Longtime volunteer co-leaders of Bowdoin Christian Fellowship, a husband and wife, who operated the group under InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, resigned rather than submit to a new school policy requiring their pledge not to discriminate based on “sexual orientation.” The husband explained: “The Bible teaches that human sexuality is expected to find its fulfillment inside of the twoness of persons and the twoness of genders.”

The Kulturkampf against Christian faith and ethics marches forward, now striking at Bowdoin College in Maine, where leaders of an Evangelical campus ministry are effectively being excluded because they won’t bend their knees to the new religion of “sexual orientation.”

Longtime volunteer co-leaders of Bowdoin Christian Fellowship, a husband and wife, who operated the group under InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, resigned rather than submit to a new school policy requiring their pledge not to discriminate based on “sexual orientation.” The husband explained: “The Bible teaches that human sexuality is expected to find its fulfillment inside of the twoness of persons and the twoness of genders.”

The dean of students refused their offer to sign with religious reservations.

“If someone’s participating in an organization and they are LGBTIQA and they are not allowed to participate in that organization because of their sexual orientation or they cannot lead that organization because of their sexual orientation, then that’s discrimination,” the dean hardheadedly explained to the school newspaper. “And that is a violation of Maine law and therefore also a violation of College law.”

Hmmm, so even religious groups, in the dean’s interpretation of state law, must submit to LGBTIQA orthodoxy? The newspaper didn’t bother to explain that LGBTIQA, the ever growing acronym, stands, I believe, for lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-intersex-questioning-asexual.

The article cites Evangelical campus groups at three other major schools recently facing similar pressures, including one that was challenged for insisting on adherence to 8 major Christian doctrines. So “diversity,” in the new secularist thought dictatorship, excludes orthodox Christianity. Evidently “diversity” can’t withstand the challenge of a competing worldview.

For more info on the Bowdoin case, read this excellent essay by my friend Owen Strachan, a Bowdoin alumnus who teaches at Boyce College, and who alerted me. I first heard of Bowdoin over 20 years ago when watching PBS’ Civil War series by Ken Burns, which highlighted Gettysburg hero Joshua Chamberlain, who later became Bowdoin’s president. He was severely wounded at Petersburg. Did he sacrifice for a nation that would try to smother orthodox Christianity by ignoring its own heritage and Constitution?

The accelerating attacks on religious freedom and conscience, waged with increasingly brazen smugness, ultimately threaten all who cherish their right to think for themselves. In Orwellian fashion, the Kulturkampf against traditional faith styles itself “nondiscrimination.” Who among us will defend the right of dissent against this oppressive new secular orthodoxy?

Mark Tooley is President of the Institute on Religion & Democracy. This article appeared on the IRD blog and is used with permission.