A Dagger at the Heart of Religious Freedom

Supreme Court decision marginalizes Christians.

 by Jim Ray

It was the simplest of requests, really – just an email from a student group to a college administrator, asking for permission to set up an informational table on a patio. So why was the request ignored…and therefore, in effect, denied? Because the group in question – the Christian Legal Society – ran afoul of the college’s decree that everyone subscribe to certain politically-correct beliefs.

Little notice was taken last week of a Supreme Court decision that, according to Justice Samuel Alito, is a “serious setback for freedom of expression in this country.” In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Court decided that Hastings College of the Law, one of the University of California schools, had the right to deny recognition to a Christian group as a “Registered Student Organization” because the group’s Statement of Faith included the tenet that “sexual activity should not occur outside of marriage between a man and woman.”

There are “Registered Student Organizations” for just about anything at University of California public universities. Students can join groups focused on feminism, environmentalism, animal laws, “reproductive justice,” and scores of others. But for a group committed to traditional biblical principles – well, those beliefs were evidently an intolerable embarrassment to the school. Although the Christian Legal Society can continue to operate without “registered” status, it faces obstacles – such as the inability to even get approval to set up a table – that are clearly calculated to make the group go away entirely.

There are a lot of people besides evangelical Christians who are deeply troubled by this latest ruling from the Supreme Court. Many other groups filed “friend of the court” briefs urging the justices to rule in favor of the Christian Legal Society, including Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty, the American Islamic Congress, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Boy Scouts of America, and the State Attorneys General for 14 states.

But for the five members of the Supreme Court who formed the majority opinion, it didn’t matter. “The era of loyalty oaths is behind us,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy in the decision. But the substance of the ruling itself would seem to render that statement dishonest, given the demands made upon the Christian Legal Society to conform…or be ostracized.

Public universities promote themselves as bastions of free speech and tolerance, when in reality many of them have become virulently hostile places for Christians. Thanks to this latest court decision, the door is open for the systematic marginalization of Christians to spread beyond the campus.

As you pray for your nation’s leaders today:

-  Pray that God would grant wisdom and discernment to the members of the United States Supreme Court in the many decisions they are charged to make.

-  Pray that the wisdom of our Founding Fathers as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would not be subjugated to prevailing ideologies.

-  Pray that President Obama would nominate, and the Congress would approve, the people of God’s choosing to the courts.

-  Pray that God would give Christian students across the country the boldness to stand strong in their faith in the face of increasing ridicule and opposition.