Christian Unions

What is it with Christian Unions at Universities in the UK?

They have been complaining that Students’ Unions have refused to affiliate them because they won’t allow non-Christians to join.

It transpires that they also want all speakers to sign up to their doctrinal statement before being allowed to address their members. Additionally, therre have been complaints about a course they run based on the book ‘Pure’ by Linda Marshall. This has been described as hompphobic by some, particularly since it apparently claims that gays can be cured of their affliction!

Now, some Students’ Unions (eg Heriot Watt in Edinburgh) have, indeed, refused to accept them. They have a constitution, bye-laws and policies, which conform to the
1994 Education Act, and they cannot affiliate an organisation not prepared to adhere to these. These mandate equality of access to all students, regardless of the particular society.

It seems that the CU is not prepared to sign up to this, hence the Students’ Union.

Now, what the CUs are complaining about is restriction of free speech.

They are guilty of trying to evade the issue and deflect it onto other issues.

Is there a reciprocal ‘free speech’ right that says CU members have a right to be exposed to other ideas, other than those narrowly prescribed by those at the top of the CU?

[Pure: Sex and Relationships God’s Way
LINDA MARSHALL

Available from good Christian bookshops, and www.ivpbooks.com/pure
(IVP, £6.99 144 pages, hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-84474-090-1

Some materials to be used with the book can be found here:

www.ivpbooks.com/pure

It gives a good idea of the content of the course.]

1 thought on “Christian Unions”

  1. “They have been complaining that Students’ Unions have refused to affiliate them because they won’t allow non-Christians to join”. It’s an all too familiar story! Faith schools are getting up to similar and probably worse tricks with their applying candidates. They have been happily cherry picking the best students to get their ratings up, thus biasing the stats on faiths schools vs non-faith schools. What they will never achieve however is to change the natural fact that the more intelligent you are the more likely you are to reject religion.

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