What seems to me a very curious story about Christian groups being drummed out of the student union at Exeter University, is reported here and here. Comment from the Archbishop of Cantebury here. It seems that funding has been withheld because they require members to confirm that they are Christians. I suppose this could be reasonable — the student leaders say that they only want to fund groups that are open to anybody. But who wants to join a Christian Union other than Christians? If I remember correctly the Socialist group I belonged to at college was self-financing, but I’ve no idea whether we could have gotten access to funds if we’d wanted to. We’d certainly have resisted being open to Tories…but its not clear why they’d have joined. And the demand that they change their name because it is misleading (apparently the authorities think that “Christian Union” might mislead potential members into thinking that they are joining an ecumenical group of theists, agnostics, and atheists, whereas it seems obvious that the “Church of England Union” would be the moniker for that group) seems completely bizarre. I hereby demand that the Labour and Conservative parties change their names on the same grounds! The Christians are threatening legal action, and although my instinct is that they must surely be in the right, at least as a matter of reasonableness if not actual law, I do wonder if there is something going on here that isn’t being represented in the stories. I found the online student newspaper of the Exeter students, which is not much more illuminating (apart from the fact that it carries an interview with Noel Edmonds, which is revealing about something). Does anyone know what is going on here?
{ 25 comments }
stuart 12.13.06 at 7:35 pm
I remember back at University they had some nationality based clubs, like the Norwegians and Afro Caribbeans, but to get central funding they had to be open to letting anyone join if they wanted to, so I imagine this is along similar lines. I seem to remember the Norwegian club got quite a few non-Norwegian members because all their members were well funded (for mooching off), and most of the clubs events were heavily alcohol related (not that was particularly exceptional for most clubs).
I could see a workable setup where everyone is able to join all funded clubs, but each clubs can kick people out who are disruptive of the clubs events – so if a militant athiest joins a Christian club just to argue with everyone at every opportunity they can kick them out (once they have been disruptive a few times). If someone with an interest in architecture wants to join because they do a lot of trips to various old Churches in the region as part of the clubs activities it would seem reasonable they could join even if they aren’t christian and don’t want to pretend to be just to join. Maybe the example stretches credibility a little, but I am sure there are occasionally going to be non Christians to join such a club with valid reasons, but even if not just on principle clubs should be open to all who are interested as long as they aren’t joining for negative reasons.
dsquared 12.13.06 at 7:45 pm
almost certainly faction fighting between various flavours of Christian Union (some of them are almost as bad as the socialists for this sort of thing). I seem to remember that the CU loved to have atheists and members of other religions coming along as they usually beleived it was prelude to conversion. I think versions of this furor have played out in other unis over the last couple of years and it is usually infighting among fundies.
dsquared 12.13.06 at 7:54 pm
thinking about it as well, it is not at all impossible that somewhere lurking in the background is Hizb ut Tahir, who have been chucked off a load of campuses using precisely this non-exclusiveness clause, and are pissed off about it.
FWIW, the Jewish Society at Oxford in the 1990s not only allowed but actively solicited non-Jewish members. I nearly joined it after a ferociously convincing-sounding sales job by one of its members.
Katherine F. 12.13.06 at 10:02 pm
The issue with the CU’s name is that the CU is not and never has been open to all Christians. Exeter CU is an evangelical organisation, and requires members to sign a “doctrinal basis” that specifically excludes non-evangelicals. Never mind atheists and agnostics: Catholics and Methodists and the Eastern Orthodox couldn’t sign the DB. For the CU to call itself the “Christian” Union is thus misleading.
The issue with the funding is partly related to non-Christians not being allowed in, and partly seems to stem from a feeling that the CU discriminates against women and gays. (Which it probably does, if it’s as conservative as most CUs are.)
This has been discussed at the Ship of Fools message boards, where at least one person involved in the Exeter CU is commenting (look for comments by “Steve G”), as well as many others with experience of Christian Union groups all over th UK. As you might expect, the situation is a bit more complicated than it appears at first glance.
Ben M 12.13.06 at 10:08 pm
The issue, then, may be both a) confusing choices for incoming students, and b) a backhanded insult to other denominations. “Yes, Exeter already has a Catholic Union and an Anglican Union, but until we arrived there wasn’t a Christian union.”
Richard 12.13.06 at 10:36 pm
I hereby demand that the Labour and Conservative parties change their names…
Indeed. Perhaps to Neo-Thatcherite and, erm, what would it be, these days?
Regarding who would join outside the intended group: there’s always anthropologists.
rd 12.13.06 at 10:43 pm
What’s wrong with a group’s name making universal claims? If a group want to present itself as the sole upholders of actual Christian truth, it should be free to do so. Is the next step requiring the catholic union to call itself the Roman catholic union when somebody finally looks up “catholic” in the dictionary? It seems Orwellian to impose a kind of pluralist metaphysics on an organization on the supposed grounds that people won’t do their homework and figure out what it really stands for.
harry b 12.13.06 at 10:58 pm
It’s a bit of a bugger to learn from katherine f that dsquared gets things right even when he’s just guessing wildly…..
katherine — your link doesn’t work, and I’m keen to follow up.
Still, I’m on rd’s side in the nomenclature dispute: caveat emptor when it comes to names. Couldn’t alternative Christian Unions call themselves things like the “Workers Socialist Christian Union”?
sflkj 12.14.06 at 12:51 am
rd — You are free to exclude whomever you wish to, or make any sort of universal claims. But you can’t damn well exclude whomever you wish, and also expect to receive recognition and aid from whomever you wish.
Eric 12.14.06 at 1:43 am
Typically US Universities require that student groups NOT discriminate. They must be open to anyone. Students wishing to form a group that excludes some people have a complete right to do so… off campus (and with no University funding).
The same issue of whether Christian groups could limit membership (in any way and perhaps by the need to agree to some statement of faith) has come up occasionally in US universities. The groups doing this are often right-wingers who are seeking to “make a point” that, well, they are oppressed (sic) within the liberal pluralistic university.
Eric 12.14.06 at 1:43 am
The US universities referred to above are, of course, public universities. Private universities can and do operate differently.
Z 12.14.06 at 2:58 am
I distinctly remember that the Christian Union at my university was heavily funded and, like the Jewish Society mentioned by dsquared, actively seeking members form outside the catholic faith (I write catholic because it was exclusively catholic, despite its name). Occasionally, they would even succeed.
It seems reasonable to me that groups can require that members take an active and positive role in conformity with its stated goals, especially if they are funded. However, I would resist the idea that a funded group requires a signed statement. You wish to join the Socialist Union? Fine, as long as you actively and positively support socialist ideas and policies. But asking the student to be a card-carrying member of a socialist party is out of line.
ajay 12.14.06 at 4:51 am
FWIW, the Jewish Society at Oxford in the 1990s not only allowed but actively solicited non-Jewish members. I nearly joined it after a ferociously convincing-sounding sales job by one of its members.
Ha. Me too. Actually, I think they signed me up without asking; I certainly kept receiving newsletters and invitations to things.
Michael Mouse 12.14.06 at 5:15 am
What a lovely blast from the past! This sort of debate is ancient – it was old hat when it regularly reared its head at my University (York) back in the late 80s/early 90s.
Both sides dress this up as a question about freedom of speech or anti-Christian sentiment or whatever. But it’s really about cash. The fundamental issue is who should get funding from the Student Union (Guild of Students at Exeter). On one side is the argument that all student union-funded societies must be open to all students who wish to join. On the other is the wish of some groups to exclude those with profoundly different views.
I come down very heavily on the first side. It’s not an abuse of freedom of speech or association to refuse to fund exclusionary groups. They’re perfectly free to do so – just not to be paid to.
It was common practice then for the more fringe political groupings (SWP, Libertarians) to have a widely overlapping membership on paper. At the time this seemed to be an instance of triumph over the Prisoner’s Dilemma: far-left and far-right could both get more cash by inflating each others’ membership numbers. But in these Hitchens and Euston crowd days I think it might have signified more than that.
paul 12.14.06 at 3:13 pm
What does it mean to force students to sign some kind of statement of doctrine? Obviously its a method of exclusion for those unwilling to sign (even if they agree with everything on the piece of paper) and an initiation rite for those who are willing. But I expect it’s also ultimately a club for keeping those who have signed the paper in line in some fashion. Behave in a way that the leadership doesn’t like, and it turns out you’ve violated some item that you had promised to affirm. In such a case, refusing to fund people who insist on particular narrow statement of doctrine as a precondition for joining their group is actually a decision not to fund groups with a certain oligarchic form of governance.
rd 12.14.06 at 5:55 pm
If a group can’t exclude on the basis of beliefs, how is an expressive association even supposed to exist on a campus? If anyone can be a voting member, no matter what their beliefs, then what’s to stop the largest group on campus from having its members “join” all the other groups, impose their viewpoint and monopolize all the funding?
harry b 12.14.06 at 7:55 pm
The funding issue aside, some groups need that “oligarchic form of governance” to fulfill their aims (for the reason rd gives). I don’t thinkit would be ok for society to be like this, but for a voluntary association of adults it seems absolutely fine. Lots of groups achieve much the same thing informally, by the way. I bet its hard to be a member of the rugby or the football club if you love rugby or football but otherwise deviate from a set of social norms and values that predominate in those groups and are enforced through informal mechanisms. The evangelicals are being penalised for honestly adopting an explicit standard which many others (in my, deviant, experience) enforce just as effectively without being explicit about it.
raj 12.14.06 at 8:32 pm
If a group can’t exclude on the basis of beliefs, how is an expressive association even supposed to exist on a campus?
Possibly by eschewing funding from the college–assuming the college is a publicly funded college that provides funding from tax money and student fees.
Colin 12.14.06 at 9:00 pm
“what’s to stop the largest group on campus from having its members “join†all the other groups, impose their viewpoint and monopolize all the funding?”
From my dimming memories of student politics that’s unlikely. If anything the pattern is toward excessive division. Getting people to turn up for your own meetings is hard enough, and most folks have enough sense of fair play that it would be extremely hard to assemble a large, disciplined team of meeting-going stooges. Plus the funding is not usually enormous — a few hundred here or there for a speaker. I’d be a lot more worried about any funded student organization setting up exclusionary tests.
Functional 12.14.06 at 9:21 pm
Not much appreciation for freedom of association on this site.
OK, imagine a different scenario: The university funds 101 different student clubs and organizations of all different varieties. They then decide that it is “discriminatory” for the Abortion Rights group to deny membership to pro-lifers, and deny funding only to the Abortion Rights group. Is that fair?
harry b 12.14.06 at 9:30 pm
functional — no, definitely not fair. But it’s not clear that’s happened here, because it seems as if the CU is the only group denying membership to those who don’t share its aims. As far as freedom goes, they do have freedom of association because they can eschew funding (but not, it seems, freedom to name themselves!). Still, I’m more or less persuaded by rd that they shouldn’t be denied funding even so (on fairness, not freedom, grounds).
raj 12.14.06 at 10:08 pm
Functional · December 14th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
You don’t really believe that students should be required to pay fees that fund student organizations that categorically deny them membership, do you? If an organization wants to be able to categorically exclude certain students, they should be funded by the members that they condescend to allow to join.
Alex 12.15.06 at 6:06 am
Ah, the old “we’re exclusive but we get away with it by saying that you self-define as X” student politics tripe.
For non-UK readers, the National Union of Students has many subgroups for different identity groups, such as Muslims, lesbians, Scotsmen, Asians & c. This is replicated at the individual SUs. However, constitutionally you cannae have central funds if you exclude anyone, so they get around this by defining a Scotsman, lesbian or whatever as anyone who considers themself to be such. This results in the annual ceremony of male Conservative delegates to NUS conference applying to be seated on the lesbian committee, being refused, self-defining as lesbians, still being outvoted, and whingeing.
It is far less amusing than the people who do it appear to think.
Syd Webb 12.16.06 at 12:12 am
Paul (#15) wrote:
What does it mean to force students to sign some kind of statement of doctrine? Obviously its a method of exclusion for those unwilling to sign (even if they agree with everything on the piece of paper) and an initiation rite for those who are willing. But I expect it’s also ultimately a club for keeping those who have signed the paper in line in some fashion.
ISTM that the statement of doctrine is designed to steer students away from mainstream Christianity. Instead of being a restatement of the Nicene Creed and Jesus being portrayed as the redeemer of the world; Christ is instead positioned as a purely personal saviour whose purpose is to pluck the believer from a naughty Earth into Heaven. IMO it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Trinity but, being a Christian myself – and hence as fractious as a Trot – I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Katherine F. 12.17.06 at 12:52 am
Apologies for the non-working link; the discussion is at
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=009029
or just go to the bulletin boards at
http://www.ship-of-fools.com
and select “Purgatory”; as at this posting, the Exeter CU discussion is on the first page.
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