The war continues, now against Christian colleges and the Boy Scouts

Last updated on: January 24, 2015 at 12:35 pm by Dan Peterson

The war continues, now against Christian colleges and the Boy Scouts 2015-01-24T12:35:50-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The chapel on the campus of Gordon College, in Wenham, Massachusetts, twenty-five miles from Boston
(Click to enlarge.)

David French has published a troubling article — it’s fully accessible to me, and I hope it will be to you, as well — about the besieged Boston-area Evangelical school, Gordon College:

https://live-redesign.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/395969/persecution-gordon-college

Gordon’s offense, which may prove lethal to it, is that its code for students and faculty frowns upon sexual relations outside of marriage and upon homosexual relations altogether.

Sound familiar?

French believes that Gordon College is especially vulnerable because, owing to its location outside of (and far from) traditionally Evangelical areas, it’s relatively marginal and lacks a powerful group of supporters.

My concern is that Brigham Young University could also be especially vulnerable, in an analogous way. Not because of geographical isolation but because of being on the denominational and theological margin. Would Evangelicals rally around BYU, should it come under heavy pressure of the kind that David French describes in the case of Gordon College? Maybe. But maybe not.

Alert and astute Evangelicals (and Jews and Catholics) would see the danger and would understand the principle, and would probably come to BYU’s defense. But not a few Evangelicals, I suspect, would actually take a certain degree of satisfaction in seeing the “Mormon cult” embroiled in difficulties. Which puts me in mind of the very famous comment from Pastor Martin Niemöller (d. 1984), who spent seven years in labor camps for his outspoken public opposition to Hitler and the Nazis:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The principle implied in Pastor Niemöller’s statement is one of the reasons that I’m concerned about the fate of Gordon College and other such schools.

I didn’t mention it in my account yesterday, but, speaking Friday on the BYU campus about current threats to American religious liberty, the Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia cited Benjamin Franklin’s admonition to his fellow signers of the Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together,” he said, “or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

In related news, California’s Supreme Court decreed on Friday that the state’s judges may not be affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, because that organization discriminates against homosexuals:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765667022/California-bars-judges-from-Boy-Scouts-membership.html

I can easily imagine a progression by which, eventually, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and Mormons may be banned from serving as judges in California (and, not long thereafter, everywhere) for precisely that reason. In fact, I think that such a rule is virtually inevitable, if current trends continue. Certainly, calls for it can be confidently expected. The ban may be formal and explicit (de jure) or, even sooner, informal and unstated but effectively equivalent (de facto).

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