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GODSTUFF: Homosexuality on Christian college campus

GODSTUFF: Homosexuality on Christian college campus

Last updated on: March 1, 2011 at 3:21 am by Cathleen Falsani

GODSTUFF: Homosexuality on Christian college campus 2011-03-01T03:21:29-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

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Late last week, the provost of Belmont University in Nashville

announced that the school officially had recognized its first gay

student organization.

The announcement came barely a month after the Christian school

changed its anti-discrimination policy to include homosexuals, after a

popular girls soccer coach was forced out last December because her

lesbian partner was expecting a child.

The gay student group had twice been turned down for official

recognition. Belmont provost Thomas Burns said the change of mind

reflected an “ongoing campus dialogue about Christian faith and

sexuality.”

The thing is — such dialogue isn’t limited just to Belmont.

Belmont’s policy changes are the latest in a series of incidents on

evangelical Christian campuses involving issues surrounding

homosexuality. Some observers now wonder whether a major shift in

opinions about homosexuality might be occurring among younger

evangelicals.

The answer seems to be yes.

Last month, the student newspaper at Westmont College in California

printed an open letter signed by 131 gay and gay-supportive alumni who

said they had experienced “doubt, loneliness and fear due to the

college’s stance on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues.”

“We offer our names as proof that LGBT people do exist within the

Westmont community,” their letter said.

In 2009, Hope College in Holland, Mich. banned “Milk” screenwriter

Dustin Lance Black from screening his Oscar-winning film or talking

about gay issues on campus. College officials said Black’s “notoriety

as an advocate for gay rights would not contribute constructively to the

ongoing exploration and dialogue on our campus.”

Eventually Black, who had been invited to Hope by students and

faculty, screened “Milk” at a public theater in Holland — an event

organized by the group Hope is Ready, founded by college and community

members to foster dialogue about gay issues.

Wheaton College in Illinois, the alma mater I share with the Rev. Billy

Graham and countless other evangelical leaders, is widely considered the

gold standard of evangelical Christian colleges. Earlier this year, several

gay (and gay-affirming) Wheaton alumni started a Facebook page; it

currently has more than 100 members.

The group is working to produce a collection of “It Gets Better”

videos to show their solidarity with and concern for young gay and

lesbian students at their alma mater and elsewhere.

While some of the policy changes are new, the conversation isn’t.

It’s just more open.

Since 2005, activists from the gay civil rights group Soulforce have

taken their Equality Ride to dozens of Christian campuses — including Wheaton, Calvin, Gordon, Bethel, Messiah, George Fox, and Biola — to spur dialogue about homosexuality. They’ve been welcomed with varying degrees of hospitality; they were arrested for trespassing at Jerry Falwell’s

Liberty University, Pat Robertson‘s Regent University, Oral Roberts

University and Baylor University in Texas.

Whether the train of change among young evangelicals has left the

station is certainly a matter of debate. Either way, some observers

sense a rumble on the tracks.

“Clearly attitudes are changing,” said David Gushee, director of

the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Georgia.

“The activism of an entire generation of Christian right leaders had

left its mark. Unfortunately the mark wasn’t mainly to change the

culture, it was to make Christianity look bad.”

As Gushee puts it, a growing number of evangelicals — especially younger

evangelicals who have little taste or patience for the political battles

of their parents’ generation — are looking for a course correction.

“We can’t have the name of Jesus certainly associated with hatred

or contempt for homosexuals,” Gushee said. “And in general we should

be known by what we’re for rather than what we’re against.”

A 2010 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and Religion

News Service found that a majority of young adults favor allowing gay

and lesbian couples to marry and adopt children. Researcher Robert Jones

said there is no other issue today with more of a generation gap than the gay

question.

Gushee cautioned, however, that a difference in attitude doesn’t

necessarily equal signal an epic difference in beliefs, even as one might shape

the other.

“The possibility that the church has been wrong on the ethics of

committed homosexual behavior _ that’s a momentous question,” Gushee

said. “It’s obviously one that people in the broader culture have

determined a long time ago that the church was wrong about. But I would

say that, from the perspective of any kind of understanding of Christian

doctrine and Christian ethics, it is not an easy thing to throw over the

majority position of more than 2,000 years.”

A version of this commentary originally appeared via Religion News Service.

evangelical christian colleges

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