Less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, Eastern Mennonite University and Goshen College announced changes in their staffing policies: They would now welcome married gay, lesbian, and transgender employees and provide them with benefits.
The move was significant because the institutions were the first among the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities to add sexual orientation and gender identity to their nondiscrimination policies. The two colleges previously hired gay and lesbian employees who were celibate.
The decision to adopt a more welcoming stance generated waves among peer institutions, revealing a broader debate within Christian higher education.
Colleges “recognize this is an issue that isn’t going to go away,” says James E. Brenneman, Goshen’s president.
For some colleges, the Supreme Court’s decision and the shifting climate around same-sex marriage have given them additional momentum to make what some have viewed as long-needed changes. For others, it is cause to stand up more strongly for their religious principles. Mr. Brenneman says a strong minority of religious colleges regard marriage between a man and a woman as a “litmus test for one’s stated Christian principles.”
The policy shifts by Goshen and Eastern Mennonite exposed a disagreement within the council, of which both had been members until last month. Union University, in Tennessee, and Oklahoma Wesleyan University withdrew from the council, and a few other colleges indicated they would also leave if Goshen and Eastern Mennonite remained — enough resistance that the latter two opted out of the group. The episode raised the question of whether Christian colleges would continue to separate themselves along lines of belief as disagreements in practices grow more pronounced.
A Changing Debate
Until recently, many socially conservative institutions had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach when hiring, and “chose to interpret closeted homosexual faculty as heterosexual,” says H. Adam Ackley, a founder of Safety Net, an organization that works privately with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students and professors on Christian campuses. Some colleges will hire gay and lesbian instructors on the condition that they remain “nonpracticing,” or celibate, as Goshen and Eastern Mennonite did until July. Other Christian institutions with policies that support same-sex marriage insist that all faculty members — whether gay or straight — have sexual relations only within the confines of legal marriage.
Institutions already having conversations around acceptance got “a bump to go in that direction because they don’t want to deal with the legal hassle in straddling that fence anymore,” says Haven Herrin, executive director of Soulforce, which works for inclusion on Christian campuses.
Other Christian institutions, such as Belmont University, in Tennessee, fall outside of Christian higher-ed coalitions like the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. The nondenominational institution added sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy in 2010 and offers benefits to married couples. “The Supreme Court didn’t change anything for us,” says Robert C. Fisher, Belmont’s president. “Before it was a matter of law, it was a matter of respect for all people.”
In contrast, other colleges now make plain long-held positions on same-sex marriage by creating new policies, or updating language in existing policies. For Union and Oklahoma Wesleyan, the scriptural view that marriage is between a man and a woman is a defining belief. Universities can have different interpretations of scripture, says Samuel W. (Dub) Oliver, Union’s president, but there is “adherence to God’s word that we think is essential to what we are doing as an institution.”
Cedarville University, in Ohio, says in its workplace standards that homosexuality and lesbianism are “acts of sexual immorality” and that violations may lead to “immediate discharge.” Cedarville wants prospective employees to understand the university’s belief “in the authority of the Bible as God’s word,” says Thomas White, the institution’s president. “Transparency and honesty” should drive Christian colleges “to adhere to the authority of Scripture or to more clearly articulate their worldview and presuppositions.”
And while Baylor University removed an explicit ban on “homosexual acts” from its student policy on sexual misconduct in May, the university holds that sexual intimacy be kept within “marital fidelity,” with marriage traditionally defined by the Baptist Faith and Message of 1963.
For some conservative institutions, sensitivity to donors is a constant concern, says David S. Olsen, chair of communication studies at California State University at Los Angeles. Mr. Olsen, an alumnus of Cedarville University who now works for Safety Net, says even subtle moves toward inclusion get “so much backlash from alumni, from donors, and from churches.”
It’s important to keep in mind that, regardless of official policy, opinions vary across campuses, says Loren E. Swartzendruber, president of Eastern Mennonite. “It’s hard to say an institution has a particular position on these questions,” he says. “Donors, board, staff, and students could all feel differently.”
Freedom, says Everett Piper, Oklahoma Wesleyan’s president, implies the option “to choose what is right and wrong and to behave accordingly. The history of the liberal-arts academy is one that stands for academic liberty, with truth — not power, not politics — judging the debate.”
Dream Job Derailed
Gay, lesbian, and transgender professors, staff, and administrators, as well as their allies, navigate spaces that are both increasingly tolerant and pushing back.
Cynthia A. Davis, now an adjunct professor of English at Christopher Newport University, says she was dismissed last year from the interview process for a tenure-track position at a private Bible college in North Carolina for her support of gay and transgender civil rights. She was writing a book about intersexuality and was told that her views were not welcome, she says.
“I feel like I traded my dream job for my voice,” says Ms. Davis, who asked that the college remain nameless. “Religious universities have refocused on protecting ideologies and are motivated to put a stance in writing. It’s not just ‘Do you practice a certain lifestyle?’ but ‘Do you support someone who does?’”
Mr. Ackley, of the advocacy group Safety Net, taught for 15 years in the theology department at Azusa Pacific University while living as a woman in a heterosexual marriage. But he agreed to leave in 2013 after coming out as a gay, transgender man. The university had no official statement on sexual orientation when Mr. Ackley arrived, in 1998 — he signed a general policy to adhere to a Christian standard of ethics — but when a stricter policy was drafted, in 2012, he could no longer stay silent. He now teaches at the University of Redlands but has struggled to find full-time employment.
Once a gay or transgender person in Christian education loses a job, Mr. Ackley says, “what I have found is that you can’t get letters of recommendation based on past work; you can’t get HR to confirm why you were fired; you can’t get course evaluations from previous students. You go back on the job market with no way to account for the last 15 years.”
In his work with Safety Net, Mr. Ackley helps people who are in similar positions. He is one of eight directors in five regions, mostly alumni or former employees of conservative Christian colleges, who provide support to dozens of gay and transgender students, employees, and their supporters, including faculty members who have been fired.
Discrimination claims will increase as a result of the Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage, predicts Douglas NeJaime, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, because marriage is a way of coming out to one’s employer. Since many states don’t have antidiscrimination laws for sexual orientation in employment — only 22 states protect sexual orientation, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and 19 of those protect gender identity — religious colleges there have few legal obligations. As private employers, their tax-exempt status is safe, John Koskinen, commissioner of the federal Internal Revenue Service, promised in July.
The question, Mr. NeJaime says, is whether employees have recourse after being fired. Repercussions are swifter and fiercer for faculty members and administrators, says Haven Herrin of Soulforce, because they are closer “to the power structure of the organization’s policies and theologies.”
For Katherine R. Evans, an assistant professor of education who came out as queer during Eastern Mennonite’s discussions for change, the policy, as much as she appreciates it, is not about her. “I know that our previous unspoken policy prevented a lot of people from coming to work here and am thankful we can now advertise ourselves as a more inclusive community.”
Soulforce’s staff members have been arrested more than 150 times for visiting Christian campuses, often uninvited, to advocate for gay and transgender rights in religious education. Out of 19 colleges they visited in 2006, only two had gay and transgender student-support groups. Colleges would cancel classes or call the police when Soulforce representatives arrived. Now there are around 30 groups, and there have been no arrests in several years. “More and more, schools let us come,” Haven Herrin says. “We don’t want to get arrested. We bring a really useful conversation to campus.”
What that conversation will look like in the years ahead remains to be seen.
Editor’s note: Kate Stoltzfus, a Chronicle intern, is the daughter of a Goshen College professor.
