The Mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, Kimberly Driscoll, is actively attempting to destroy Gordon College.
Dissatisfied with the Christian college, practicing its own beliefs, last week Driscoll began to take out her hostility against them. The angry tone of the actions taken against the school reveal a few things that are important for the rest of the nearly 6,400 Christian colleges in America to understand.
First and foremost--none of them are safe. Not a single one.
The activists--having lost the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court--are looking for a place to focus their vengeance. Christian schools now seem to be their target of choice.
Some backstory: Gordon's President Michael Lindsay signed a letter to President Obama asking for a waiver to be granted to Christian schools from his impending executive order. The President has pledged to compel Christian organizations that believe in biblical sexual practice--to be forced to violate that belief and hire people who violate those practices.
Almost universally across the spectrum Christian colleges and universities have "Behavioral Standards" codes that they ask employees and students to observe for the length of time they wish to be employed by or a student at said school.
The Christian school is desiring to advance and deepen the faith of the person attending. The school believes it is important to be consistent in moral worldview as well as moral practice so as to set a good example for the students. This is why when a professor at a state run university conducts themselves in immoral practices, no one knows nor cares. But if an instructor, faculty member, or President of a Christian college conducts an immoral choice--they are more often than not fired upon discovery.
From the Christian school's perspective, it is not wise to ask teachers to instruct something they themselves are not observing.
Almost universally across the spectrum Christian colleges also believe the Bible is the final authority on sexual practice. And the understanding of Biblically approved sexual practice is that it is reserved for man woman marriage, before God, for life. This is why students get kicked out of Christian colleges because they are discovered to be casually sexually involved with each other (and more than 99% of the time on the Christian college campus it is involvement in heterosexual behavior.)
To be clear Gordon College had not set up two different sets of rules--disallowing sex for students who wished to be involved in heterosexual behavior, and a different set of rules for those who wish to be involved in homosexual behavior. Nope--equal treatment under the Gordon College behavior standards was practiced. No sexual behavior by any student while a student outside of marriage period.
The only possible slight that might be able to be conceived was if the college had attempted to tell students who would claim they were married homosexuals. But those students likely would never have interest in studying at a school where core to the tenants of its belief system was rigorously observed biblical sexual standards.
Those who desire homosexual behavior do not simultaneously also desire biblical standards. The two are completely incompatible.
So the Mayor of Salem doesn't care for any of the standards of Gordon College. She doesn't like that they hold their students accountable to the student's own desires (they each agree to the behavioral code before attending.) And now she is attempting to destroy the school.
Which reveals something important to understand.
It is not enough to merely disagree with leftists. They will work with every bit of force they can muster to compel you into agreement with them.
In Driscoll's case she immediately tore up a contract with the school.
Gordon College had been caring for the town's Old Town Hall. They maintained it, had given tours to the community and visitors to the area. They had used it for Gordon events. And they had allowed outside groups to schedule events there as well--all part of the agreement with the town.
Never once has there been an accusation that the Christian college maintaining the Old Town Hall had ever prevented any single group from using the facility. Likewise there is no record of the college denying the use of the facility by people who disagree with their own behavioral standards.
But now the city will deny the school the opportunity to fulfill its contract, because the mayor disagrees with them.
In addition she is among those pushing hard to have Gordon College's accreditation stripped from their programs. Accreditation is one of the key attractions for people to attend colleges and universities, and in doing this the mayor is attempting to choke the very life out of an institution that has been part of it's community and the religious life of this nation for 125 years.
If successful in repealing Gordon's accreditation look for this strategy to be copied by endless numbers of activists against the 6400 Christian colleges across America. It's all part of an ugly and angry campaign to punish Christian colleges for being--in essence--Christian in what they believe, and what they practice.
The intolerance of the left and the ignorance of the faithless will only succeed if the faith-filled show complete indifference.
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