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| Is InterVarsity acting in a Christ-like manner? |
Pastor John Pavlovitz is critical of InterVarsity Christian
Fellowship’s decision to fire employees who show support for equal
marriage
18 October 2016
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), one of the United State’s largest Christian college campus ministries, recently announced
it will terminate employees who show support for same-sex marriages or
for married LGBTQ friends and family members, even though such unions
are the law of the land here.
It’s another shining example of the misplaced priorities of the Evangelical movement here in America, and a perfect case study in why so many young people are increasingly finding the strong-armed Church that IVCF represents, an irrelevant presence in their world.
As is so often the case, the Church is administering a self-inflicted wound and asking incredulously why its bleeding.
LGBTQ-affirming employees at IVCF are essentially being asked to ‘out themselves’, at which point their termination process begins.
Far worse than ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, this is ‘Tell, and Be Asked to Leave.’
Let’s put aside the precise legalities of such a policy for a moment, as wiser legal minds than mine will surely weigh in soon enough.
Practically speaking, what IVCF and their sister company (and by association publisher InterVarsityPress) is doing, is essentially disregarding the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality, and choosing to make its own laws for their people.
They are asking their employees to openly discriminate against the LGBTQ community in a way the marriage legislation clearly prohibits.
IVCF isn’t making a bold stand for the Gospel (as Jesus words on the subject are nearly nonexistent), they are making the statement to college students everywhere, that followers of Jesus believe your body is their business; that they would rather disobey the legislature of our highest courts in order to prevent you from happiness, family, and intimacy – you know, just as Jesus would.
This is not some courageous gesture by Christians being faithful to the Bible even if it runs in opposition to the culture. If that were the case they’d be stoning adulterers, chaining up people with mental illness, shunning those with skin diseases, and crucifying common criminals.
This is about a Church in 2016 unwilling and unable to yield to both Science and the law because it hasn’t yet learned how to handle complex discussions on gender identity or sexual orientation.
It’s also illustrating a tone-deaf religion that doesn’t understand that Christians and LGBTQ people are not mutually exclusive; that IVCF’s campuses, students, and leadership are likely LGBTQ or fully supportive of them. They are the very culture ICVF claims to want to reach with the love of Jesus – but it doesn’t seem that way.
A ministry whose entire focus is the diverse student population on college campuses, is ensuring that it will be both less diverse and less authentic moving forward.
If LGBTQ folks dare to step foot in its future gatherings they will never feel fully welcome or free to be authentic. They will know they are conditionally welcomed.
They’re also guaranteeing that their LGBTQ-affirming employees will be forced to live a lie if they want to remain in ministries they obviously love and believe in. They will be forced into the duplicity that so many LGBTQ Christians understand well.
IVCF’s leadership is so short-sighted that it would build itself on ultimatums, marginalizing, and expulsion, rather than on the diversity, hospitality, compassion, and relationship-building that would make it relevant in to young people who demand such things from their spiritual communities.
Ultimately what the ministry’s leaders are saying is, ‘We will go to great lengths to interfere in people’s bedrooms and marriages; we’re that committed to denying people the basic rights and happiness that the Government has clearly stated they deserve.’
This simply isn’t a decision that does anything to glorify God or ‘make disciples of Jesus.’ If anything, it’s making Atheists, former Christians, and once dedicated, passionate employees who have departed. It’s shutting people out and silencing them in order to make a public stand, one that Humanity is rejecting in greater and greater numbers.
It’s also an irresponsible and dangerous decision to take vulnerable young people in their care and in their midst who are already used to Church-sanctioned isolation and rejection, and to subject them to more of it in one of the very places they come to for an experience of real, loving Christian community.
IVCF obviously believes the issue of sexuality is one worth dying on, which is a good thing, because as the world around it comes to peace about marriage equality and the LGBTQ community – their wish may come true.
IVCF’s membership (like the current Evangelical Right) will continue to decline in membership, appealing solely to the most Conservative extremists among them and ever-narrowing its broader influence.
It will no longer be a ministry bringing Jesus to diverse college communities, but a restricted club of intolerance, reminding people what the Pharisees really looked like to Jesus.
That’s not the education college students deserve from an organization bearing the name of Jesus.
They deserve something resembling him.
John Pavlovitz is a Christian pastor serving the North Raleigh Community Church. This article first appeared on his blog, Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
It’s another shining example of the misplaced priorities of the Evangelical movement here in America, and a perfect case study in why so many young people are increasingly finding the strong-armed Church that IVCF represents, an irrelevant presence in their world.
As is so often the case, the Church is administering a self-inflicted wound and asking incredulously why its bleeding.
LGBTQ-affirming employees at IVCF are essentially being asked to ‘out themselves’, at which point their termination process begins.
Far worse than ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, this is ‘Tell, and Be Asked to Leave.’
Let’s put aside the precise legalities of such a policy for a moment, as wiser legal minds than mine will surely weigh in soon enough.
Practically speaking, what IVCF and their sister company (and by association publisher InterVarsityPress) is doing, is essentially disregarding the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality, and choosing to make its own laws for their people.
They are asking their employees to openly discriminate against the LGBTQ community in a way the marriage legislation clearly prohibits.
‘This is not some courageous gesture by Christians being faithful to the Bible’
IVCF isn’t making a bold stand for the Gospel (as Jesus words on the subject are nearly nonexistent), they are making the statement to college students everywhere, that followers of Jesus believe your body is their business; that they would rather disobey the legislature of our highest courts in order to prevent you from happiness, family, and intimacy – you know, just as Jesus would.
This is not some courageous gesture by Christians being faithful to the Bible even if it runs in opposition to the culture. If that were the case they’d be stoning adulterers, chaining up people with mental illness, shunning those with skin diseases, and crucifying common criminals.
This is about a Church in 2016 unwilling and unable to yield to both Science and the law because it hasn’t yet learned how to handle complex discussions on gender identity or sexual orientation.
It’s also illustrating a tone-deaf religion that doesn’t understand that Christians and LGBTQ people are not mutually exclusive; that IVCF’s campuses, students, and leadership are likely LGBTQ or fully supportive of them. They are the very culture ICVF claims to want to reach with the love of Jesus – but it doesn’t seem that way.
A ministry whose entire focus is the diverse student population on college campuses, is ensuring that it will be both less diverse and less authentic moving forward.
If LGBTQ folks dare to step foot in its future gatherings they will never feel fully welcome or free to be authentic. They will know they are conditionally welcomed.
They’re also guaranteeing that their LGBTQ-affirming employees will be forced to live a lie if they want to remain in ministries they obviously love and believe in. They will be forced into the duplicity that so many LGBTQ Christians understand well.
IVCF’s leadership is so short-sighted that it would build itself on ultimatums, marginalizing, and expulsion, rather than on the diversity, hospitality, compassion, and relationship-building that would make it relevant in to young people who demand such things from their spiritual communities.
Ultimately what the ministry’s leaders are saying is, ‘We will go to great lengths to interfere in people’s bedrooms and marriages; we’re that committed to denying people the basic rights and happiness that the Government has clearly stated they deserve.’
This simply isn’t a decision that does anything to glorify God or ‘make disciples of Jesus.’ If anything, it’s making Atheists, former Christians, and once dedicated, passionate employees who have departed. It’s shutting people out and silencing them in order to make a public stand, one that Humanity is rejecting in greater and greater numbers.
It’s also an irresponsible and dangerous decision to take vulnerable young people in their care and in their midst who are already used to Church-sanctioned isolation and rejection, and to subject them to more of it in one of the very places they come to for an experience of real, loving Christian community.
IVCF obviously believes the issue of sexuality is one worth dying on, which is a good thing, because as the world around it comes to peace about marriage equality and the LGBTQ community – their wish may come true.
IVCF’s membership (like the current Evangelical Right) will continue to decline in membership, appealing solely to the most Conservative extremists among them and ever-narrowing its broader influence.
It will no longer be a ministry bringing Jesus to diverse college communities, but a restricted club of intolerance, reminding people what the Pharisees really looked like to Jesus.
That’s not the education college students deserve from an organization bearing the name of Jesus.
They deserve something resembling him.
John Pavlovitz is a Christian pastor serving the North Raleigh Community Church. This article first appeared on his blog, Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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| Pastor John Pavlovitz |
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