The Overview (Monday, April 12)
A lawsuit points to challenges for Christian higher education, Andrew Walker and Jake Meador go back and forth on "theonomy," delayed Easter readings, and more
Last week the Religious Exemption Accountability Project—REAP—filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education. The suit has major implications for Christian higher education, including my alma mater (George Fox University) and my employer (John Brown University).
REAP is representing nearly three dozen current and former students who say their colleges—all Christ-centered in some way, with many belonging to the CCCU—discriminated against them based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity (in at least one instance, a university purportedly did not file a Title IX claim following a report of sexual assault on campus). REAP argues that this is unacceptable, and that these colleges and universities should lose their exemptions from Title IX regulations governing higher education as a result. Without responding to this case, these colleges have traditionally held that their religious commitments have enabled them to make decisions regarding student conduct consistent with their understanding of the Bible’s view of human sexuality.
Objectively, the lawsuit faces an uphill climb. Even if lower courts were sympathetic to the suit’s legal claims, the United States Supreme Court would have the final word, and there is little to suggest that the Court, as currently constructed, is ready to go along with REAP’s argument. Just last year the Court broadened the ministerial exception as applied to private educational institutions, and based on the opinion, there appears to be at least five justices who would side with the colleges in this case.
But regardless of how this case will end, its very existence is a testament to the legal challenges on the horizon for Christian higher education. In the aftermath of Obergefell v. Hodges and Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (both watershed cases for LGBT rights), it is only a matter of time before lawsuits ask whether colleges receiving government funding (the vast majority of Christian colleges do, in the form of students using federal loans and grants) must make hiring and firing decisions in line with anti-discrimination laws or admit students in same-sex marriages, to name two examples.
As someone who teaches at a university that would be affected by these kinds of lawsuits, I’m aware of the stickiness of this situation. On the one hand, Christian universities ought to treat LGBT students the same as non-LGBT students in terms of behavioral expectations. Being in a relationship counter to the university’s stated ethic concerning marriage is subject to discipline (for gay and straight students alike), but being gay, by itself, should never be grounds for university discipline. At the same time, universities with a mission rooted in sincere, traditional religious beliefs should have the freedom to hire (and fire) employees to protect that mission. While the REAP lawsuit doesn’t necessarily speak to these questions, future lawsuits inevitably will.
This is a complicated issue (indeed, set of issues). I ache for the students who felt harm at these institutions, and think colleges (including my own) can always be doing more t address these questions. And I can’t speak for others, but John Brown University is proactive in attempting to find responses to these questions that respect the dignity of all people as made in the image of God, while at the same time remaining committed to the mission that has led us for more than a century. This lawsuit brings a cleaver when what’s necessary is a scalpel.
With that, here’s the Monday, April 12 edition of The Overview:
1) Yes, Easter was over a week ago, but the New York Times ran two excellent essays about Resurrection Sunday very much still worth your time. First, Wheaton College’s Esau McCaulley writes about “the unsettling power of Easter,” drawing on his experience in the Black church:
Christians, at their best, are the fools who dare believe in God’s power to call dead things to life. That is the testimony of the Black church. It is not that we have good music (we do) or excellent preaching (we do). The testimony of the Black church is that in times of deep crisis we somehow become more than our collective ability. We become a source of hope that did not originate in ourselves.
And Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center asks why it matters that, after the Resurrection, Jesus remains wounded and scarred. Wehner speaks to several people about this, ultimately concluding that there is beauty in Christ’s wounds. “All things, even broken things, can be made new again,” he writes, “and sometimes they can be made even more beautiful.”
2) Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Andrew Walker and Mere Orthodoxy’s Jake Meador had an interesting exchange over Walker’s latest essay at The Gospel Coalition, with Meador writing a response of his own. At the center of their exchange was the concept of theonomy, which involves, according to Walker, “apply[ing] the civil law of the Mosaic covenant to contemporary civil government.” Walker continues, “Theonomists wish for civil government not only to take its directions from Christianity, but also to craft specific law in the shadow of Old Testament Israel.”
Walker is critical of theonomy (alternatively known as Christian Reconstruction) as a solution to the cultural woes facing America. He explains:
[Theonomy] correctly stresses a continuity in the original moral force behind Israel’s civil law. It overlooks, however, the covenantal discontinuity in applying and enforcing the particulars of Israel’s civil law, especially since theocratic Israel’s expiration. God’s purposes with Israel were unique in design compared to his relationship with other nations.
Meador, in responding to Walker, is not advancing theonomy as a correct approach for Christians to adopt in their efforts to transform American society. Instead, Meador calls Walker’s essay “muddled and confused,” and says that emphasizing a divided 10 Commandments (with the first table focused on piety and the second on justice) misses the role that obedience to God ought to play in Christians’ political engagement — Meador cites 17th century theorist Johannes Althusius, who said, “What would human life be without the piety of the first table?”
Meador’s response to Walker is primarily concerned with how Christians ought to approach their engagement in the broader culture. Fundamentally, Meador appears to believe Walker’s conclusions amount to advising Christians (and other religious traditions) to leave religiously-motivated behaviors and actions out of their interactions with the public square. As someone who is not at all well-versed in Baptist political theology, I found both essays to be especially informative. Perhaps you will, too.
3) I recently had the opportunity to have a short conversation with the Deseret News’s Kelsey Dallas, for her weekly newsletter about faith, politics, and culture. We talked about recent developments in the Christian legal movement in the four years since my book on the subject. Kelsey is one of a handful of excellent religion reporters in this day and age, and it’s always fun to have an exchange with her. If you’d like to receive her “State of Faith” newsletter, you can sign up here.
4) Finally, two sports items. First, thanks to reader Samuel Gurel for passing along this discussion of an NCAA initiative aimed at bridging the gap between Christian colleges and LGBT students and staff. The initiative, Common Ground, asks two important questions:
Is it possible to protect and respect the rights of private, faith-based schools to set policy in accordance with their faith tenets while ensuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning students on campus are treated with respect, compassion and fairness? And is it possible to protect and respect the beliefs and rights of people of faith in public schools while protecting the rights of LGBTQ students and staff on these campuses?
And second, the New York Times’s Jason Zengerle writes about a recent postgame interview featuring Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard, and what it says about the culture of hard work in both sports and politics. Highlighting Lillard’s focus on work and discipline in propelling him to his superstar status—as opposed to more cliched and tired references to, say, God—Zengerle says that more attention should be paid to the work of governing rather than posturing:
In politics, just as in sports, a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work is involved in making the spectacle possible. Before the senator’s dramatic floor speech, the bill must be drafted; the convention pageantry is typically preceded by the monthslong slog of drawing up a party platform. The public performance of politics is secondary to — and at the service of — the behind-the-scenes work, because the behind-the-scenes work is, in effect, the actual operation of government.
Zengerle notes that too many elected officials have been rewarded for shunning expertise and hard work, choosing instead to focus on entertainment, sound bytes, and owning the libs/cons. He’s not wrong that it’s past time for political elites to demonstrate the same commitment to their craft as Lillard does to his.