Apparently 17 Christian groups have decided to comply with Vanderbilt’s new ‘nondiscrimination’ policy, which means that their leaders (and less importantly, members) can’t be selected based on faith requirements. Two catholic groups decided to move off campus and there are 11 other Christian groups waiting on approval of their group constitutions:
TENNESSEAN – After a year of conflict over Vanderbilt’s nondiscrimination policy, the university’s 30 Christian groups are going their separate ways.
Seventeen decided to comply with the policy, which bans groups from requiring their leaders to hold specific beliefs. Two Catholic organizations will become off-campus groups rather than comply but will continue to hold Mass on campus.
Eleven conservative groups remain in limbo. They didn’t appear on a list of approved groups released by the university nearly two weeks ago, but they haven’t been told their applications were rejected.
“We are still waiting on the university,” said Peter Valk, a member of the Navigators, one of the groups in limbo.
Most people understand that this ‘nondiscrimination’ policy was crafted to keep homosexuals from being ousted by Christian groups who believe homosexuality is a sin and therefore bars them from being in leadership and perhaps in some cases, members. However, this policy takes it much further in what it calls ‘nondiscrimination’:
CHRISTIAN POST – A Christian student group at Vanderbilt University has been told by the school’s administration that it will lose its recognized status on campus unless the group removes its requirement that its leaders have a “personal commitment to Jesus Christ,” says a Christian legal association. …
The Christian Legal Society told The Christian Post on Friday that the small Christian student group, which wants to stay anonymous, received an email from the administration last Tuesday that stated that the group’s application to keep its recognition was deficient because the group’s constitution states the following:
“Criteria for officer selection will include level and quality of past involvement, personal commitment to Jesus Christ, commitment to the organization, and demonstrated leadership ability.”
CLS said that the student group was told that in order to retain recognition, it must eliminate the requirement that leaders have a “personal commitment to Jesus Christ.” The private university, located in Nashville, Tenn., dictated that the following sentence be substituted instead:
“Criteria for officer selection will include level and quality of past involvement, commitment to the organization, and demonstrated leadership ability.”
If this isn’t religious discrimination in the name of ‘nondiscrimination’, I don’t know what is. In an effort to be ‘tolerant’, Vanderbilt has become intolerant and discriminatory against those it deems intolerant – in this case Christian groups. No longer can Christian groups mandate that their leaders be Christians.
With 17 groups folding, it doesn’t sound like there is much effort to fight this policy. I can only hope that changes because 30 Christian groups, all banding together to fight religious discrimination, could make a real difference at the university.