Lileks has n post on a Christian organization that has run afoul of the intolerance of the tolerance dogma:
I read stories like this, and the very first paragraph makes me tired.
A UNIVERSITY Christian Union has been suspended and had its bank account frozen after refusing to open its membership to people of all religions.
I could understand a University turning a cold narrow eye to a group that declared, in its charter, that nonbelievers and sodomites alike would be cast into the lake of fire on Judgment day - and to prepare them for that event they would be set alight should they attempt to attend a meeting of the Christian Union. But:
Members claim the actions have been taken against them after they refused on religious grounds to make “politically correct” changes to their charitable constitution, including explicitly mentioning people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered.
Personally, I suspect that the organization would welcome anyone who showed up for services, and not inquire too closely about what they wish to do with whom. But the Union isn’t in trouble for excluding people. They’re in trouble for not rewriting their constitution to “explicitly mention” some noisy people who, one suspects, are less interested in access to this particular group than enforcing the use of a wide bland smear of magic words that somehow insulates them from exclusion. It gets richer:
The Christian Union was advised that the use of the words “men” and “women” in the constitution were causing concern because they could be seen as excluding transsexual and transgendered people.
Something similar to this happened at Tufts University not so long ago, although there it was a little less absurd. The Tufts Christian Fellowship refused to let a practicing lesbian join its leadership team, apparently on the theory that the leadership of an organization should agree with its beliefs. They were suspended for a while, then eventually reinstated on a technicality, with the core issue--whether anyyone has a
right to be a leader in an organization, even if they disagree with it--left unresolved.
MIT's Graduate Christian Fellowship, where I was an active member, did not hold elections for its leaders. Instead, the outgoing leadership team would ask people to take over positions for the next year. All in all it was very informal, as our problem was always finding enough people for the leadership team, not dealing with competition for positions. I doubt we would have run into the same problems as Tufts, as the passed over candidate would have no way of knowing why they were passed over. However, every once in a while, there would be problems with one of the current leaders. I remember a very difficult meeting I was involved in (actually I remember a lot of very difficult meetings--it wasn't always fun and games), where the organization's secretary had reached the point where he no longer agreed with the central tenets of the Christian faith. He asked us whether he should step down--he argued that he should remain since, even if he no longer believed in Christianity, he believed it was a good thing. We said he should. Being a leader in a Christian organization means more than just being an advocate for it. It means being a functioning member of the body of God. It means being a servant, first of God and then of the Fellowship. You don't have to be perfect--none of us were. But if you aren't trying to serve God, if you don't believe in Him or aren't willing to obey Him, then how are you going to help the Fellowship serve and obey God?
