Christian University Under Fire for Firing Gay Professors
Plus: African Anglicans reject U.S. funds, no news is much news for Kerry's meeting with the cardinal, American missionaries shot in Guatemala and other stories (not all of them about homosexuality, we promise) from online sources around the world.
But University President Loren Swartzendruber, who took office in January, says the college is standing firm.
"I want to articulate as best I can the university expectation that, with respect to employment as well as student behavior, we will continue to follow our policy that sexual relationships are reserved for a man and a woman in marriage," he told the Richmond Times Dispatch. "That is the expectation of the Mennonite Church U.S.A, which is the denomination to which we are accountable."
At a campus forum Tuesday, Swartzendruber reiterated the denomination's stance. "While it can legitimately be argued that these are statements which may be superseded at some future point by a similar church process, this is where the Mennonite Church U.S.A. officially stands as of April 2004," he said.
Last year, two EMU professors were fired for engaging in homosexual behavior. Swartzendruber emphasizes that they were not fired for homosexual orientation. In fact, he said, two other staffers have been dismissed for heterosexual behavior outside of marriage. Swartzendruber also says that another gay faculty member did not have his contract renewed for next year, but that the decision had nothing to do with sexual orientation. That faculty member has appealed the university's decision.
Kathleen Temple, a heterosexual instructor in the school's Bible & religion department, resigned over ...
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Launched in 1999, Christianity Today’s Weblog was not just one of the first religion-oriented weblogs, but one of the first published by a media organization. (Hence its rather bland title.) Mostly compiled by then-online editor Ted Olsen, Weblog rounded up religion news and opinion pieces from publications around the world. As Christianity Today’s website grew, it launched other blogs. Olsen took on management responsibilities, and the Weblog feature as such was mothballed. But CT’s efforts to round up important news and opinion from around the web continues, especially on our Gleanings feature.
Ted Olsen is Christianity Today's editorial director. He wrote the magazine's Weblog—a collection of news and opinion articles from mainstream news sources around the world—from 1999 to 2006. In 2004, the magazine launched Weblog in Print, which looks for unexpected connections and trends in articles appearing in the mainstream press. The column was later renamed "Tidings" and ran until 2007.