A Heretic in the Sorority

Zora Sanders, an undergraduate at Howard University, released a letter that she sent to the national administrators of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. In the letter, she says she has “renounced and denounced” her membership because, in her view, the initiation process required committing idolatry and compromised her Christian faith. Sanders’s letter — which is worth reading in full — describes an initiation ceremony that required kneeling and swearing an oath before an “altar” for the “goddess Minerva.” On a different occasion, during a chapter meeting, Sanders observed the “manipulation of scripture,” where Psalms verses were “misconstrued” and “taken out of the context from the Bible to fit a ‘delta version.’”

“As a Christian, I don’t affiliate, partake, or wear anything that is symbolic of any other deity that is not God, including the Greek goddess,” Sanders wrote. “I also shall only receive and seek wisdom from God.”