Setting the Standard

by

Perspectives

Maria Shriver's 'Sunday Paper' on Jan. 13 called my attention to something I had not noticed in the news this past week...

Bernice Sandler died on Jan. 5 at the age of 90. She was known as "the Godmother of Title IX," the landmark anti-discrimination legislation passed in 1972 that protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance. The law applies to more than 23,500 institutions. [1]

When the law was passed, religious institutions were allowed to request exemption from the law, using a separation-of-church-and-state rationale for doing so. As a result, a lot of Christian schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries are now exempt from Title IX, in whole or in part. [2]

From the outset, I wondered why any Christian school would seek exemption from an anti-discriminatory policy. As a general rule, that just seems odd. At face value, you would think Christian schools would want to make a witness to anti-discrimination that exceeds the law and sets the standard for relationships with anyone. Would not the Gospel offer a higher way than the government? Or to say it another way, why would we want to make Christ less than Caesar in the public square?

Oh, I am familiar with the reasons many Christian schools discriminate against people--these days most especially LGBTQ+ people. They use the same argument in the educational domain that they espouse in the political and ecclesial realms--i.e. the sinfulness of LGBTQ+ people. But even that argument seems strange for a number of reasons.

A major reason is that "there is none righteous, no not one" (Psalm 14:3, Romans 3:10), we have "all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Laid against that standard, Christian halls of higher learning would be empty, and grass would be growing in the sidewalk cracks. Crickets.

Woven into the strangeness of Title IX exemption is a second reason: the Christian conviction that redemption is the aim of God in Christ. Hmmm. Laid against that telos, would it not stand to reason that Christian schools would be all the more proactive to welcome ALL people and put them into an atmosphere of saving grace.

But the biggest reason is described in one word: love. Start with "God is love" (1John 4:8), move on to the revelation that God loves the whole world (John 3:16), and wind up in the realization that "we should love one another" (1John 3:11), and it is impossible to understand why any Christian school would seek exemption from Title IX in whole or in part.

It seems like alchemy in reverse: turning gold into lead, and all the more so when Tertullian, about a hundred years after the close of the New Testament era, appealed for the protection of Christians in the empire because they were the most loving segment of the citizenry. [3]

And then, sadly--very, very sadly--the oddness becomes clear. Christian schools seek exemption from Title IX because in whole or in part they are populated by students, staffs, administrations, trustees and donors who are discriminatory-- who have made others "less than" and are intent on excluding them from enrollment and employment. Sadly, very sadly, some Christian schools' witness to the world becomes obvious: "In the Name of Jesus, we don't want people like you on our campus." That's textbook-definition discrimination. [4]

And Jesus replies, "I never said that," and he weeps.

***

[1] Find more about Title IX on the U.S. Department of Education website in the Office for Civil Rights section.

[2] Many schools did not request full exemption from Title IX, but rather selected portions of it, (which enables them to continue to receive federal money, a telling point all its own)--portions which schools had to show violated their theological and/or ethical commitments. One of the oft-granted exemptions is that schools do not have to conform to Title IX regarding LGBTQ+ persons' civil rights.

[3] He made this a major point in two of his writings "To the Gentiles" and "Apology."

[4] It repeats the discriminatory mindset manifested by some Christian schools in the 20th century that did not enroll African-Americans. It is a mindset that never seeks to be healed, but only keeps moving the target of exclusion around.

The Rev. Dr. Steve Harper is a retired seminary professor, who taught for 32 years in the disciplines of Spiritual Formation and Wesley Studies. Author and co-author of 31 books and a retired Elder in The Florida Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, he and his wife Jeannie Waller Harper are frequent leaders of workshops and spiritual retreats. This post is republished with permission from his Facebook page.