Christian colleges value accreditation from secular agencies as a quality assurance mechanism, but also because without it their students will lose federal financial aid and may have trouble gaining acceptance to graduate school. So accreditation is a potential weapon in the hands of agencies influenced by the agenda of gay rights activists. This worries some education leaders in the wake of news from Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., while others say there’s nothing to fear.
The Gordon story, in brief: Gordon President Michael Lindsay bravely joined some other Christian leaders in signing a letter to President Barack Obama asking for religious exemptions to a proposed ban on federal funding for institutions that “discriminate” against LGBT employees. In September the Commission of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), one of six regional accrediting agencies, asked Gordon for a report about whether its conduct policy forbidding “homosexual practice” meets NEASC’s requirement for “nondiscriminatory policies and practices in recruitment, admissions, employment, evaluation, disciplinary action, and advancement.”
NEASC President Barbara Brittingham told me, “We didn’t have any problem with any other part of the school’s policies,” which also include prohibitions of sex outside marriage, drunkenness, blasphemy, profanity, theft, and dishonesty. She also said, “We accredit Boston College, which is a Jesuit school, and they only want Jesuits to teach theology. We have no problem with that…Read More
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