If SPU were to change its employment policies with regard to sexual orientation, the consequences would be immediate. “If the University changed its employment policies to permit employment of Christians in same-sex marriages, the University would be automatically disaffiliated from the Free Methodist Church,” the lawsuit states. “The University would no longer be a denominational institution. Disaffiliation would occur whether the University made this change voluntarily or under compulsion of law. This would result in the loss of a religious affiliation that has existed for over 130 years.”

Washington state Attorney General (AG) Bob Ferguson, who became well known for hounding Christian florist Barronelle Stutzman into retirement for her biblical beliefs about marriage, has now set his sights on Seattle Pacific University (SPU), a Christian educational institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church.
In June, Ferguson’s office sent a letter to SPU saying, “I am writing to inform you that the [Attorney General’s Office] is opening an inquiry to determine whether the University is meeting its obligations under state law.
“Specifically, we have learned of information that suggests that the University may utilize employment policies and practices that permit or require discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, including by prohibiting same-sex marriage and activity.”
Wait. That’s not controversial at all. And it shouldn’t be.
A Christian university that requires its faculty to abide by principles of the Christian faith is exactly what you should expect from such an institution. There are plenty of secular colleges and universities to work at or attend if you’re not particularly fond of the Bible.
SPU has a statement of faith that includes human sexuality and the school requires its faculty and staff to both affirm it and abide by it.
The school’s right to do so is protected by the religion clauses of the First Amendment, according to Lori Windham, an attorney with the Becket Fund, which represents the school in a federal lawsuit seeking to put an end to the attorney general’s investigation.
“At the heart of the lawsuit is religious autonomy, Windham, told World. “The Supreme Court has guaranteed that right several times. It has said the First Amendment protects churches and religious groups’ right to decide what they believe and who should lead them.”
The lawsuit explains the expectations that SPU has for its employees.
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This case provides a teachable moment for prospective students and their parents as they consider enrolling at a public educational institution in a day and age where Christian beliefs are more counter-cultural than ever.

Maggie DeJong, in her third year of a master’s program for art therapy counseling at Southern Illinois University (SIU), was shocked recently to receive official emails from the school’s administration ordering her to have “no contact” with three other graduate students in her program, either on or off campus.
What was this Christian student guilty of? What would prompt the university to issue the educational equivalent of a restraining order against her?
According to her attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the only thing DeJong was told in emails from the university is that “upon information and belief that interactions between yourself [and the other students] would not be welcome or appropriate at this time.”
DeJong was given no prior notice of the complaints against her nor was she given an opportunity to defend herself against whatever accusations have been lodged against her.
In an interview with The Daily Citizen, Tyson Langhofer, ADF Senior Counsel and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom, told us that Maggie has been singled out at times by her professors and fellow students for criticism of her Christian beliefs, even telling her that her beliefs are wrong, insensitive and contrary to the values of the program in which she is enrolled.
For example, Langhofer said, Maggie at one point was texting back and forth with another student who asked her about her beliefs. Maggie informed her that her personal beliefs are grounded in objective truth by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The conversation was friendly and conversational. Yet Maggie’s exact text ended up on a piece of art in a common area at the school entitled “The crushing weight of micro-aggressions.”
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Given the current conservative leanings of the high court and its recent decisions affirming religious freedom, this case is setting up to be an important one. It may prove to be the perfect opportunity for the high court to finally vindicate the free speech rights of Christian creative professionals whose chosen messages do not conform to the politically mandated ideology of the local governments where they operate.

When Denver-area baker Jack Phillips won his religious discrimination case against the state of Colorado at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 after declining to create a wedding cake for a same-sex “marriage,” the justices decided in his favor on the basis of the religious hostility exhibited by particular state officials toward his religious beliefs about marriage. The court avoided the even weightier questions of free speech that lay at the heart of the case.
Now, four years later, another creative artist is challenging the same Colorado nondiscrimination statute that ensnared Jack Phillips—as well as other wedding professionals in other states dealing with similar statutes—for compelling Christian businesspeople to express messages contrary to their faith.
Lorie Smith is the owner of 303 Creative LLC, a Denver-area graphic design and wedding website where Lorie hopes to celebrate marriages and bring her Christian faith to bear on the creative work she does in blogging about and building memories for the couples that hire her.
While she doesn’t discriminate against any customer because of who they are, she does desire to limit her wedding business to opposite-sex couples because of her Christian beliefs about marriage, and that’s something that Colorado law does not permit.
Smith’s courageous legal efforts to fight the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) and operate her business in accordance with her faith have not gone well to date. When she sued the state in 2019 to have the law declared unconstitutional, she lost in federal district court and again at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
That didn’t discourage Smith, to her credit.
Lorie appealed the 10th Circuit’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on February 22 announced it would hear her case. The news is encouraging for those who value religious freedom, free speech, and the right of creative professionals to be free from government-compelled ideology.
Given the current conservative leanings of the high court and its recent decisions affirming religious freedom, this case is setting up to be an important one. It may prove to be the perfect opportunity for the high court to finally vindicate the free speech rights of Christian creative professionals whose chosen messages do not conform to the politically mandated ideology of the local governments where they operate.
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Judge Phipps said, the Lasches’ allegations that their civil rights were violated because of the state government’s religious hostility and retaliation based on their biblical views should not have been dismissed by the lower court. In explaining his reasoning, Judge Phipps cited two recent Supreme Court cases supportive of religious freedom.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court decision dismissing a New Jersey couple’s lawsuit against the state after it removed their foster child and suspended their license to foster parent. The decision relies on recent U.S. Supreme Court cases favoring religious freedom and paves the way for Christians in the Garden State to push back against government hostility toward biblical values.
Licensed foster parents Michael and Jennifer Lasche could only watch helplessly in 2018 as their foster daughter – whom they wanted to adopt – was removed from their home by government officials. Employees of the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP) decided the Lasches’ religious beliefs about the sinfulness of homosexual conduct and same-sex “marriage” justified the child’s removal.
But then the state went even further in making its point by suspending the Lasches’ license to foster any child. When the couple sued the state for violating their constitutional rights, a federal district court dismissed the lawsuit.
However, the 3rd Circuit reinstated the lawsuit and sent it back down to the lower court for further proceedings.
“The District Court dismissed the Lasches’ [constitutional rights violation] claim against the individual capacity defendants for First Amendment retaliation on two grounds,” Judge Peter Phipps wrote on behalf of a three-judge panel.
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It’s bad enough when public school parents have to fight against the woke indoctrination happening in those schools, but when Christian institutions are threatened with the same agenda, it’s time for dissenting voices such as Dr. Schulz to step up and alert the Church. Hopefully the good professor can not only keep his job but will cause positive change at Concordia because of his bold stand.

Dr. Gregory P. Schulz is a tenured professor at Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW), a Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod institution. He teaches philosophy and is a Lutheran pastor with over 40 years of experience in ministry either in a local parish or in higher education.
When Dr. Schulz published an article on February 14 critical of CUW’s “woke-ness” in its search for a new university president for the 8,000-student institution, he was immediately suspended from his teaching duties until he publicly recants.
And for good measure, Dr. Schulz was immediately barred from campus. The callous swiftness of the administration’s retaliation was stunning. He had hit a nerve.
“Woke Dysphoria at Concordia,” the title of Schulz’ February 14 article in The Christian News, complained that CUW was “coming under the influence of Woke-ism,” which he described as “a potent cocktail of Progressivism, Neo-Pragmatism, and Marxism.” Instead of searching for a new president from a list of 11 candidates given to the university’s Board of Regents by the Synod – a list which included Dr. Schulz as a qualified candidate – the Board decided to ignore the Synod and start a new search for a candidate with social justice credentials.
Those credentials include a president who exhibits a “demonstrated belief in and commitment to equity and inclusion” and promotes racialized “diversity in all its myriad forms.”
“These are aggressive-progressive Woke mantras,” Schulz warned in his article. What the university is really looking for, he said, is someone “who would thus be radically different from spiritual and educational leadership as authoritatively described in the Scriptures.”
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Myre, a six-foot, 195-pound linebacker and co-captain of his school’s football team and a member of the wrestling team, was also a star student, carrying a 3.9 grade point average. He was even being recruited by the University of Toledo and had visited the campus only a few days before his death.

Last Tuesday a 15-year-old sophomore boy emerged from a school restroom at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan with a handgun and started firing. Five minutes and at least thirty shots later, four students lay dying and seven more suffered gunshot wounds, two of whom are in critical condition fighting for their lives. The shooter surrendered peacefully when police officers stationed at the school arrived at the scene and confronted him.
The dead have been identified as: 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin, 17-year-old Justin Shilling, and 16-year-old Tate Myre.
Out of this senseless tragedy, however, a story has emerged of the heroism of one of the victims, 16-year-old Myre, who died trying to disarm the shooter.
According to multiple witnesses, Myre ran toward the gunman when the gunfire started, and was reportedly hit several times. He later died en route to the hospital. His selfless bravery that put him in the line of fire undoubtedly saved more of his classmates from falling victim to the shooter.
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