UK: Students Sue Over Christian Rights At Colleges

Taken from The Times, November 18, 2006
By David Lister and Ruth Gledhill

CHRISTIANS on campuses across Britain are preparing to take legal action against university authorities, accusing them of driving their religious beliefs underground, The Times has learnt.
Christian unions claim that they are being singled out as a “soft target” by student associations because they refuse to allow non-Christians to address their meetings or sit on ruling committees.

The dispute follows the associations’ decisions at four universities to ban the unions from official lists of societies or deny them access to facilities or privileges. Christian unions at Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt and Birmingham universities are all taking legal advice after being accused of excluding non-Christians, promoting homophobia and even discriminating against those of transgender sexuality.

Two Christian unions announced yesterday that they were consulting lawyers, at the same time as the Government announced measures to tackle the threat of Islamist extremism on campus.

At Exeter University the Christian union issued a statement on Thursday stating that it has given the students’ guild 14 days to reinstate it in full or face legal action. It was suspended from the list of official societies last month for allegedly breaching rules on equal opportunities.

Andrea Minichiello Williams, public policy officer for the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, which has offered informal legal advice to the students, predicted that there would be a wave of legal action.

She said: “We haven’t seen examples of this sort of discrimination against any other groups and we are puzzled by why Christian unions seem to be being singled out.”

The Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, the umbrella group for Britain’s 350 Christian unions with a membership of up to 20,000 students, accused student authorities of extreme political correctness. It said that Christian unions faced a struggle “unprecedented” in their 83-year history.

Pod Bhogal, the fellowship’s head of communications, said: “The politically correct agenda is being used to shut people up under the guise of tolerance when, in fact, you tolerate anything other than the thing you disagree with.”

Amid calls for the fellowship to set up a fighting fund to contest legal actions, Emma Brewster, one of its 60 paid staff workers who act as mentors to Christian unions, said: “We believe that we are going to see more situations like this in our universities.” The 150-strong Christian union in Birmingham was suspended this year after refusing to alter its constitution to allow non-Christians to address meetings and to amend its literature to include references to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and those of transgender sexuality.

In Exeter, the Christian union had privileges suspended, including free access to university rooms and funding, after the guild deemed its core statement of beliefs too exclusive. At Edinburgh University, where copies of the Bible were banned from halls of residence last year after protests from the students’ union, the Christian union has been banned from teaching a course about sex and relationships after complaints that it promoted homophobia. At Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh, the union has been told it cannot join the students’ union because its core beliefs discriminate against non-Christians and those of other faiths.