity at Michigan is at
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/university-of-michigan-kicks-christian-club-off-campus.html
Brad Pardee
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