• Watch the Heritage Foundation panel on the new book What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.
• Distributing Bibles and secular humanist books in schools
• A Christian law school in Canada wants its students to obey the Bible. Not so fast, says the council of Canadian Law Deans.
• Planned Parenthood sets record for abortions and government funding.
• Will Obamacare go the way of prohibition?
• What would you do if a professor called the Bible “The original Harry Potter?” (warning, PG-13 language)
• The White House declines to build a Death Star.

Today, Alliance Defending Freedom is launching a new tool with important information and up to date information about your rights on  campus. The Speak Up University Newsletter will cover a range of topics relevant to college students and their parents, as well as faculty and staff, keeping you informed about your constitutional right to Speak Up.

Take a look at the first newsletter here, and sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each month.

As college students nationwide head back to campus, Kevin DeYoung has an excellent article about one of the biggest problems they will face.  No, it is not the intellectual assault from atheist or agnostic professors on their Christian worldview, though that is unquestionably a problem.  Instead, it is the rampant moral relativism that universities actively promote, the opportunity to experiment in just about any kind of conduct imaginable without the restraints of home, family, and church.  Only DeYoung says it more powerfully:

Churches and Christian leaders must not take their eyes off of this singular fact.  Take almost any college in the country, especially the big state schools, and I can just about guarantee that the biggest obstacle to Christian discipleship is not Richard Dawkins or Bart Ehrman or all the heady objections to Christianity that our apologetics are meant to counter.  We need apologetics.  I’m 100% for taking every thought captive to Christ.  But for most 17–22 year-olds the most common temptations to sin are alcohol and sex.  Even when there are intellectual objections to Christianity, these are often just cover for a debauched lifestyle.  Tens of thousands of college students walk away from the church this year or never give it a chance because their main goal each week is to get smashed and hook up.  Rare is the campus ministry that needs to talk about Derrida more than drunkenness.

Such temptations are hardly new.  The Apostle John long ago instructed Christians not to “love the world or the things in the world,” including the “lust of the flesh” and the “lust of the eyes.”  The university campus just features these old temptations in a particularly dangerous combination:  an intellectual assault against students’ Christian beliefs in the classroom, rampant hedonism everywhere else on campus, and all of this in an environment removed from restraining influences.  But even this is not entirely new.  Daniel and his colleagues survived very similar threats as the Babylonian court tried to change their identities, beliefs, and convictions, at a time when home was much further away than an e-mail or cell phone call.

So what can Christians do to help students?  Sadly, many Christians—from parents, to youth pastors, to campus ministries—have not thoughtfully engaged this question.  For example, when a parent at my church recently asked this question, the visiting campus minister stammered for several minutes before offering this inane advice:  “Just love on them more.”  (And he was from a national evangelical campus ministry.)  Fortunately, Kevin DeYoung provides ideas that are more substantive than “more pampering, please” and that are also thoughtful, Biblical, and practical, but you will have to read his article to see them.

The effort to normalize homosexual behavior on America’s college campuses continues apace.  The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Elmhurst College in Illinois “has become the first institution to include a question about sexual orientation and gender identity on its undergraduate admissions application.”  The reason?  “To connect students with campus programs and services.”

An applicant’s answer to the question will also help the college determine eligibility for institutional scholarships given to applicants from “underrepresented groups.”  A student who declares that he consider himself “to be a member of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community” will be eligible for the college’s Enrichment Scholarship, which covers one-third of tuition.

Elmhurst is a college of the United Church of Christ, perhaps the most liberal denomination to still call itself “Christian.”

If you believe, as I do, that premarital sexual behavior (including same-sex conduct) is both morally wrong and personally damaging, then you will conclude, as I do, that this is an unwelcome development.  That isn’t my point.  My point is this:  should colleges with a different view of human sexuality also be free to “actualize” their commitments?  Should they be free to deny admission to applicants who reject the Bible’s sexual ethics in word and deed?  Should they be free to work lovingly with students who fall into sexual sin?  Should they be free to shape their students’ beliefs about sexual morality?

ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom believes the answer is yes, and stands ready to protect the religious freedom of such colleges.

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by ADF Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco

The stereotype of the arrogant, leftist professor in the ivory tower occasionally shows up in real life in a manner that shows that the truth is stranger than fiction.

Recent case in point:  a biology professor at a Colorado college (let’s call him Dr. Jones) hotly ridiculed a student (let’s call her Ms. Smith) in front of her entire class for her lack of belief in the theory of evolution.  In order to avoid legal trouble for his immense misstep, he agreed to settle the case in advance of litigation.  Part of the settlement required a written apology to the student.  Here is the letter of “apology” from the professor, followed by a response from Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney Barry Arrington that can only be said to…um…set the record completely straight:

June 1, 2011

Ms. Smith:

With regard to our conversation about your belief that evolution is not true, I apologize to you for appearing to denigrate your obviously strongly held beliefs.  I had not intended to offend you in any way regarding your faith or your world view.  That this was so perceived by you, I again offer my sincerest apology.

In making this apology to you, I am reminded of what happened to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) – considered by many to be the father of modern science.  In 1610 Galileo determined through his telescope and various mathematical calculations, that the Earth moved around the sun, rather than the other way around which was, according to the Catholic Church “false and contrary to Scripture.”

In 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, forced to recant heliocentrism, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.  As he was led away to begin his confinement, he said (to no one in particular) “and yet it still moves”.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jones

Response from ADF-allied attorney Barry Arrington:

July 27, 2011

Dear Dr. Jones:

I am writing in response to your June 1, 2011 letter to my client Ms. Smith, in which you apologized to her for “appearing” to denigrate her strongly held beliefs.  Sir, we both know you did not merely “appear” to denigrate Ms. Jones’s beliefs.  You specifically intended to use your position of authority as a platform from which to denigrate Ms. Smith’s beliefs and humiliate her in front of her peers, and you accomplished your purpose.  It saddens me that in your letter you decided to add mendacity to your boorish and abusive attack on your student.

You say you did not intend to offend Ms. Smith.  Rubbish.  I assume you are not an idiot, and only an idiot would not know that your words would demean and humiliate her, intimidate her into silence, and curb her natural desire for self expression in the face of the orthodoxy you represent.  Do you really expect anyone to believe that it was an unfortunate and unintended side effect of your actions that she would feel hurt by the experience or perceive it as an assault on her personal dignity?  Please do not insult our intelligence.

Finally, I cannot let your smug reference to Galileo go unchallenged.  Firstly, as a matter of simple fact, your history is all wrong.  Galileo never uttered the words you mistakenly placed in his mouth.  I provide for your edification a primer on the matter under my signature.

More importantly, however, your letter illustrates an utter failure to grasp the significance of this figure from history.  I will not spell it out for you.  Instead, I urge you to go back and think about this one a little more.  To assist you in that endeavor, please ask yourself and answer the following questions:  As between Ms. Smith and you:  (1) who is the pope (i.e., the authority figure with all of the power in the relationship)?  (2) Who speaks for an unyielding established orthodoxy?  (3) Who holds the minority dissenting view?  (4) Who was willing to challenge the entrenched orthodoxy at significant personal risk to herself?

“But Galileo was right and his opponents were wrong!” you might respond.  And that response would completely miss the point.  The adherents of every entrenched orthodoxy believe not only that they are right, but also that everyone who challenges the orthodoxy is at least wrong if not wicked.  Yet history is full of failed orthodoxies, collapsed paradigms, and discredited dogmas.

You are a high priest of the Church of Darwin.  How easily you slipped into the role of inquisitor.  You sniffed a hint of heresy from Ms. Smith, and you did not hesitate to put her on the verbal rack.  In your letter you point to Galileo as a hero of free thought and expression against an entrenched orthodoxy.  I hope you appreciate by now how richly ironic your appeal to Galileo is.

Sincerely,

Barry K. Arrington

Primer on Galileo

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