Just taking a break from the Big Tick for a moment to engage on something else.
This week the news is all about Christian Persecution. It seems that 1700 years after the edict of Milan with which the Emperor Constantine legalised Christianity in 313AD that for the first time Christianity is being actively persecuted in Europe.
BOLLOCKS.
Anyway, lets unpack this. This is all to do with the fact that several University Student Unions have apparently 'Banned' their CUs. Another University has banned them from teaching Christianity on the grounds that Christian Morality is Homophobic.
Ok so first things first. Homophobia like any prejudice is a sin. So any society which promotes it is not Christian and deserves to get banned. I am 100% sure that CU agree with me on this one.
Secondly the SU’s (student Unions) in question have not banned the practice of Christianity. They have disaffiliated the CU.
The problem here is that the SU is trying to do something which they are not really set up to do, facilitate the practice of religion. We have moved a long way from the days in which a bunch of students met to have Bible studies in their room. Now we have all sorts of legislation regarding the practice of religion on campus and it is no longer helpful to have this centred on student societies.
As someone from estates pointed out to me recently there are all sorts of Muslims on site who want to practice their faith: students, staff and visiters. It is silly really to have the University deal with the Undergraduate society of the Student's Union to sort this out. There needs to be someone else.
Dito for Christianity. Let me ask you why does the CU need to be affiliate to the SU? Surely the solution to this problem is for CUs over the country to become part of Chaplaincy. After all according to our DVC if chaplaincy needs more sapce for an event then we only have to ask for it. Equally if CU were an official chaplaincy society they would not need to rely upon the Student's Union for space they could through chaplaincy deal with the University directly.
It might be objected that this would give Chaplaincy too much power over CU. Actually it wouldn't give chaplaincy any power over CU. I don't have any power over cath-soc. It would give CU the support of chaplaincy.
People might say that if CU became part of chaplaincy then chaplaincy might disaffiliate them...then where would they be? Except of course SUs are currently doing just that. Now ask yourself who is more likely to disaffiliate a CU, a bunch of left wing secularists or other Christians? Take your time with this one...it is an intelligence test.
This also takes the SU away from religion and back to what they do best. Heavy drinking, extreme ironing and comedy nights.
CUs walked away from SCM in the 1920s and they walked away, for the most part, from Chaplaincy too. Now they find themselves in a far country eating the swine food of SU politics.
It's time for the CU to come home.
Church of England Chaplain University of Southampton CU Christian Unions UCCF Christian Unions Southampton University University Soton Uni
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11 comments:
Good call.
But however, while you might not have any power over Cathsoc someone else MIghk.
he he!! Here's an amusing one. Firefox 2.0 has a built in spell checker for text field such as this one I'm writing in. And the top suggestion for 'cathsoc' is 'sociopaths' and the suggestion for 'Cathsoc' is 'Loathsome' - lol (of course it's not true, most of them are lovely people).
I agree, its time for all student christians to end inter group disaproval and join together and remind each other that faith has no divisions.
i fear some CU members are un/not-fully aware of what chaplaincy has to offer them, from worship to a place to go for advice or just a cup of tea.
However like when a bunch of strangers get bundelled into a room, everyone is nervous to extend the first hand of friendship. It may therefore be up to the respective chaplaincy's to extend the hand of friendship.
i for one would only be too glad to see 80 years pointless separation ended
Hmm, should the SU not have any religious societies? It's an idea, but then you have the problem of social societies who might happen to be religious/promote a religion. I'm fairly sure that would get messy pretty fast, with the lines between personal beliefs of society officers and what "the society" says causing untold drama.
On a side note, it's a pet peeve of mine.... but what makes a judgement a prejudice as opposed to a judgement? Where does it become "sinful" to make a decision, or to base your actions on something? That's just something which keeps annoying me....
I completely agree with you. When CUs and chaplaincies work together I believe things are happier all round.
In Warwick uni the CU decided that the Chaplaincy couldn't be represented at the beginning of year Churches fair because they couldn't sign the DB. And where was the churches fair held year after year? The chaplaincy. The Chaplaincy decided that they would not allow the CU to have the room for that one event, so they had to have it in a lecture hall which was really awkward. A lot of other meetings however happen in the Chaplaincy!
firstly, it seems that the SUs at Birmingham, etc have acted illegally when kicking out CU, and have deliberately targeted the CU, when by the reasons that they got kicked out, the sports teams should have all been kicked out, for the simple reason that they wouldn't let non-players be captains, likewise the CU wouldn't let non-Christians take positions of leadership.
Secondly, if Edinburgh deliberately set out to reform non-Christian homosexuals and do nothing else, then they should have been kicked out. AFAIK, the Pure course is aimed at Christians, and isn't homophobic - it shows that same sex relations are sinful, but doesn't specifically target them, and anyway, Romans 3:23 is incredibly inclusive - ALL have sinned. Anyway, why do we have this emotive word "homophobic". While some people genuinely are irrationally fearful/hateful of gays, most "homophobic" behaviour is just anti-homosexuals (still sinful) or even stuff done out of love, like telling people in a calm and gentle fashion, that same sex relations are sinful, but Jesus is the remedy to that.
Thirdly, SCM and IVF (now UCCF) split as there were primary issue disagreements, these are big problems. How would evangelism work with lots of different versions of what the good news is, who Jesus is/was, why he came, and so on - we'd end up with confused people and be arguing all the time over what the gospel is that we're supposed to be telling.
Fourthly, and finally, moving into Chaplaincy and disaffiliating with the SU is something that needs to be looked at on a case by case basis - is there the threat of being chucked out? is that persecution? would be silent and moving to Chaplaincy be better than a bomb load of publicity? is it what God wants? with SUCU, there's no real need to move - I agree that we should perhaps do more with the Chaplaincy, though I can't think of what we could do. With other unis, the Chaplaincy is unable to work with the CU due to primary issue differences, and at some unis the Chaplaincy has deliberately tried to hinder CU evangelism as they disagreed with what was being preached.
In short - a nice idea, however, it needs to be looked at case by case, and in most cases just isn't needed.
Warwick SU disaffiliated the CU because they refused membership to a gay Christian, which went against the equal opportunities policy of the SU. That cannot be argued to be illegal.
I do not think that who Jesus is /was and that kind of thing is much debated among Christians. I think it is just that different Christians empahasise different parts of Jesus' life and ministry and maybe interpret things differently, as in the literal vs symbolism vs a combination of the two debate. I would say we argue far more about sex before marriage, homosexuality, women priests etc than the life of Christ. No one can dispute that he came to show us how to love as God loves us, that he came to die so that we could be forgiven. Love, I would argue, is the message of the gospel that we should ALL be using to evangelise, no matter what method we are using.
Shorts Si has picked up on the inherent suspcision between Chaplaincies and CUs. I do not understand why this suspicsion exists- are we not all worshipping the same God?? Why can't we accept that while there are differences in our opinions on certain issues and in the activities we undertake (which is exactly the same in the wider Church, different churches have different opinions about homosexuality, women priests, evangelism etc etc), we are all Christians at the end of the day? Could I not, believing that there is nothing wrong with loving homosexual relations, worship alongside someone who believes the opposite? This would challenge both parties, but I think it needs to be worked towards, for the sake of Christian unity. We are never going to all agree on these issues. It's time we stopped arguing and got on with loving God and loving each other, which is surely the most important thing.
Hmm, that's interesting Mel...
Doesn't that mean that you're treating all doctrinal or dogmatic differences as being essentially trivial in nature? The whole point of having a religious belief about something is that it's important. Saying "oh, you're all the same really" seems to be the same kind of talk as people who say that all religions are the same. Talking about conflicts as though the people involved don't care (when they obviously do) will never solve anything.
I'm not saying these differences are trivial, I'm saying that we need to acknowledge that it is ok to be different from each other whilst also embracing our similarities. It is the only way I can see to stop there being conflict over these issues and for Christians to be by their love for God rather than divided by conflict.
It is not the issues that are trivial, but the act of arguing about them.
I personally think that the issues, for the most part, are relatively trivial... We do believe in and worship the same God, We all believe in Jesus and repent of our sins. What else defines someone as a Christian?
Brearing in mind that the best way to get some decent focus on what's truly important is *probably* to get together as a group, and focus on what God asks of all of us. We don't have to all practice it in the same way - in fact we probably shouldnt - but we could essentially mandate ourselves as an ecumenical group to work out how to "Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With Ou God" - and if this is done in love, keep ourselves accountable without getting lost in our own denomination's dogma.
Incidentally Simon, the SU's are there for representation as well! And while a lot of it may be behind the scenes, we do do quite a lot to help students' academic lives!
As a member of the executive committee I can safely say that the actions are not illegal, they are fully in line with our democratically voted on constitution allowing people access to everything regardless of gender, race, religion, sexuality, age or disability. One of my male friends was allowed to stand for women's officer (and failed to be elected). 6 other Christian societies have happily agreed to the constitution, 2 of them evangelical so there is no anti-Christian bias. In fact it would have been discriminatory to have made BUECU an exemption. There were in fact about ten breaches of the constitution, most of them completely trivial, in my opinion, and the others were aimed at keeping Christians that aren't conservative evangelical out of the committee rather than making sure they're Christian. The fact that they claim it is persecution when it quite clearly isn't is ridiculous.
They are members of the chaplaincy but have written nasty letters to local churches about other Christian societies and refuse to associate with the other Christian societies so it may be difficult for them to work together.
James Bowes- University of Birmingham Guild of Students Disabled Students' Officer
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