“University of Virginia” © Phil Roeder (Flickr)
The New York Times is reporting that something of a tipping point may be in sight on a perennial national issue: evangelical student groups on secular college campuses. More and more universities, in part because of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, are banning evangelical student groups who maintain doctrinal tests for their leadership.
The secular left, particularly in the academy, is only living consistently with its value system when it discriminates among student groups—separating those deemed ideologically acceptable from those deemed, well, discriminatory.
They do seem to be utterly deaf to the joke here, blind to the glaring inconsistency: they’re discriminating against evangelicals for committing the arch sin of discrimination. They are busy proclaiming their own neutrality while smuggling in definitions of “equality” and “freedom” that are anything but neutral. Equal in what respects? Freedom to do what?
But I’m not whining; Jesus said this would happen. I suspect evangelical groups will be fine—and maybe better—without the help of student fees and free meeting places and recruitment opportunities. Persecution can drive Christianity into extinction in a given locale if it’s violent enough, but, thankfully, we do still seem far from a North Korea.
My concern is not primarily for evangelical students, not even for America as a nation, but for the blind academics (and others) who so desperately need their intellectual sins to be forgiven and cleansed. I can only see it as spiritual blindness a la Ephesians 4:17–19 when, over and over again in our national discourse, highly educated people say with a straight face, “The one thing I cannot tolerate is intolerance!”
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