Really Good News at Tufts: Christian Leaders Can Be Christian

This from World magazine, which has provided intrepid reporting on the alarming situation at Tufts University:

Student religious groups should not have to appoint leaders who do not share their beliefs, a student judiciary at Tufts University announced on Wednesday.

Like several other private colleges, Tufts has an “all comers” policy that requires official student organizations to be open to all students for both membership and leadership, regardless of beliefs. But in reviewing a discrimination complaint filed against Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF), the largest evangelical group on the Medford, Mass., campus, the Tufts Committee on Student Life decided unanimously the policy should not apply to leaders of religious groups.

“It is reasonable to expect that leaders within individual [religious groups] be exemplars of that particular religion,” the committee ruled. “Therefore, an ‘all comers’ policy for group leadership may not be appropriate for all [religious groups].”

Read the whole article here.

As a four-year alumnus of Bowdoin Christian Fellowship, an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship student organization on a secular (formerly Christian) New England campus, this is heartening news. The students of Tufts have showed good sense in handing down this decision. It is of course the most common-sense move one can think of; it is deeply harmful to organizations to require them to appoint leaders who do not agree with their confessions or founding documents. Nonetheless, I’m thankful to the Lord that this Christian group can continue its work without injury, and I commend the student judiciary of the university in question. This is a decision in keeping with the modern ideal of the liberal arts college.

Take a moment, would you, to pray for this group and the students involved? Let’s pray for the evangelization of the Little Ivies in New England. Let’s pray for the gospel to break out over these schools and the Ivy League and for students awash in the secularism of the modern college campus to find the only freedom that liberates and does not enslave. These students are fighting major battles on these campuses. Pray for their leaders to teach them sound doctrine and to build them up in the faith.