Editorial: Restricted discourse

Recently, Christian groups on several college campuses have come under fire for discrimination for requiring that their leaders share their religious beliefs. That is, universities such as Rutgers, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard have objected to the fact that Christian groups demand Christian leaders, something that the universities say violates their non-discrimination policies.

Since these policies prevent discrimination based upon religion, the universities argue that a Christian group requiring that its leaders be Christian is tantamount to religious discrimination and hence prohibited. Such an argument and the universities' hyper-sensitive, politically-correct outrage are ridiculous. Although discrimination is usually wrong, this general principle should not prevent religious groups from having leaders who are co-religionists. It makes sense that Christians should not lead Buddist groups, atheists should not lead Jewish groups and Muslims should not lead Hindi groups.

The purpose of most religious groups is to promote their own beliefs, and for a leader to effectively promote, celebrate or practice the beliefs that form the foundation of a religious group, that leader must believe in the religion. Thus, it is nonsensical for a university to argue that a religious group should not require that its leaders also believe in the same religion: If the group's leaders did not believe in the same religion, they could not possibly be effective leaders.

Of course, private individuals have the right to decide with whom they will associate, and private clubs or groups generally have the right to discriminate against whatever groups they wish. However, in the case of these Christian organizations, they receive funding from the university. Thus, the question is not whether Christian organizations have a right to discriminate against other religions in general, but whether on-campus Christians groups receiving university funding may discriminate.

The answer is that they should be allowed to, for the essential reason that their discrimination is based upon something central to the purpose and effective governance of the group. Thus, it is appropriate for a Christian group to discriminate against non-Christian leadership, since being Christian is essential to the function of a Christian group. How-ever, it would be inappropriate for , say, cricket team to discriminate against non-Christians, since being Christian has nothing to do with whether one can play cricket (of course, it would be appropriate for a cricket team to discriminate against leaders who cannot play cricket).

But, one must draw a distinction between the leadership of a group and the membership of a group. It is not appropriate for a university group funded by student fees coming from the pooled resources of students to bar any student from the group. Although the atmosphere may not be particularly welcoming to non-Christians, Christian groups should not be allowed to ban non-Christians from membership.

By the same token, universities should not discriminate against Christian or other religious groups solely because these groups espouse religious ideas; those sorts of restrictions on speech are what is truly offensive.