California ‘derecognizes’ Christian college group for requiring Christian beliefs
California is a safe haven for the political correctness movement, so it should be surprising that an international Christian group for college students, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, was “derecognized” by all 23 California State University schools because IVCF wouldn’t stop requiring its leaders to hold Christian beliefs.
“While we applaud inclusivity, we believe that faith-based communities like ours can only be led by people who clearly affirm historic Christian doctrine,” the statement on the IVCF website read.
Photo – Instagram
Christian Today covered the story and asked how far will this change go and what’s next.
“It’s not just InterVarsity that will be impacted. Following the same logic, any group that insists on requiring its leaders to follow an agreed upon set of guiding beliefs is no longer kosher (irony intended) at California’s state universities. This will impact many other faith-based organizations with actual, well, faith-based beliefs. Presumably, even People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would have to allow Oscar Meyer to lead their campus chapters.”
“Loss of recognition means we lose 3 things: free access to rooms (this will cost our chapters $13k-30k/year to reserve room). We also lose access to student activities programs, including the new student fairs where we meet most students. We also lose standing when we engage faculty, students and administrators,” Greg Jao told CT on the impact of the ruling in their Sep. 6 article.
Jao added that “the university is using a rule intended to protect and to include religious groups to exclude religious groups because they want their leaders to be representatives of that religion. It’s an imposition of a civil religion (democratic process) on a religious leadership selection issue.”
Recently Tish Warren chronicled for Christianity Today her own experience at Vanderbilt here in Nashville, where a similar action was taken against not just InterVarsity, but Catholic and Mormon groups. Student groups requiring leaders to sign doctrinal statements were derecognized to second class status.
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