Christian College Crackdown?

A conservative resurgence on evangelical campuses battles LGBTQ affirmation.

I can visualize the conversations happening behind the scenes: Christian college presidents and administrators, perhaps a few major donors, gathered around a conference table and brainstorming how to quell what they see as a growing problem on their campuses. Increasingly, students, faculty, and staff are becoming affirming of LGBTQ people and their marriages.

Most Americans across the board support a gay couple’s right to marriage (71% according to Gallup; and among the younger generations it’s closer to 80%). In fact, that number has been increasing since the mid-1990s. Evangelicals are among the only holdouts left, but even that is changing. In 2017, almost half of young white evangelicals were supportive, while only 26% of older evangelicals were supportive. More recently, support among evangelicals under the age of 40 has increased to 64%.

Notably, younger generations are the first to have grown up with friends who are openly gay or transgender. As a member of Gen X, who graduated from high school in the early 1990s, I didn’t know anyone who was out. It wasn’t until the summer before my sophomore year in college that one friend quietly confided to me. I didn’t come out to others until my senior year of college. But, in my circles, such matters were still hush, hush. It was something whispered about, as we discreetly attended our ex-gay support groups.

When I was in high school, I thought gay and transgender people were simply rebellious, people who gave into their temptations and turned away from God—kind of like someone who decided to party too much. Even when the counselor at my Baptist college referred me to an ex-gay group, I still believed it was a temptation I could just pray away in a matter of months. I simply needed to get right with God, or so I thought. Never mind that I came to realize my same-sex attractions while fully devoted to God, attending a conservative Christian college, still a virgin, and desiring nothing more than to give my life to ministry. I was as clean cut as they come, yet still believed I must have done something wrong to have such feelings.

The generations that have come after me understand something that I didn’t when I was their age: LGBTQ people can be as wholesome as anyone else. Millennials and Gen Z had role models while still in high school. I was out of college and in grad school when I sat riveted in front of my TV watching Ellen come out in 1997. It was electrifying. Here was someone the American public respected. Someone normal. She wasn’t like all the negative caricatures we had been fed of illicit sex in the park, excessive lust, narcissism. Slowly, more and more LGBTQ people courageously shared their stories, including LGBTQ Christians.

Slowly, we began to realize that our own brothers and sisters are gay, that our best friend since kindergarten is bisexual, and that our own child experiences gender differently than most. People born and raised in the 2000s grew up with this awareness and now they are in college attending evangelical schools. These young folk are no longer persuaded by the old derogatory stereotypes. They want their LGBTQ friends to be able to date and marry too.

A colleague recently told me that he thinks the battle is already won within evangelicalism when it comes to the next generation and LGBTQ affirmation. He believes it’s just a matter of time before the old guard dies out and those who oppose LGBTQ rights will be viewed the same way as white Christian leaders who ardently opposed the end of segregation. That may be true. But that’s not where we are now. And, we have only to look at the conservative resurgence that took hold of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s to realize that nothing can be taken for granted.

Something like a conservative resurgence appears to be happening on Christian college campuses now. Will it succeed? In the last year alone, I have personally heard stories from multiple people on different evangelical campuses who have suffered harassment or lost jobs for expressing any kind of support for LGBTQ people. Many of these stories are unknown to the public. But some are making headlines. Consider the tenured professor at Oklahoma Christian University who was fired simply for inviting a guest speaker to his class who happened to be gay. Or the celibate gay coach at Geneva college who was fired for tweeting that queer people might have something good to offer. Or the two staff members pushed out of Houghton College for placing pronouns in their e-mail signature line.

These stories are not necessarily new. In 2013, Azusa Pacific University ousted the chair of the theology department who came out as transgender (the theologian and pastor later discovered he is intersex). In 2015, a New Testament prof was let go from Fuller Theological Seminary for being an affirming ally. That same year, a celibate gay staff member at Wheaton College was driven out by constant pressure and surveillance, including by the president of the school. This doesn’t even begin to touch on LGBTQ students who have been expelled from evangelical schools (e.g. see here and here). Yet such stories are becoming increasingly common. This makes sense given that more students, faculty, and staff are becoming affirming.

The backlash from administrators, trustees, and conservative donors (mostly older men) is symptomatic of their growing discomfort and awareness that they are losing their grasp. Aside from pushing people off campus, another tactic to suppress affirmative views has been to clamp down on student support groups or host forums on sexuality that promote a traditionalist viewpoint. But campus communities are rising up in protest. Just to name a few, consider Seattle Pacific University, Baylor University, and Abilene Christian University.

So, who will win this standoff? Right now the top administrators and conservative donors wield the power. As we speak, the conservative resurgence is actively purging campuses of anything that resembles affirmation. But as the younger generation of evangelicals grows older and takes up those administrative posts, perhaps the tide will turn. Only time will tell.

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