The phone call came after midnight on April 13, 2000. A representative from the “J,” the Tufts Community Union Judiciary, called Curtis and Jody Chang, Boston-area campus-ministry leaders for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, to deliver a short message. Without a hearing or an opportunity to be heard, the Tufts Christian Fellowship, the largest student group at Tufts University and an InterVarsity affiliate, had been expelled from campus — “de-recognized,” in the bureaucratic language of university regulations. The grounds? The Fellowship was a threat to campus safety. Its Christian message of sin and redemption could drive students to suicide.
The proximate cause for the J’s fury was the Fellowship’s recent decision to deny a lesbian student’s application to lead the group. Not only did the student expressly disagree with InterVarsity’s teachings on marriage, family, and human sexuality, she also specifically stated that she wanted to use her position at the Fellowship to advocate gay rights. It would be the equivalent of Walter Palmer attempting to join PETA to lead the group in a hunt to kill Cecil the lion. Rather than accept such leadership, the Fellowship chose to remain true to its Biblical roots: An orthodox Christian organization wanted an orthodox Christian leader — as Baptists want Baptist pastors, Muslims prefer imams to rabbis, and Republicans tend to nominate Republicans to represent their party. But the secular university is consumed by both the sexual revolution and identity politics. Thus, the Fellowship’s commonsense exercise of freedom of association was immediately re-characterized as hate and exclusion.
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