Canada Supreme Court rules against Christian university, must abandon Biblical rules to get accreditation
Canada’s Supreme Court ruled 7-2 against Trinity Western University’s (TWU) Law School, declaring that universities must choose between biblical standards and accreditation, essentially stating that Christianity and higher education in Canada are incompatible.
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Trinity Western is a Christian university that requires its students and faculty to live by basic Christian standards, meaning that students and faculty members cannot commit fornication or adultery, nor can you engage in homosexual relationships. These are common standards in thousands of schools across North America.
TWU’s mandatory covenant, which requires“that all students and faculty pursue a holy life ‘characterized by humility, self-sacrifice, mercy and justice, and mutual submission for the good of others.’ It requires members to abstain from using vulgar language, lying or cheating, stealing, using degrading materials such as pornography, and ‘sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.’”
LGBT activists and their allies argued that TWU was discriminating against LGBT students, because of which students graduating with a bona fide law degree should not be allowed to practice law in Canada.
The majority of justices found the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario have the power to refuse accreditation based on Trinity Western University’s “so-called community covenant.”
The Supreme Court ruled that if a Christian law school wants accreditation, it must abandon biblical values.
“In our respectful view, the [law societies] decision not to accredit Trinity Western University’s proposed law school represents a proportionate balance between the limitation on the Charter right at issue and the statutory objectives the [law societies] sought to pursue,” the court statement reads.
Two dissenting justices, Suzanne Cote and Russell Brown, sided with TWU, arguing that the law societies’ powers should be more limited when it comes to approving law programs.
