Western societies face a growing risk of conflict as cultural elites embrace guilt and shame rooted in broad self-reproach. Within this hate-filled climate, Christianity faces rising levels of hostility. Although the Christian faith originated in the Middle East, it has historically been regarded as a foundational pillar of Western civilization. Since Western civilization has now been placed in the crosshairs of an ever-expanding number of cultural critics, Christianity has become a prominent target in America’s contemporary cultural disputes.
This emerging conflict is part of America’s seething culture war, which John Davison Hunter described more than thirty years ago. In his book Before the Shooting Begins, he noted that contemporary cultural conflict centers on a cluster of issues concerning the most private of all matters: the body. Conflictual issues that do not relate to the body, more often than not, concern the legitimacy of social institutions that have authority over the body. Highly contested institutions include family, church, educational institutions, and the law.
American universities, despite their initial origin as Christian institutions, have now become hotbeds of intolerance by engaging in anti-Christian behavior. As a result, educational institutions have sought to undermine the First Amendment's vitality. Consistent with this contention, Virginia State University (VSU)—a publicly funded institution — has recently created a Campus Ministries Policy that strips Christian organizations of their registered student organization status.
At the same time, VSU has exempted Muslim and non-Christian student ministries from its newly instituted policy. VSU’s policy burden falls on two plaintiffs—Women of Victory and Bethel Campus—which provide religious support to Christian students and orthodox Christian belief on college campuses through Bible studies, leadership trainings, and other events.
Prompted by VSU’s policy choice, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has filed a complaint against VSU. The ADF notes that the two plaintiffs previously received various benefits, including event planning assistance, strategic planning, online space reservations, and leadership training.
VSU claims that it adopted the new policy because “the school wants to crack down on transportation to outside churches.” The evidence, however, suggests that the policy explicitly targets Christian groups. Thomas Wynn, a campus minister and a defendant in the case, acknowledged that the restrictions were imposed because the two plaintiff organizations “are faith-based” and promote “Jesus Christ and faith.” That admission supports plaintiffs’ claim that the university deprived the two Christian organizations of their constitutionally protected liberty interests. The policy’s selective application strengthens that claim since VSU’s policy does not apply to the Muslim Students Association or the VSU Community of Faith Alliance, a non-Christian religious organization.
Taken together, VSU’s policy of appointing a single Campus Minister to govern all Christian activities and only Christian activities violates Christian organizations’ free exercise, expressive association, free speech, and free assembly rights under the First Amendment. VSU’s new policy authorizes faculty advisers to control the content and administration of religious events on campus. The two plaintiffs contend that this policy gives the university authority to decide which beliefs and practices are acceptable within the bounds of the Christian faith.
Arguably, VSU’s policy constitutes a Stalinist approach to Christianity that would make any Bolshevik proud. VSU’s policy, which can be seen as an extension of America’s culture wars, is constitutive of an effort to establish a university-sanctioned religion. The Constitution expressly bars that objective. Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel, Tyson Langhofer observes that VSU has brazenly singled out Christian clubs by treating them worse than student groups of other faiths.
Langhofer’s claim underscores the fact that people of faith have always been under threat—from both the Left and Right—from those who seek to control religious and non-religious freedom. Whether from the Left or Right, whether from Stalinists or Nazis, the goal of this threat to religious observance is the ominous specter of control. VSU, acting as a centralized source of power and control, seeks to determine how its students can worship. If this policy stands, the university will likely next seek to determine who students can worship.
VSU’s new policy constitutes a form of central planning, censorship, and repression designed to void individual freedom and pluralism in exchange for forced uniformity of belief. It appears that VSU’s policy has one goal: the rapacious destruction of religious freedom.
VSU’s policy objectives appear to match Anthony Gramsci's revolutionary communist objectives. Gramsci believed the best way to spread Karl Marx’s revolution throughout the West was to take control of cultural institutions such as universities and thus defeat Christianity. Marx’s second goal, as Richard Wurmbrand—the founder of the Voice of the Martyrs--observes, was to spread Satanism
One of the best ways of undermining Christianity is by first controlling freedom to practice one’s beliefs. Against the VSU’s policy, Gramsci’s objectives, and Wurmbrand’s fears, Christians should remain awake and alert, consistent with Paul’s admonition to “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith . . . be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).