Funding Religious Voices on Campus -- Sightings

After a week off, Martin Marty returns to action with a reflection on the church-state issues raised by debates over funding of campus groups at public universities. Legally the standard is if you fund one group you should fund others, but such a rule isn't followed universally and it presents problems.
So, is it a matter of free speech? Or community standards? If an evangelical group receives funds should campus rules on inclusion be in force? These and other questions are raised in today's Sightings piece.

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Sightings 7/9/07

Campus Funding Frays-- Martin E. Marty
O-o-o-h! or O-h-h-h! here's a hard issue, a persistent one for partisans of "separation of church and state," "free speech," and "religious expression." It presents itself in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court Rosenberger decision of 1991, which decreed that students at public universities have the right to student-activity funds for publishing their explicitly evangelical (or other such) newspapers. Thomas Bartlett in the Chronicle of Higher Education surveys student handbooks, and finds a mixed bag of responses and lawsuits ("Pennies for Heaven," July 6).

The question: should such use of funds be "religion-blind," thus treating religious organizations of all responsible sorts just as secular clubs and interests are treated? For example, a Roman Catholic group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, sued and won $250,000 in such funds. David A. French of the Center for Academic Freedom at the James Dobson-inspired Alliance Defense Fund leads the efforts to "aggressively defend religious liberty." So far, so good. On the other side, should, say, a Hindu or an atheist student indirectly or, since student fund gathering is compulsory, directly pay for celebrations or publications that urge them and all others to be saved through the blood-atonement of Jesus Christ? Or should evangelicals pay for sometimes hard-edge Muslim or Wiccan publications? Thinking about this led me to begin this column with an "O-o-o-h!" or "O-h-h-h!" about the difficulties attendant to this discourse and these suits.

Some say that if you stop student funding of anything, you solve the problem. That's a no-go among most at most places. Or you can celebrate the fact that many administrations and student bodies are not hard-line, and somehow muddle through in fair-to-middling, fair-minded ways, as Bartlett sees them doing. An evangelical teamed with a Hasidic Jew at Georgia Tech is suing while finger-pointing: "you," the administration, allowed funding for an Islamic-awareness week, describing it, in a dodge, as "educational." Isn't awareness of Hasidism or evangelicalism "educational" as well? Georgia Tech says it has recently funded an evangelical group's post-Katrina relief work, but is wary of evangelization subsidies. "It depends on what they're doing, not who they are," says a university lawyer. Still, "O-o-o-h!" and "O-h-h-h!" that's tough.

Tougher yet is this: Southern Illinois University withdrew official recognition from an evangelical group that refused to admit homosexual members, though presumably they were of the evangelical persuasion. The group argued that to admit such people would be counter to their Christian beliefs. The non-homosexual religious group basically "won" in a subsequent compromise. Many predict that such discrimination (for example, against homosexuals) versus non-discrimination claims and causes will be "the next generation of Rosenberger" contests.
Mr. French, savoring recent victories, promises many more suits to come. We read in Bartlett's piece that some aggressive litigants become very unpopular on campus, but they point to their victories, their renewed funding, and thus to how they profit. One may also foresee that those who profit most will be attorneys for universities and the rights-claiming groups. O-o-o-h! and O-h-h-h!
References:
Thomas Bartlett's article "Pennies for Heaven" appears in the July 6, 2007, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, and can be read by subscribers at: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i44/44a02901.htm.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
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The current Religion and Culture Web Forum features "Christian Responses to Vietnam: The Organization of Dissent," by Mark Toulouse. To read this article, please visit: http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/webforum/index.shtml.
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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