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Home/Featured/Eastern University on Hold from CCCU after Dropping Ban on LGBTQ Faculty

Eastern University on Hold from CCCU after Dropping Ban on LGBTQ Faculty

The school has amended its policies to allow for the hiring of LGBTQ faculty and to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination statement.

Written by Yonat Shimron | Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Until this semester, Eastern welcomed LGBTQ students and allowed a student-led club, Refuge, to advocate for the LGBTQ students. But its student handbook banned “inappropriate displays of affection” and “sexual intimacy…outside of marriage between a man and a woman.” That has now been amended. Sex outside of marriage is still prohibited, but marriage is no longer defined as the union of a man and a woman. 

 

(RNS) — Eastern University, a Christian school affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA, has amended its policies to allow for the hiring of LGBTQ faculty and to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination statement.

As a result, its membership with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities has been put on hold during the 2022-23 academic year, and the school is no longer listed online among the 150 U.S. and Canadian schools that belong to the Christian higher education association.

Located in St. Davids, a suburb of Philadelphia, Eastern has leaned left on the evangelical spectrum for some time. Among its faculty are Tony Campolo and the late Ron Sider, two evangelicals who urged social action and justice on behalf of the poor. Its best known alumnus may be Bryan Stephenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, who has fought for eliminating unfair sentencing and exonerating innocent death row prisoners. (The school’s alumni also include Doug Mastriano, the recently defeated Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor.)

The decision to change its policies on LGBTQ students and faculty took place at the end of the last semester, the school said in a statement. Specifically, the school removed its ban on hiring LGBTQ faculty and added sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy.

That immediately set the school on a collision course with the CCCU, the largest association of Christian schools. The CCCU does not allow member schools that hire married gay faculty members and requires policies upholding traditional Christian marriage between a man and a woman.

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