ARE OUR CHRISTIAN COLLEGES IN A LEGAL NOOSE?
Norman Parks

The legal noose is tightening on the Christian colleges’ long reach into the public treasury for tax support while trying to maintain their sectarian identification and commitment. The day is fast approaching when they must make an inevitable choice: to go secular and abandon compulsory chapel, compulsory doctrinal instruction in religion, and a faculty selected on the basis of church identification in the hope of expanding state support or to move firmly and finally behind the wall which separates church and state and look to their own constituency for salvation.

A decision of national import has just been handed down by a three judge federal court in Nashville declaring unconstitutional the law establishing the Tennessee Tuition Assistance Corporation as a violation of the First Amendment. This act had been lobbied through the General Assembly by the church colleges of the state to funnel tax money into their treasuries. Singled out specifically in Americans United v. Dunn were two Church of Christ colleges, Freed-Hardeman and David Lipscomb.

The decision carries an ominous note for the “tuition equalization” program which Abilene Christian College executives had sparked through the Texas legislature and under which ACC is receiving $300,000 this year. In fact, Judge Frank Gray followed fairly closely the advisory opinion of the Texas attorney general, who has already held that a church college which limits the choice of its faculty on religious grounds is not eligible to receive funds under the Texas program. His opinion held that Houston Baptist College was ineligible because it refused to employ a Jewish applicant. He also pointed out that compulsory religion courses and compulsory chapel were also bars. ACC would not only not employ a Jew, it will fire a professor who is “soft” on the tongues issue, and most certainly would reject an applicant from the premillennial and instrumental music divisions of the Church of Christ.

It is good that these legal blows are coming early before our Christian colleges get hopelessly “fixed” on tax heroin. For to continue to get their annual “fix,” these colleges would in the end have to go secular. And a concomitant of this development would be a decline in giving from their religious constituencies, for why dig into your pocket when the college is already mining public revenue? That our college executives find tax sources almost irresistible is revealed in their behavior over the past decade. Only one college (Florida College) has remained aloof from the enticement. Norvell Young, head of Pepperdine, at first took a firm stand against taking tax money and pointed to the inevitable consequences of government control surely following tax dollars. But he abandoned the doctrine of separation of church and state and Pepperdine now avidly seeks funds from every possible source.

Freed-Hardeman, now in the process of becoming a senior college, has built its transition plans heavily on Tennessee tax money. For three years it has led all of the colleges of the state in the amount of money received under the tuition grant program. It has aggressively advertised to all prospective students the availability of a “$1,000 tuition grant” annually from public funds. When Americans United v. Dunn came before the federal bench, David Lipscomb had its own representative in court to argue its right to receive tax money. It appears that ACC has looked optimistically forward to the time when the state of Texas will “equalize” tuition costs between its students and those in public institutions. ^*

Far from defending Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state, or Christ’s distinction between the “things that are Caesar’s” and the “things that are God’s,” our Christian college executives have pursued public aid, at both the state and federal level, with even greater intensity than the Catholic hierarchy. Writing some years ago in the Voice of Freedom, the late L. R. Wilson, president of Oklahoma Christian College, said that when tax dollars begin to flow, “We must establish our own system from kindergarten through university.” The administrators have not been too nice about observing the law governing such aid. Oklahoma Christian College had to refund a federal grant because it violated the prohibition against using subsidized buildings for religious purposes. Ohio Valley College also ran into trouble on the same count, but settled by abandoning its practice.

The use of tax money extracted by compulsion from citizens to support a church college is, of course, a form of force and therefore anti-Christian. Christianity is wholly voluntary. Christ flatly rejected Satan’s offer to found his kingdom on government power. Yet our brethren find the temptation to resort to power to get what we want extremely attractive. A member of the Lipscomb faculty lobbied through the Tennessee General Assembly in 1973 what is commonly known as the “Genesis law.” It would compel all state institutions to teach the Genesis account of creation in their science courses. Since he had the only published secondary school text in biology which did this, the professor, it is said, stood to make a “pile” from its adoption. Presumably the act would require the teaching of his interpretation of Genesis. Actually the act was a Pandora’s box of interminable wrangling and community turmoil, for there was no legal way to prevent the teacher from presenting Genesis as theistic evolution, by describing the Genesis “days” as vast periods of time, or describing Genesis as presenting a “recreation” account instead of a creation story. Fortunately the schools were saved from this effort to force them to teach religion by a Davidson County chancery court, which ruled recently in Steele v. Waters (1974) that the law violated both the federal and Tennessee constitution.

Florence Church of Christ, near Murfreesboro, Tennessee recently persuaded the county road superintendent to build it a $3,000 parking lot. The son of a former teacher at Lipscomb and a member of the county court happened to see the lot under construction. The furor he created in challenging this illegal act led the state highway department to advise all road superintendents that it has been illegal since 1935 to use county funds and equipment to assist churches and other private organizations in any way. If the church has decided to refund this illegally spent money, there has been no public notice of it. Yet it is doubtful if even the members of the Florence church would agree to be taxed to build such a lot, much less Baptists and Methodists.

The moral of this essay is as old as the teaching of Christ. He did not come into this world to be served, but to serve. The church is not the object of charity, but the giver of it. It is not to be supported, but to support. Taxes belong to Caesar. Force belongs to Caesar. The kingdom of heaven is not of this world and its loyal followers and citizens reject all appeals to power. If our church college executives will not heed the moral, then perhaps the judges in our courts will save them from their folly.

-- Norman Parks, Ph.D., is now retired from the political science department of Middle Tennessee State University. He taught at several Church of Christ colleges in earlier years. He is presently on the board of both Mission and Fellowship magazines.