Posted on 11/18/2006 4:36:21 AM PST by Man50D
A civil rights organization has joined forces with a Christian student group at Brown University in an attempt to find out why the school has banned the Christians from meeting on its campus.
"A university that respects its students cannot capriciously suspend student groups," said Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. "Suspension of any student group is a serious matter and should be accompanied by a serious explanation. Yet Brown has consistently skirted questions about the suspension, calling into question both the university's motives and the legitimacy of the punishment."
FIRE said the members of the Trinity Presbyterian Church campus fellowship had sought from school officials an explanation for the punishment. After being offered varying and shifting reasons, they sought help from FIRE in trying to obtain the information.
As WND as reported, the move by Brown comes just weeks after Georgetown University notified a group of evangelical Christian organizations, such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, they would no longer be allowed to operate on campus. The university said it was going in another "direction" but never explained more fully.
The Alliance Defense Fund wrote a letter to Georgetown asking for reconsideration of its ban on several Christian groups. Officials said no response was received.
Those in a position to know have reported that the Christian groups were booted from campus for being too evangelical, because student clubs promoting Muslim and Jewish beliefs were allowed to continue existing within the formal campus structure.
Now comes the move by Brown to eject the meetings involving nearly 100 students, and the varying explanations the school has offered, according to FIRE.
The first apparent word of trouble was in September when Janet Cooper Nelson, of the school's Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, sent the fellowship's leaders an e-mail explaining it was suspended because of "non-compliance with University policy and procedure."
She alleged Trinity Presbyterian Church, the sponsoring body, "has withdrawn its sponsorship."
The difficulty there was that Trinity Senior Pastor David Sherwood immediately responded that the church "has not, in any sense, withdrawn its sponsorship." In fact, he said, the group's leaders and students "do a fantastic job of equipping the rising generation of student leaders."
Then Allen Callahan, an associate chaplain at the school, explained that a form that was submitted late meant that the group "had not been a 'recognized student organization' since the fall of last year."
However, officials also noted there was no suspension in place at that time, and in fact the group retained the right to reserve meeting space throughout the school year.
Callahan then offered the accusation that the group "had become possessed of a leadership culture of contempt and dishonesty that has rendered all collegial relations with my office impossible."
So the students asked for an explanation of the "culture of contempt and dishonesty" but did not get a response.
On the FIRE website, Tara Sweeney wrote that student groups "should not exist at the mercy of administrative caprice… Brown University encourages its students to forge their own path, famously telling them that at Brown, 'you will be challenged to define liberal education for yourself.' But students whose definition includes membership in this evangelical Christian fellowship are just out of luck."
When FIRE got involved, the civil rights group got a statement from Russell Carey, an interim vice president of campus life, that he would personally "mediate" the issues, "with the goal of ending the suspension.:
"Over the years FIRE has seen too many examples of administrators treating religious groups in an unjust manner. All students – religious and otherwise – deserve fair treatment," said Samantha Harris, the organization's director of legal and public advocacy.
"We hope that Brown will take seriously its promise to revisit the suspension and reach a decision that shows respect for students of faith."
"It's the students who lose out in this situation," said Pastor Sherwood. "It's hard to imagine that anyone's involvement in this organization could be anything but beneficial."
A number of other universities also have taken action to dismiss various Christian organizations, and have faced legal action because of their decisions. Most of those cases have had to do with the Christian organizations failing to follow school "diversity" plans because they require their leaders to be Christian.
FIRE is a nonprofit education foundation. It works with civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists and others on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression and academic freedom at colleges and universities across the country.
In 1763, James Manning, a Baptist minister, was sent to Rhode Island by the Philadelphia Association of Baptist Churches in order to found a college. At the same time, local Congregationalists, led by James Stiles, were working toward a similar end.
On March 3, 1764, a charter was filed to create Rhode Island College in Warren, Rhode Island, reflecting the work of both Stiles and Manning. The charter had more than 60 signatories, including John and Nicholas Brown of the Brown family, who would give the College its present day name.
The college's mission, the charter stated, was to prepare students "for discharging the Offices of Life" by providing instruction "in the Vernacular Learned Languages, and in the liberal Arts and Sciences."
The charter required that the makeup of the board of thirty-six trustees include twenty-two Baptists, five Friends, four Congregationalists, and five Episcopalians, and by twelve Fellows, of whom eight, including the President, should be Baptists "and the rest indifferently of any or all denominations." It specified that "into this liberal and Catholic institution shall never be admitted any religious tests, but on the contrary, all the members hereof shall forever enjoy full, free, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of conscience."
Oh, I see. Is that really a Crusader shield or are they trying to steal that too?
We need to find ways to use our courts to prove that Islam is unconstitutional.
That was my thought, too. Leave my freakin' shield alone! ;)
I agree, and furthermore, I don't think we should accept any Muslim immigrants under any conditions. The stated purpose of Islam is to take over the world and impose its political system (since in Islam, civil law, rulership and religion are one and the same). There is no Muslim - except one who doesn't believe his religion and thus should be encouraged to dump it and find a better one - who can answer "no" to the question of whether they plan to overthrow the United States government.
Why in the world are we accepting them, and taking in greater numbers of them every year?
The purpose of the multiculturalists is to surround each individual with others of varying races, creeds, cultures. They think that if the world is thus reorganized, there can no longer be wars. Unfortunately, what they are causing is instead chaos.
WRONG... Democracy is Mob Rule...
Democracy is the road to socialism. -Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism. -Karl Marx
"Islam should ,at the very least, should be treated as a cult."
Call to prayer 5 times daily is a method of mind control.
Yesterday, an evangelical Christian told me that he was raised a Catholic, but became a Christian last year. I asked him what he meant by that and he said, "Catholics are not real Christians, and that many of them are pagans and dabble in witchcraft." He then went on to explain why Mary is not a Saint. (I stopped paying attention after the witchcraft comment so please don't ask me to explain why he thinks Mary is not a Saint.) If this is the way evangelical Christians think, then I applaud Georgetown University's decision to toss these nut jobs off campus given Georgetown's position as a Roman Catholic college that is run by the Jesuit order.
I hate legal means for solution . . . and wonder how long such will work as the globalists seek to eradicate Christianity from the planet . . . however, Lord, let all the administrators involved be removed from office and sued wholesale.
But, Lord, You alone are our high tower and our defense. Please make abundantly clear that you are God Almighty in this situation. Make abundantly clear that all who dare stand against those called by your name will suffer your censure.
Please Lord, make an example of these satanic idiots.
You affirm that the weapons of OUR warefare are not carnal, Lord. Prayer is one of the most potent weapons we have. Please make abundantly clear your responses to the prayers of those who love You about this matter, Lord. In Jesus' Name.
May all who feel similarly agree in prayer similarly.
I think it is indeed crucial that believers stand up and be counted, fight for our God Given American Rights.
However, we know that sooner than we prefer, the battle will be lost for a short while.
Thankfully,
THE KING IS COMING.
They are a bunch of wimps.
Just meet anyway. Don't say you are an official organization, say you are just a bunch of people talking. Who's going to stop you?
That's the way it all started, too.
Christian groups (conservative) on college campuses upset the secular (athiest) liberal agenda.
The conservative professor or employee is also a no, no!!! These professors and employees are normally ostracized by peers in full view of administrations. In fact, the administrations, in many cases, act as cheerleaders for this behavior.
= = = =
YUP.
Multicult is stupid and artificial; once people live in the same area, they end up adopting the same values, customs, etc. anyway, and trying to artificially preserve languages or customs is ridiculous. The multi-cultis try very hard to keep people separate; I remember in NYC, a family had to sue to get their daughter out of a Spanish-only class where she had been assigned because she had an Hispanic last name, although it had been 4 generations since anybody in the family had spoken Spanish!
However, my point is that the stated goal of Islam is to wipe out all other societies, political structures, and religions. Unlike other groups, Muslims don't end up adopting the good and harmonious values of the society around them. They don't even want to be multi-cult; they want to take over the whole show. So why are we letting them in?
They are socialists and communists seeking to destroy Democracy.
= = = =
NOT "just" our 'democratic' Republic--they seek to destroy all the "old order" they can get away with destroying as long as they can toward setting up the satanic global government; reducing the world's population to 500,000,000 (check out the Georgia Guide Stones) . . . and in the process trying to destroy all Christians and Jews. They will eventually try to destroy all Muslims as well but they seem to be using them to eradicate the rest of us for the time being.
Thankfully, The King Is Coming . . . and He Wins.
Thanks.
All or virtually all ivy league universities started out as Bible Colleges or were set up by Christians.
Harvard started out as a Bible College.
The purpose of the multiculturalists is to surround each individual with others of varying races, creeds, cultures. They think that if the world is thus reorganized, there can no longer be wars. Unfortunately, what they are causing is instead chaos.
= = = =
Actually, imho, from my study the last 45 years . . . I consider that a sham, a smoke screen. They were going to eradicate all Blacks from the planet and might still plan to . . . until they discovered the blacks could be useful tools in causing conflict in the society . . . leveraging more of their power that way.
They are seriously into death, conflict, Machiavellian manipulations etc. Such are some of their primary tools, means, preferences.
They have one goal: The literal enthronement of satan as world ruler. They actually believe that God Almighty loses at Armageddon.
These folks are not playing tiddle-D-winks. The Mother of all conspiracies would be putting it mildly. And, it is FACT, not theory.
Good to keep those quotes in the public mind.
as much as we can! LOL.
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