USA (BNC) — World Magazine reported Aug 14 that several evangelical educational institutions threaten to leave the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) after two member colleges signaled they would hire faculty and staff in same-sex marriages.
They’re demanding that the association expel the offending institutions.
The Southern Baptist school in Jackson, Tenn., Union University, has been the first to withdraw in protest over CCCU’s perceived foot-dragging.
The CCCU failed to honor a promised date to address the issue and opted instead to initiate a series of conversations between board members and member institutions, World reported.
Several brotherhood schools hold full membership in the CCCU: Abilene Christian University, Faulkner University, Harding University, Lipscomb University, Oklahoma Christian University, Pepperdine University, and York College.
Lipscomb and Pepperdine are identified in the CCCU membership list as belonging to the “Christian Church and Churches of Christ.” Several have no listing under the “Denomination” column; only Harding is listed as “Church of Christ.”
The association describes itself as follows:
The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) is a higher education association of 183 Christian institutions around the world. The 122 member campuses in North America are regionally accredited, comprehensive colleges and universities with curricula rooted in the arts and sciences and whose missions are Christ-centered and rooted in the historic Christian faith.
The fourth membership requirement stated on the website is “Cooperation and Participation,” which states in part,
Member campuses must be supportive of other Christian colleges and universities and have a commitment to advance the cause of Christian higher education through participation in the programs of the CCCU and payment of the annual dues.
The Washington D.C.-based association includes both Protestant and Catholic educational institutions.
BNC is unaware that any affiliated Christian college within the brotherhood has issued statements taking issue with the same-sex faculty and staff and joining their sister institutions in CCCU in objections to the move. Statements to that effect would be welcome.
The CCCU controversy underlines how ministries and colleges become compromised quickly by membership in such associations that do not reflect biblical teaching.
After all, if you can’t protest false teaching in such a group as CCCU that denies immersion in water of repentant people for remission of sins, how can you object to acceptance of same-sex marriage in faculty and staff of sister institutions?
2015-08-18 at 9:14 am
This is disturbing. I hope that the other brotherhood schools will follow suit with Union, and withdraw. I hope that Lipscomb will find it’s conscience and do likewise… but I’m not particularly optimistic. 🙁 The bible hasn’t changed, God hasn’t changed, even if the prevailing attitudes have.
2015-08-18 at 9:45 pm
It is sad that some of our brotherhood schools have joined hands with the the world and have for quite some time been proclaiming lies not only in their classrooms, but also at the lectures they sponsor. If brother Lipscomb were alive today he would rent his clothing and don sackcloth and sit in ashes and so would brother Harding.
2015-08-19 at 9:41 pm
You are so right about both of these sound brethern. I do not consider Pepperdine
a Christian college. My mother stopped supporting Harding back when one of the teachers embraced Crossroads and the school wouldn’t fire him. My mother attended Harding back in the late 40s and taught a year a Abilene before her marriage in 1953.