In case you haven’t heard, the California state legislature is poised to pass a bill that would effectively close down Christian colleges in California. The long and short of it is this. There is bill in California that would deny federal funds to any college or university that maintains faithfulness to what the Bible teaches about sexuality. The ERLC released a statement today opposing the bill and describing its harms:
Senate Bill 1146 results in its own form of discrimination by stigmatizing and coercively punishing religious beliefs that disagree on contested matters related to human sexuality. If SB 1146 were to pass, it would deny students’ ability to participate in state grant programs—programs that exist to help low-income students, and which are overwhelmingly used by racial minorities—at schools that are found in violation of the bill. Moreover, it would severely restrict the ability of religious education institutions to set expectations of belief and conduct that align with the institution’s religious tenets.
The statement statement requests the California state legislature to drop the bill, and the request is signed by a number of religious leaders from across the country. Among other things, the statement says this:
While we do not all agree on religious matters, we all agree that the government has no place in discriminating against poor religious minorities or in pitting a religious education institution’s faith-based identity against its American identity.
There is much more to this, and I encourage you to read the whole thing. The list of signatories include:
- Barry Corey, President, Biola University
- David Blankenhorn – President, Better Angels
- David Dockery – President, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
- Thomas Farr – Director of the Religious Freedom Project, Georgetown University
- Shirley Hoogstra – President, Council for Christian Colleges & Universities
- John Inazu – Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion, Washington University in St. Louis
- Yuval Levin – Fellow, The Ethics and Public Policy Center
- Michael McConnell – Director, Stanford Constitutional Law Center
- R. Albert Mohler, Jr. – President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
- Richard Mouw – Professor of Faith and Public Life, Fuller Seminary
- Russell Moore – President, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
- Paige Patterson – President, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
- Samuel Rodriguez – President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
- Ron Sider – Senior Distinguished Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy, Palmer Seminary at Eastern University
- Rick Warren – Pastor & Founder, Saddleback Church
- Frank Wolf – Distinguished Senior Fellow, 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative
- Douglas Laycock – Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law University of Virginia Law School
- Robert P. George – McCormack Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University
