Who are they kidding?

One of the recruitment tools I received in the mail as a senior in high school from SMU was a message that although the university’s name had “Methodist” in it, it did not mean that the school was rigidly religious, in fact it was very accepting of (for want of a less cliché#233;d word) diversity, so the fact that you’re different than the privileged white kids that someone complains about every week in The Daily Campus shouldn’t stop you from coming here. That’s what the David Copperfield financial aid packages are for. (You know; now you see the money, now you don’t.)

The truth is this school is quite split. From the best I can tell, the faculty, the Student Senate, and the more outspoken students (i.e., those who write to the DC, are more into activism, etc.) by and large lean toward the liberal side. The trustees, the administration, and the “silent” majority of students are for the most part conservative. (This is a generality. I know of conservative faculty, liberal administrators, and I’m damn sure neither a liberal nor a conservative. There are certainly other exceptions as well.) Most of the religious students are Christians. And a majority of Christians are, to no one’s surprise, conservatives (though many of them aren’t as extreme – politically or religiously – as those on, say, The Trinity Network). Conservatives are, naturally, quite set in their beliefs (liberals are too, but they tend to be the slightest bit more tolerant). That, coupled with an adamant belief in Christianity, means, well, just avoid any religious argument with them if a supply of Tylenol (or in some cases, a cyanide tablet) isn’t handy.

So given the large number of religious and political conservatives falling under the blanket of Christianity, it should be of no surprise when they land on the representative board of the Campus Ministry Council as student representatives.

Given that Christian groups comprise the overwhelming majority of religious groups on campus (no other religion has more than one, and adding the non-Christian groups together doesn’t give you even a quarter of the number of Christian ones) and the way that pagans and paganism is portrayed in the Bible, it should not be too much of a shock that the pagan group Pursuers of All Things Holy and Sacred (PATHS) was denied acceptance as a campus ministry.

To be quite honest with you, I think that the ministry council has every right to decide what groups they do and don’t want to be part of their group. However, just because I feel they have the right to make the decision they did does not mean I agree with it (which makes the Ministry Council no difference, I’m sure), and it does not mean that it is not questionable.

And the decision is very questionable. From reading Emily Robards’ article from last Friday, I gathered three reasons for the second rejection of a charter for PATHS, exactly zero of them good. The more informal explanations were that the members’ needed to learn more about “this different religion” and that the acceptance of PATHS may lead to “the organization of more extreme faiths.” The official reason was “the exclusivity of membership as stated in by-laws relative to the closed nature of meetings and rituals.”

To the first reason, I must ask how much the members of the Campus Ministry Council know about Hinduism. Hinduism is one of the great religions, and a very interesting one as well. It is, however, very, very complex. While the goal may be somewhat simple to state (from what I understand – and please correct me if I’m wrong -your Atman [inner self] is the same as Brahman [the embodiment of the universe] and that you are to seek reunification with the Brahman), there are numerous paths of doing so. If the diversity of the mystic understanding of the universe is okay with the council (as well it should be), why not mysticism the members of PATHS follow?

The second explanation is a version of the “slippery slope” argument that I have yet to see used convincingly, and this case is no exception. If they are worried about the organization of more extreme faiths it would have nothing to do with PATHS, simply because these groups are probably meeting somewhere anyway, whether the ministry council likes it or not. And if they are worried about them wanting to be accepted as a campus ministry, how quickly those members seem to have forgotten that they have a big Christian bloc of voters to deny that “extreme” group charter. So why is PATHS the beginning of that slippery slope?

The official reason leaves much to be desired as well. Whether or not membership is exclusive or not, the membership to any other campus ministry group has a de facto exclusivity to it. One may not have a religious affiliation if he or she goes to any of the ministry meetings, but if that person keeps attending the meetings, even if he or she does not identify with the religion of the group yet, it is probably safe to assume he or she has some affinity with the religion. In other words, you can safely bet that a Buddhist isn’t going to become a member of, say, Campus Crusade for Christ if they weren’t interested in Christianity, or already a Buddhist Christian (and they do exist, believe it or not). In other words, if someone of a different religion isn’t going to become a member of a specific campus ministry, what difference does it make if PATHS supposedly didn’t pay lip service to membership inclusiveness?

The answer to the seemingly rhetorical questions that conclude the previous three paragraphs is, in fact, rhetoric. The history of Christianity has long had a record of distrust of many religions, of which pagan religions have received a great deal of that animosity. To put that in cruder terms, Christians have long been prejudiced against pagans, and I dare say the recent Campus Ministry Council vote is nothing but a show of that, hidden behind a veil of weak arguments. (I would have had more respect for the council if they had just admitted that the religious views of the majority of the members were the cause of the decision, like the assistant director of Wesley almost did.)

Mainstream Christianity has finally gotten over the mindset that led to events such as the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, much to their credit. It might be time for some Christians to take another look at how they perceive those who follow the earth-based religions known collectively as paganism as well. If that’s too much to ask (given some Christians, it probably is), maybe those Ministry Council members who voted no could at least give PATHS a chance before universally dismissing them like their religious ancestors did.