Theology in the Raw - Legal Challenges Facing Christian Institutions: Joy Mosley

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Joy serves as the Vice President for Government & Strategic Relations at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). She is a graduate of Covenant College, Belhaven University, and Emory Law. On the Hill, she worked for Congressman Gary Palmer and the Center for Public Justice before coming to the CCCU. Register for the Exiles 2 day conference in Denver (Oct 4-5) here: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles-denver/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Rod. My guest today is Joy Mosley, who serves as a vice president for government and strategic relations at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, otherwise known as CCCU. She is a graduate of Covenant College, Bellhaven University, and Emory Law School on the hill that is Washington, DC. She worked for Congressman Gary Palmer and the center for public justice before coming to the CCCU. I asked Joy to come on the podcast because she is an expert when it comes to various public issues that are possibly legally facing the church today or Christian institutions. That's I guess the most general way I could put it. So that's what we talk about. We talk

about things that the church or Christian leaders should be aware of, different aspects of public policy. We talk about Christian institutions and towards the end of the podcast, we talk about the problem of mission drift and yeah, what constitutes a mission drift versus an actual healthy change in a Christian institution. So this is a great conversation and joy brings a lot of wisdom to the show. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only joy Mosley. Hello, joy. Welcome to theology and the raw. Good to see you again. I think last time we chatted was at the exiles and Babylon conference, which you shared at last spring. Good to see

you again. Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah. Good to see you, Preston. Thanks for having me. So why don't you, cause I mean, we've, we've had several dialogues back and forth and I I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what exactly it is that you, that you do not, not because you've been unclear, but because you occupy a very unique space, I think, in the Christian world that, yeah, I would love for you to explain. So who is Joy and what is it that you do for your daytime job? Sure. So I serve at the council for Christian colleges and universities, the CCCU, which is a higher education association made up of Christian colleges all around the country in the world. I serve with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the CCCU, which is a higher

education association made up of Christian colleges all around the country and the world. And the CCCU does a number of things for colleges, including professional development and leadership training and study abroad programs, a host of things. But what I do is government and strategic relations. So for Christian colleges, being able to live out their faith is an essential piece of being explicitly a thoroughly Christian college. And in order to do that, you need government to understand or at least not harm your religious mission and give you the ability to hire according to mission and a number of other things. So I work on government relations,

which is advocating for Christian colleges to the federal government in all three branches of government. So I work with legislators. We do a lot of work with the Department of Education and a lot of the regulations. And then we'll be involved in court cases in Amicus, Greece, as well. And so we advocate for religious liberty, of course, but also just a whole host of other

things that are important to students and institutions. Affordability is a key piece. There's a lot of tax policy issues like charitable giving and other things that affect college students. We do immigration reform, prison education, just a whole host of educational priorities. When you say you advocate for Christian schools to the government, does that mean you're literally going and standing before Congress and pitching different things that you're advocating for? Are you pretty involved with the government as a whole? Yeah, so it would mean a lot of meetings with Hill staffers, for example. We send a lot

of letters about different bills that get introduced. We join with the higher education community as a whole. So we're one association, but DC has a lot of higher education associations that represent the community colleges and the public land grants and the research institutions and the Catholic colleges. So we all meet pretty regularly and try to speak with one voice where possible. So we do a lot of letters, write a lot of comment letters to the Department of Education. So the way that you have your voice heard in the regulation space is the department will propose a regulation and you have either 60 or 30 days to comment on it. The public does, and then they'll issue a final regulation and they're required by law to take those comments

and actually like look at them and substantively, um, take them into account as they're writing a final regulations. You'll have comment letters as well. When you were hanging out my house for that I was like, wait, what can you unpack? I know it's kind of tend gentle to what we're actually talking about, but like, can you explain what you meant by that? And yeah, I was just, I was kind of startled by that, but it made sense when he said it, when he explained it. Yeah, I was like, I was like, I'm not sure what I was talking about. I was like, I'm not sure what I was talking about. I was like, I'm not sure what I was talking about. I was like, I'm not sure what I was talking about. I was like, I'm not sure what I was talking about. I was like, I'm not sure what I was actually talking about, but like, can you explain what you meant by that?

And yeah, I was just, I was kind of startled by that, but it made sense when he said it, when he explained it. Yeah. I was actually surprised by that too. When I came to DC, you know, a lot of people think of the members of Congress as being the one to effectuate a lot of the legislation, but really it's staffers and the committee staff in particular who are really important in crafting laws and thinking through how, you know, how different policies should be created. And very, very many

of them are really young without a lot of experience in the areas in which they're creating policy. That's actually how I got involved in hired policy. I was working at a college and loved it, thought I would retire there in many ways. But as I got to in higher policy. I was working at a college and loved it, thought I would retire there in many ways. But as I got to know the faculty more, the faculty would talk about just the difference between the idea of a policy and the implementation of it. You know, you could just see that people

who are creating the policy hadn't actually been on campus. They didn't understand the higher education world. And so I developed a heart to bridge that disconnect. And so coming to DC and seeing how college operates, it is largely operating off of pretty young staffers who have the best intentions and who are great, but who just don't have a lot of experience in all of these different fields. They have really large portfolios that can range from 10 to 20 different areas

that they're responsible for. And they're very rarely thoroughly equipped to create policy. So these staffers, which could be 23-year-old Harvard grads, whatever. That's probably accurate for at least some. They're the ones reading through these huge, massive 1500 page bills or whatever, and then telling the congressperson they're working for, all right, this is what you should do. And then the congressperson

just, okay, we're doing that without even cracking open that bill. Would that be too accurate or that'd be too much? Generally speaking, that would be fair. There are a number of members of Congress who do actually read the bills themselves and who do really good due diligence, but there are so many bills and they're so long that it's hard to read them all. So you end up having staff that you trust do those and you take their opinions. Now the American public didn't elect these staff. They don't know who these people are. So am I too cynical? I mean, yeah. And please, if I'm, I don't want to take this farther than it needs to go, but that doesn't feel like a democracy then. It doesn't feel like the demos, the people are ruling the country. If you have unelected 23 year old college grads,

wielding a good deal of power and influence over how the decisions made in Washington. Is that a democracy? Yeah. So I would say that the member of Congress, though, is still the one ultimately held responsible. In terms of not being very democratic, I mean, we could talk about the agencies, I think is another real area of problems where, you know, those people are not elected either and making some really big policy shifts and less, I would say less accountability there than in the congressional space. So true in both spaces, but at least in the congressional space, the member of Congress ultimately is held responsible

by either being kicked out or reelected. It'd be similar to say, yeah, I guess I've probably a good parallel would be like, if I, well, let's just say I do what I do. You know, some of the part of my job is writing book reviews. What if I had a bunch of other people that said, Hey, go read these books, write the review, and then I'll put it in my name. And like, I'm still responsible for it, but it's, but I'm not actually the one that's evaluating this book and producing it. So, and say people did elect me to be the book reviewer or whatever. Um, in that sense, it's a demand that they're trusting me to make sure whatever review is put out has been gone, has gone through me,

but realistically I might play less of a significant role in that process with that. Yeah. All right. Well, um, I'm not sure if I a significant role in that process with that. Yeah. All right. Well, okay. So the real reason I want to bring on the podcast, because you live in this really unique space. You're a lawyer by that's your background, right?

Yeah. Here's the question I have. Um, what are some realistic legal issues that the church or anybody in a religious nonprofit space should be aware of? And then on the flip side, what are some of the, the hype, the stuff you hear out there and on social media and stuff that is kind of drummed up kind kind of maybe used as a piece of fear mongering, but isn't a realistic legal issue that Christians and nonprofit spaces should should be all too concerned about. Does that make sense? Where frame the question? Yeah. It does. Yeah. So in terms of something that Christians should be concerned about, I think

the first thing I would say is hiring. So hiring to me is the main issue for a religious institution to remain a religious institution. There are, in terms of schools, there are religious, well, just schools in general who don't take federal funds and you can still be religious. You can even not have tax-exempt status and be able to continue to exist as an institution. But I would say that you can't continue to exist as a religious

institution if you can't hire those who agree and support your mission. And that is something that is continually under threat. So an example is Title VII is the Civil Rights Act that covers employment law. And there's an exemption in Title VII for religious institutions to hire people who agree with their mission. But there have been a few cases where courts are trying to narrow what that means.

So I'll try not to get too in the weeds here. And if I do, just stop. So it talks about this subchapter, which the subchapter of Title VII shall not apply to religious or religious or blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that's a pretty holistic protection for schools. And so it means that if you are making a decision based on a religious motivation, then you are protected in that.

So this comes up right now and most often in the context related to people entering into same sex marriages at religious institutions. So institutions may hold to a historic view of marriage and sexuality, and they have someone who either applies to be a part of that organization or is already a part of that organization who has agreed to abide by these standards and then ends up violating those standards by entering into a same-sex marriage. The school takes an adverse employment action against that employee and the employee sues. And the school says, we have a religious exemption because we made this decision

out of our religious convictions. They sue, real quick, they sue based on the cases that the school has violated Title VII. Yeah. Is that the claim? Okay. That they've discriminated against the employee because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. So the school says, we have a religious exemption that allows us to hire in accordance with

our mission. Our mission is clearly laid out. These are our beliefs and policies. We expect people to live in accordance with them. There are some courts who are saying, well, that decision is actually not protected because it's not a claim of religious discrimination. It's not a doctrinal dispute. You're not making a religious claim. It's discrimination based on sex, which violates Title VII.

Real quick, so Title VII, doesn't it say, I was trying to pull it up, my keyboard's not working, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, right? And that's the key, because you can't discriminate based on race like that. I don't think any religious institution is allowed to claim religious exemption for that, right? Or gender, but sexual orientation is a tricky one, I think. Right, so sex and sexual orientation, gender identity are protected in Title VII.

So secular employees cannot discriminate based on those. But a religious institution, if they hold to a historic view of marriage and sexuality, which again, not all religious institutions do, there are some mainline groups and churches that would fall into a different category, but you are able to hire according to your religious convictions and tenets. The issue is that courts are saying, well, it's not a religious issue, it's a sex issue.

For a religious school, you can't intertwine those two, you know. It is out of your religious convictions that you hold these beliefs where the court is saying, well, if there was some doctrinal issue or some religious issue, that would be fine. Like if you disagreed about what form of baptism or, you know, some, or something like that would be okay. But you can't disagree about something that touches these other protected aspects of Title VII. And that's a narrowing of Title VII that's really problematic.

So does it really depend on how the judge interprets gender identity and sexual orientation? Because some would argue that, well, that is, as it pertains to marriage, that is a doctrinal issue. It's written in our doctrinal statement, we believe this about. Is that where it gets really fuzzy? And is it kind of a case-by-case basis on like have schools lost that case before yeah This is one of those things where it varies per Circuit so there's there's some Pieces will come out different ways depending on where you are in the country, okay?

Meaning ultimately the Supreme Court will probably have to take it up and clarify So it yeah it turns on, um, yeah, if the issue is a, if the court realizes it's a religious discrimination issue or if they call it a sex discrimination issue, and there's not a realization that it is both for, like you said, it is a doctrinal issue. So again, do you have any specific examples? You don't need to name the school, but where it has gone not in favor of the school, where they've tried to plead their case saying this is a violation of our school standards, and then they've actually lost that case? Has that actually happened?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I actually just ran a brief yesterday that we're going to submit in a case out in the ninth circuit right now where it wasn't a school, but it was a religious nonprofit who terminated someone after entering into same-sex marriage. And she won, the employee won at the district court level saying, yeah, it was discrimination based on sex, not religious claims. And they denied the religious exemption to the employer and so it's on appeal to the Ninth Circuit. So we're filing a brief arguing that no Title VII does protect schools making

employment actions based on their religion even if they touch. It's odd that they would use, is this the language they use that this is discrimination based on sex? Because they're not discriminating based on the fact that she is biologically a female. That has nothing to do with it. But is that the language people use? Cause that's really not only confusing, but just inaccurate really. Yeah. Cause the text of title seven talks about race, gender, sex, and then the boss doc decision, the Supreme court decision in 2020 said sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity. But it doesn't. Yeah. No, but that's like basic one-on-one

like any sexuality course. I mean, at a, at a junior college is going to say the very concept of gender identity is by definition, distinguished from sex. That's what the whole gender identity as a concept only exists because it's not sex. You know what I mean? Like, and that's, that's, but that's not even like, that's like any first year college student would learn that any kind of gender theory class, the whole concept of gender theory exists because we're not talking about sex. Obviously sex is there. People are biologically male or female, but gender identity is a whole different thing. So to collapse those just seemed, how do they get away with that? That's odd.

Yeah. Hence a, hence a great question. Yeah. So sex ends up doing a lot of work that it carries a heavy load that it can't really carry. But it's the only way for it to, without congressional language that would have categories for sexual orientation, gender identity, making sex do the work is the only way to actually protect sexual orientation and gender identity, making sex do the work is the only way to actually protect sexual orientation and gender identity. Is that, that's, I'm sorry, I'm just kind of stuck on, is that frustrating for you when these categories are just? Yeah, it is very frustrating.

And it's in Title IX, for example, the boss stop decision only applied to Title VII, but the administration in their Title IX ranks have now said that sex in Title VII also equals sexual orientation and gender identity. And so it just keeps going rather than creating different categories. It's all based on the word sex. And Title IX talks about both sexes.

It talks about it in a binary. And now we're expanding it to include a whole host of other things. How do you go about, I mean, do you try to show the judge or the people that empower that gender identity is a different category than sex? Is that something you can try to get through to people? I mean, because the Supreme Court decision in Bostock

said that discrimination on the basis of sex includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, that's not much of a compelling legal argument. So that decision in 2020 basically determined that sex is an umbrella category that includes these other things. For Title VII, yes. So, it does end up being kind of a case by case basis based on what the judge determines then. So in this case, they won, but are there other cases where the judge says, no, like this,

there is religious exemption here? Yeah. So, I think that's kind of the, I think that's the, I think that's the, I think that's the big question. I think that's the big question. I think that's the big question. what the judge determines then. So in this case, they won. But are there other cases where the judge says, no, like there is religious exemption here? Yeah, and I'd still say that the weight of the case law

still understands the nature of the religious exemption. But we're starting to see cases come out the other way. And I think that made it just right for a Supreme Court case at some point. What would be your counsel to people listening who are on some kind of leadership at a Christian nonprofit where this is maybe potentially relevant? Are there any things they can do even in their language

or statements or policy that they can start preparing just in case something like this happens? Yeah, so there's a lot of things they should do in terms of making sure that their policies are clear about what they expect from people. So a statement of faith has not just beliefs, but also practices that they expect employees to live out. And then that needs to be consistent throughout. And if you also need to live it out consistently. So an argument that an employee

who gets terminated or not hired is going to bring, they're going to say, well, you say you believe these things, but you didn't apply it in these other instances. So it's actually pretext to discriminate against me. And so if you, let's say that you also have a policy regarding divorce where only biblical reasons for divorce are allowed otherwise, you'll also face termination. If you've not implemented that,

or if you've gotten it out written out and it's happened and you've not terminated the person who was divorced for a reason that your policy lays out as non-biblical, that's a problem. It's problematic to then enforce another part of your policy, get someone else if you've not been consistent. So look at your policies, make sure you actually are going to adhere to what they say and be willing to apply it consistently.

Because if you don't, you'll open yourself up to a claimant. Can you give an example of where schools were caught kind of flat-footed on that? You don't need to name the schools. We don't need to name schools. But an instance where they, if because they were clear upfront, they ended up having a big lawsuit on their hands. Well, the divorce example didn't come out of nowhere. Okay. So that's one where schools have had something like that on the books sometimes, but have not always enforced it somehow. Some have done that really consistently, others have not. And then, so then you say, well, we have these really strong religious convictions

around sexuality and marriage. And so you terminate the person into same-sex relationship. Well, it looks like you're discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. If you didn't, similar action to the person who's divorced for reasons that go get your policy. Right. I've often thought too, like the whole title, the language of sexual orientation, I think schools can tell me if I'm wrong. It seems like the issue isn't sexual orientation. I think schools can tell me if I'm wrong. It seems like the issue isn't sexual orientation. I personally, I would agree. I don't think schools should discriminate based on sexual orientation. I mean, you, one could argue that this is, I don't know if I agree with this, but I mean, you know, my orientation is polygamous. You know, like it's what, what will you do with that thing called orientation?

This natural bent towards my sex, my, where would my sexual desires want to take me? You know, like who am I sexually attracted to? To me, that is, I think completely irrelevant. The question is, what are the marriage standards, uh, for employees? Um, so I would, I think schools could adopt, we do not discriminate based on, on race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity is a little trickier. And I think the conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity again is just unscientific is just completely wrong. Really? These are very different things.

So maybe that would be a whole different case, but I think conservative schools can say we don't discriminate based on sexual orientation. We still believe in sexual marriage, and those are two different things. Yeah, and I think that would be the position that many schools would take of, it's the behavior that is the issue,

not necessarily the orientation. Though the LGBTQ activist would disagree that you can separate those two. And so I think it just becomes unclear as to what you mean if you say we don't discriminate based on sexual orientation. Like, yes, hopefully that's true in the sense of, we welcome anyone who's a follower of Jesus,

who's willing to live by these behavioral expectations that we set out But yeah, I've talked to plenty of folks who say that distinction is really harmful to LGBTQ people and that it's a false distinction that Christians make that is untrue And I yeah 100% that that would be the pushback All you have to do is just quote the APA's definition of sexual orientation and say, this is exactly what doesn't mention marriage. Doesn't mention sexual behavior. It just says whatever it is in a, in an enduring pattern of sexual and emotional attractions, you know, or I forget the exact definition, but like people say, well, that's that includes marriage. It's like, well, it actually doesn't like definitionally.

It doesn't like, like you can make a case that it could lead to that. That, uh, your, I guess you could make a case that you're harming people that have that sexual orientation. If you're also placing additional requirements regarding marriage and that would be good, but that's kind of a, that would be a different discussion. You're still, it seems like you're still protected legally under you are abiding by the actual definition of sexual orientation, not the potential implications of what that might lead to. This episode is brought to you by Mitapure by Timeline. Timeline is a Swiss-based life science company and is a global leader in urolithium A research. Okay, so Urolithian A is a powerful postbiotic

that is nearly impossible to get from your diet alone. Mitopure is the first product to offer a precise dose of Urolithian A. Mitopure is clinically shown to give our cellular energy generators new power by triggering the body's natural process for removing and rebuilding damaged mitochondria. One way to look at it is,

mitochondria is kind of like little Pac-Man in your cells, chopping up the damaged mitochondria that makes you feel old and tired and recycles it into new healthy ones. According to the timeline, taking two soft gels a day for two months results in significant improvements in your cellular energy, muscle strength, and endurance.

After four months of taking Mitapur, you'll feel yourself getting stronger, recovering faster after a workout, and experiencing less inflammation. I'm currently on week three, and I've already noticed an elevation in strength and energy, and I'm really honestly excited to see what two to three months will feel like. Timeline is offering 10% off your first order of might appear if you just go to timeline.com forward slash theology and use the code theology to get 10% off your first order. Okay, so that's timeline, T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E.com

forward slash theology. Go check it out. Okay, so title seven, title nine, these are, would you recommend me in any school church? So you, you're, you work in the space of schools is everything you're saying. Does that apply to churches too? Or are churches a little more protected being a church and not like an educational institution? Yeah. So title nine, one apply to churches. Title IX applies to recipients of federal funding. But yeah, Title VII still would,

depending on the size of the church. There are some additional protections for churches, but these things still come up in the context of churches. There's another hiring doctrine called the ministerial exception, which is the idea that you should be able to hire those who are passing on the faith to the next generation and that the government can't really entangle itself

in the affairs of the church. That also applies outside of the church context as well, but there are plenty of hiring protections in the church context that would apply. Have you dealt with cases where a church has been sued and have lost a case based on something related to what we're talking about? Or is that pretty rare? I haven't really dealt with those. They may exist, but I'm not familiar with them. Okay.

Okay. All right. So let's go to the other side of the coin. What are some things that you hear in social media, in broader rhetoric, cultural rhetoric, that people are, Christians are kind of hyped up about, but you would see from a legal perspective, these are not a realistic thing that Christians should be worried about. So I don't do a lot of social media, so I try to stay away from that intentionally. But a lot of the fear mongering that I hear

tends to be around government intrusion and what the government is going to do and taking away. Yeah, you hear some about taking away tax exempt status or different things, but I don't know. So I would say, I don't know if this really answers your question, but what I see is problems that are real even if they're not potentially something that will get passed immediately. But problems from the, we'll say from the left that are real, but then instead of pushing back on those problems, the right ends up adopting them just with their own different set of ideologies. So we talked about tax exempt status. Well, tax exempt status, the left has used that

to threaten schools who do adhere to a historic view of marriage and sexuality. Their tax exempt status could be threatened by not agreeing with this public policy. And that's a real problem, I think. But instead of protecting tax-exempt status and saying this is actually a really important policy as it relates to charity, so exists for the common good,

and the right has sort of taken that idea and said, well, maybe we could weaponize tax-exempt status. So in some of the hearings for the higher ed anti-Semitism hearings in the House in the fall, there are some members of Congress suggesting that some of those schools should lose their tax-exempt status.

So it is this idea that an idea starts. Ideas are sticky. They exist over here. They talk about them. And then the other side sort of adopts them. Another example, let's see, gosh, there's, yeah, there's a lot of things that I could talk about.

So the Equality Act is something that I do think we can talk about in this space. Yeah. So it's a really problematic bill that would enshrine LGBTQ protections into law, but it would do so at the expense of religious freedom protections. So rather than pairing them together in a way that would work to give rights to all parties, it actually would be really harmful to communities of faith. And while it hasn't gotten a lot of traction recently,

it's something that is still a very real threat. The President Biden mentioned it in his State of the Union this year as something that should pass. And it would threaten tax exempt status like we talked about. It would also threaten federal funding for institutions that hold the historic view of marriage and sexuality. And weaponizing federal funding is, is again something that I think is

a real problem. But instead of the right pushing back on that idea and saying, no, federal funding is actually really important, this goes to the students to allow them to choose the institution that's the best fit for them. We need to support this. They've now adopted it and like Trump's platform talks about how he's gonna cut federal funding for any school that pushes critical race theory or radical gender rights. So it's this moment where the bad ideas on the left just get co-opted by the right.

And so the fear mongering is on both sides about these things that could legitimately happen, but they're problems on both sides, just different iterations of it. Yeah. Instead of saying, no, these institutions are free to teach what they want, they're doing the same thing, only saying, we're going to outlaw it based on the things we don't like to be taught in schools. Yeah, that's not good at all. The equality act. So I remember this flared up a few years ago and it was a big deal. I remember reading through, I think the whole thing or most of it. And yeah, it was the same thing. They were using language. It was just flat out inaccurate. Like it just, it

was like they, like they didn't consult anybody who is like basically aware of sexuality and gender conversations. I was, I was up, I was like shocked at how bad the language was. But so I guess what I don't understand. So this is, I'm going to be really naive here. I, I, that was a proposed bill that is it, is it constantly trying to get past? Is he just kind of sitting there and every few months somebody tries to get it passed or how does that work? Was it flared up a few years ago? I don't, it didn't get passed. So I kind of moved on and it's all right. Well, that, that was an attempt, but I don't need to worry about it. But you're,

you're saying, no, it's, it's, it's always on the table. Is that Speaker 3rd-5 It's, it's been on a table for years and it actually is passing at least twice now in one house but not the other, which is why it's not gone through yet. It has to pass both. It has to pass both. For it to become law. Okay. Right.

And that's why the Senate filibuster is so important where you have to have 60 votes rather than 51. So, it hasn't passed both houses yet, but it has passed one a few times. And so it is a real thing that will keep coming up, especially if we, depending on if we have a democratic trifecta or not, I could see that this would be something that would come beyond a table again, especially as leader Schumer has talked about getting rid of the filibuster. Wow.

Okay. So let's just say it passes both houses. What does that mean for churches and schools? So, I mean, it would be, I mean, there would be a suit about it. So let's assume that without a suit though, so schools would have a choice of moving forward with accepting federal funding, keeping their taxes and status, doing all those things and changing their beliefs around marriage and sexuality. Or if you stood firm in your beliefs, you would have to find a way to operate without government funds, without tax incentives,

the hiring piece is again, really problematic. And we would see, I think a lot of religious institution closures. That's huge. So if this goes through, basically Christians don't want to hold to attritional view of marriage would lose any kind of government funding and taxes upset us.

That's big, right? Is this just schools or churches as well? There are some protections for churches in there. How robust those protections are are debated even among proponents of the bill. So I wouldn't be too confident if it were a church, it would be okay. There are slightly more protections than for religious institutions. Okay. And this would apply to like traditional conservative Jewish institutions and Muslim. Not that there's a whole lot of those,

I don't know too many Muslim colleges or whatever in the United States. I'm sure there may be a few, but. Yeah. We often only talk about the Christians because that's the big, I mean, they're obviously numerically the most, but would this also affect a conservative Jewish educational institution just as much? Oh yeah, it would.

And so one of the things we do is we work with a whole host of other tradition denominations because yeah, religious liberty is not just for Christians. So we work with Orthodox Jewish Union and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and yeah, a whole, a whole list of other groups because our voice is just stronger the, the more people saying the same thing. So like I said earlier with the higher education groups, we try to speak with one voice as much as possible. We do that with the religious side of things as well. Yeah. I mean, people are going to, that's going to be said to be pretty anti-Semitic, I think. Well, it's only interesting, again, I think this goes back to kind of what we started

off the conversation about, you know, people were reading these bills, not necessarily understanding them. I mean, it's, you know, how it's, how it's billed is, oh, this is great. This is protecting LGBTQ people that, you know, that we, billed is, oh, this is great. This is protecting LGBTQ people. We need these laws enshrined in federal civil rights law. But then when you delve into it, a lot of what we do is actually just educate people about what the bill would do to the communities of faith that they represent. And honestly, they're shocked by what it would actually do because they were sold the bill

of goods about how great this is. And the part about harming the minority religious communities in your district or state, that wasn't mentioned. And so then it's hard, like, do you vote against the party line? Like, you know, then it becomes like, how much social capital do you want to expand on this issue? So would you say going back to our kids who are in the country, would you say that a lot of people who are responsible for passing this bill haven't really thought through,

they haven't even read it or thought through the, all the implications of it? I think that's probably pretty fair. That's scary. Wow. Okay. So, but it, it, it, for both ha houses to pass it was pretty unlikely. It seems like, right? With the current filibuster. Okay. But if we remove that is how likely is that that would be revoked? Is that pretty possible? I think it's really

possible. I leader Schumer's talked about, if they get enough Democrats in the Senate that they, that, that is something on the agenda that they would like to do and the only question is do you revoke it all together or just for key things key issues which is the kind of opening up of getting rid of it all together. Wow that oh man I that so I always had you're talking, I just have all these random questions about the government that I would love to ask you. I want to come back to one that just popped in my head. But, um, so last, uh, when we talked last April, I'm blanking on the name, but you mentioned a 1500 page document that that was next on your list of things to read through is a really important

one that flared up and now I'm blanking on whatever the name of it was. What was my title nine? Right. Oh, is it, was it titled? Okay. Okay. I can't remember. Yeah. What did you, so you ended up reading it and what was, or did you, I guess maybe if it's regarding title nine, you probably already explained it then, right? More or less. I mean, we can talk more about if you want. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Give a summary of what was in that 1500 pages document that nobody listening is going to read. And what, what should we be aware of? Yeah. So the thing that gets the most, you know, media coverage right now is the fact that the title nine regulations extended the boss stock holding a title seven

sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity to title nine. And that of course has been sued because there's no, you know, there's no statutory weight the worry for that leak. And so that's been a subject of lawsuits that are still moving forward at this point. So schools had to start implementing it on August 1, but it was a whole host of other things. So this is Title IX mandates that students need to have equal access to educational opportunities.

So initially it mainly meant sports, like you had to have equal opportunities for women's sports as you did for men's sports. Now it's most commonly talked about in the sexual misconduct and sexual harassment space, ensuring that that doesn't prevent students from accessing education. And how do you create policies and procedures that allow students to report any sort of crime and misconduct and still receive educational opportunities. There were some things that these current Title IX regulations, I thought, did really well. In the previous Title IX regulations, there was a rule that said, it basically said, it really needs to look like kind of a legal process, like

a kind of a due process. This needs to annotate the courts in some way. And so if a complaint is accusing a respondent of something, then as it goes through this process, it becomes this kind of mini courtroom procedure and you have to have a live hearing and you have to have an opportunity to cross-examine the respondent, which can be really be traumatizing and problematic in some ways. And again, this is not, this isn't a court. This is a school investigating a violation of its conduct, of its conduct code. Sometimes these things do go to the courts and they, you know, they should. That doesn't take away the school's responsibility to investigate it,

but it doesn't mean the school's response need to look exactly like a court either. And so these regulations rolled back the idea that you don't necessarily have to have a live hearing. You have to make sure that you're providing resources for both the respondent and the complainant that you're treating both equally. But the live hearing procedure is not required, which I would say is a good thing. Wow, I can't believe you read through all that.

But that's what you do, though, right? This is just Tuesday for you to comb through a 1,500 page document and figure it all out. Do you deal with the big question of, I'll say, biological males and female only sports? Is that something you've had to wrestle with on a legal level? Yeah. So the Department of Education initially did a proposed rule on transgender participation

in sports, and they have not issued a final rule. They've pushed that back, so it'll probably be after the election. So they're not going to wait into that space. But that's an issue that does keep coming up. And so it's not something that we've been as directly involved in, but like we submitted a comment in response to the proposed rule. And we've got some presidents who are really active in the NAIA space, which is one of the divisions. And they came out with a policy that

that was gonna be biological sex was the mandate for participation. There were a number of school presidents involved in that across the board, including some Christian school presidents who really worked to ensure that from a fairness perspective. Okay. Is that issue, I know it's facing public schools, right? But is it facing Christian schools as much? I think it probably does. I don't hear about it quite as much. I think there was a case at a K through 12 school maybe up in Vermont or something where the opposing team had a transgender athlete and the school didn't want to play them. But I don't know that Christian

schools have as much, have had to deal with that as much. I haven't heard about it at least. And is that the, so going back to the language thing, this is where we need to resurrect George Orwell, have him be president of the country. Like it has nothing to do, I mean, if the way I would frame it, it has nothing to do with whether you identify as trans or not. The question is, should biological males be allowed in female sports? Like it's, it's the, the whole thing is about biology, not one's personal identity. I mean, that's what transgender is an identity that some people choose to describe themselves for a myriad of different reasons. You know, I mean, some people who say they're trans are theologically conservative, haven't transitioned. No, they're would identify with their biological sex, but they would also say other trans because

they might experience gender dysphoria or something. Other people say they're trans because they would, they would say they're being a born of the wrong body. Maybe they have transitioned, maybe they've D transition. Maybe they want to transition, but there's just a whole myriad of what that term means. Whether somebody identifies with the label transgender, that's not the question. The question is, is a biological male, can that person participate in female sports? But that's not how it's being framed. Right. Right. I was going to say, if only it were that easy. Um, I mean, that's what the NAIA said of, like,

where it's biological participation. So they are pushing for that kind of specific language, because that's really what. Yeah. And they got a little bit of pushback when the policy came out, but not too much from what I remember. But yeah, like you said, it's not being framed that way by

folks who have a different agenda. The difference with that issue is you have, with this one, it's not really a conservative versus liberal debate. I mean, you have like most women, whatever their political meanings would be on one side of this issue, especially some of the more outspoken feminists. Um, and then you have obviously pretty much everybody, anybody who's religiously conservative, but also classical liberals. I mean, the, the bill Mars of the world, you know, I mean, so it seems like it really is a, a small, and I, I mean, I've, I don't know a single one of my trans friends. I mean, I haven't talked to them all about it, but most of them would not be on board with this. So yeah, it seems

like a really small demographic that would be really advocating for, again, biological males to participate in female sports. Was that, would that be accurate? Is that your sense of it too? Or no, it sounds sense. I think that's how a lot of things are. It's actually like a lot of these things are a real minority. They. I think that's how a lot of things are. It's actually like a lot of these things are a real minority. They're just incredibly vocal and get a lot of the attention. Yeah. Well, other, so other hot button cultural issues like abortion or even same sex marriage

or something there, there you would have the majority of the population, I think would be on, you know, pro choice and pro gay marriage. I know, whereas with this one just kind of gets lumped into this kind of left versus right, but it's really not that this is really kind of a very different thing. Again, people, even they would be very pro trans rights would say, well, we got this, this is, this is not that, you know, yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting question. I think Idaho passed some laws banning males and female sports, I think. So it is kind of a state by state issue, right? Yeah.

I mean, the Department of Education would make it a federal issue with their proposed Title IX. get a federal issue if, you know, with their proposed title nine, but again, it got pushed back and delayed, but then it would be a federal issue. It's also something that can vary by conference. You know, your NCAA or your NAI, your D2s, like that. And would this be another issue where kids would ultimately be making the decisions? Well, I mean, something like this ultimately is going to go to the courts, I would think. But yeah, I mean, if Congress were to get involved, then yeah.

Again, I could imagine, I don't have any Congress person in mind right now, but I could imagine a left leaning progressive Congress person with a thousand and one things to do, you know, to say, well, this sounds like a progressive value. I'll sign off on it. Have your 23 year old Harvard grad assistant that took a gender theory class and whatever and said, yeah, this is a progressive thing. We should push us through the guys. All right, whatever.

You know, is that, that maybe that's too cynical, but not completely untrue? No, I mean, a lot of things are a party issue. And so if you are going to not vote in line with the party, you're going to expend a lot of social capital to do that and risk the funding to run again and things like that. So it's not even as much, yeah, I really looked into it and think this is a progressive value that we need to support, but it's, this is, you know,

like you see a lot of things, like the Equality Act, for example, there were some original co-sponsors who sponsored the bill, but then like all of the Democrats support it. So most, a lot of things are, you know, you might have, you might peel off one or two folks from the party, but if it's a Democratic priority or Republican priority, you're generally going to get the vast majority of those folks to fall in line. I mean, again, that, that, I guess that's not surprising, but that's not good. Right? You should have like, you should debate ideas and not just feel the pressure to go

along with what your party is saying if there's legitimate pushback to the decision being made. But you're saying that's not common for that to happen. Or people don't last long if they are kind of- Yeah. And there are certainly plenty of great members of Congress who are incredibly thoughtful and diligent. And I want to make sure I say that. But generally, yeah, I mean, the party support is really important, especially the funding piece of it. And so, in it. And so, you know, if you, if you go outside the party lines too many times, you know, you might be running as an independent or not be right. What kind of role on the, since we're here, what kind of role or power do various lobbies

play? Like the money behind the scenes, um, lots of debates about Israel, Palestine, what's going on there. And then of course, you know, lobbies like APAC come up, you know, very, very well funded Jewish lobby. It's going to be advocating for pro-Israel decisions. And some people would say that APAC is largely controlling so much of the military spending for Israel and so on and so forth. Yeah, so I guess my original question, in your opinion, do these well-funded lobbies ultimately control a lot of the decisions made, or is it not so much?

I used to have a really negative opinion of lobbyists, like I think most Americans do. I still do in some regards, but when I came to DC, I did realize, oh, actually the lobbyists are the ones who actually are experts in their field. Congress and the staffers aren't generally just definitionally experts. There are certainly, money is definitely a corrupting source, of course. And so there are a lot of bad things. We need to acknowledge that. But I've been surprised at how lobbyists can actually be really colorful in crafting, at least tweaking at the margins, a bill to actually make it better. So like in the education space, we are not lobbyists.

We were a nonprofit. So we don't lobby. We do advocacy, which is harder because I'm asking people to do something because it's the right thing, not because there's any money in it. But we work with some lobbyists in some of the other associations and there was a group that wanted to pass a veterans benefits bill, updates and stuff to the VA. The lobbying groups and we worked with some of them too said, we said, no, that's actually not how it works on campus.

Like here's some things that you would need to tweak. Here's some things that you need to do differently. This is how it actually works. And they didn't take that approach. They wanted to do what they wanted to do. They passed it, and then turns out it wouldn't work because that's not how it actually the VA benefits work on campuses through the federal aid portal and stuff like that. And so then they had to pass a technical corrections package to address the stuff that we were saying in the first place. So when it's at its best, lobbyists are actually the experts informing Congress about how things work

on campus, on the ground. And there's worst-case scenarios as well, of course, where there is more corruption and control and stuff like that. But I generally have had a more positive understanding of lobbyists since coming to work in DC. I would assume that even that concept of the lobbyists, there's probably a whole myriad of different kinds of lobbyists, maybe a whole spectrum of the ones doing really good work, stuff you never hear about, all the way to the ones that are putting tons of money behind controversial issues maybe. Um, would that be an accurate? Yeah. Um, and then what role do you like these,

the big, uh, like weapons manufacturers, Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Raytheon and others, there's at least one view that they kind of control everything. The military industrial complex. I mean, do you know much about that or I'm reading a book right now. So I'm always like, yeah, I really don't. My husband, my. I read a book called the prophets of war and it talks about the rise of how the big five weapons manufacturers came to be and how they came to wield just so much power in the country. But yeah, maybe I'll have your husband on me to talk about. We were talking offline and you said while a part of your job is everything we've been talking about, kind of like advocating for Christian schools to the government. But you said

almost a more important part of what you do is helping schools stay on mission and to protect against mission drift. Can you unpack that a bit? Why, or is that a big issue and how do you go about helping protect against mission drift? Yeah. So the longer I've been in this role doing, you know, focusing on the external advocacy challenges, I realized that actually I think the greatest threat to Christian higher education is not external, but internal in terms of mission drift and just a lack of mission fidelity. And so as an association, I think we have a role to play in thinking

through how we can come alongside our schools and help them stand firm in their biblical mission. Because advocating externally to allow them to flourish in their educational mission, biblical mission, doesn't matter if they give it up voluntarily. And so we all know of schools that were Christian at some point and now really aren't. I mean, aside from the Harwards, Princeton's, all of those that were founded as religious institutions, but even more recently there have been schools that just have maybe a loose affiliation but aren't explicitly and thoroughly Christian. And so how do we prevent that from happening? How do we help schools withstand the pressures from constituents and donor groups and alumni groups sometimes to abandon their mission,

while also not then caving into the other alumni groups and donor groups who are really focused on don't do anything that looks like it could potentially be woke and don't engage with love and that sort of thing. Schools are sort of hit from both sides. And so I wanted to think through how we can be a resource to schools.

Soterios Johnson Is there a common factor that happens at the beginning stages of mission drift? Is it hiring the wrong leaders, the wrong faculty, or what's the, how does it start? How does mission drift start? Amy Quinton I know I talked about hiring a lot, but I'm going to say that again, I do think that is one of the key areas. And so it starts generally innocuously. You've got this one class that you really need someone to teach and you haven't had any good applicants and it's just an adjunct position and it's a key class you really need to offer then you've got this great adjunct

who's really well qualified and they don't really line up with your mission but it's just one class and it'll be okay. So you hire that person and that person teaches again the next semester and then the next semester and then there's a full-time job opening and that adjunct professor wants to then become a full-time professor.

And so it just gets really, really tricky pretty fast. So it's more the faculty level, like slowly hiring faculty that aren't quite on board with the mission of the school and then. Yeah, definitely faculty. But I mean, I would say staff as well. I mean, staff are really important also in terms of formation for students. Your work-study supervisors generally, they're people that are the front lines of questions

about financial aid or questions about my schedule and working in the facilities and things like that, you're working alongside staff people, um, sometimes more so than your faculty, you know, where you're going to class few days a week, maybe you're talking to your professor outside of class, but so I think they're both equally important for the formation of students. And so you then need to be really diligent about hiring. What? So I mean, mission drift, that is a negative way to put it. And maybe that's an accurate way for some schools.

Could a school need to change its mission in a healthy way? And what would that look like? And I think this is all public, but I taught for a couple of years at Cedarville University. Cedarville used to be, if I remember correctly, I think it was part of the General Association of Regular Baptists, the GARB, you know, which is Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, but much more on the, not just conservative end, but I think most people would consider that more of a fundamentalist wing of Christianity. And Cedarville over the years wanted to basically

become just a conservative evangelical institution, but not a fundamentalist one. And so yeah, they were hiring people that were moving more in that direction. And in the two years I was there, it was, it was interesting. I mean, it was a, first of all, two of the best educational years of my life. Students were amazing, but there was this touch, the faculty, cause he still had the kind of the old guard. You had the, the board. Then you had more typically younger faculty that were more on board with where the school is trying to go. But then others that didn't want it to go. And then people being accused of, yeah, people would say we're mission drifting and others like, no, we're just becoming more of a gospel centered institution, not a fundamentalist

one. And I guess that's, that's just such a subjective, like, is it a good move or a bad move? And it just depends on who you ask. I mean, do you, do you wrestle with that as well? I mean, some mission drift is drifting in the right direction, is it not? Yeah. I mean, I think we saw that with Grub City like back in the day when they did some work to, they were progressing towards a more liberal school and did some work to turn that around. So while I would say that by definition, drift is bad. Oh yeah, that's true. Then change your mission. Got it.

That's fine. And I think this educationally too. We can talk about schools who have lots of different missions. Some are more life of the mind. Some are more practical oriented. The distinction that John Henry Newman made with useful arts and liberal arts. But what your mission is, are you doing that excellently or are you drifting from it? So yeah, you can change your mission and think, this actually maybe doesn't make sense

with where we want to be right now, but I would say the drift piece would be problematic. Drift. That's a great distinction. If you're drifting, then that's not good. But if you're intentionally saying this is where we've been, and if the leadership, whoever that might be says, you know what, we want to go in this direction, that'd be super clear about it. Don't hold back and don't let donor support or lack thereof. I say, hold you back to this is the one thing, joy, if I can be totally honest is frustrating to me is how much power the donor base, not maybe not even intentionally, but just does have over the institution. And I, I, you, you're going to know more about this than I do. I've

peeked behind occurred a little bit, been part of a couple of institutions. And like, I remember like the, the doctrinal statements always, always just, I mean, a dumpster fire, not the statement, but like, like I remember. So like the, when I was on a Bible faculty at a certain institution, I've only been at a couple speaking group, you know, like I remember that, um, the, the Bible faculty. So we're like the theologians of the school, like we should have the most, the strongest voice over the theological statement of the school. And I think the doctoral statement is written maybe back in the fifties or something. And then we'd talk about it and we're like, Hey, so let's talk about this doctoral statement. And here I am a young, you know, fiery professor, fresh on my PhD, all ambitious and idealistic.

And I'm like, is this, if we were to write this, is this how we would write it? Not that we don't believe we can sign it and everything, but it's like, gosh, like are these the main values we believe in? What about these other issues that aren't in the doctoral statement? Would we, were it this way? And everybody's like, yeah, I mean, if, if we were going to write this, we'd probably write, it would read differently. Again, it wouldn't be like different doctrines necessarily, but I mean, yeah, this wouldn't be, I'm like, Oh, let's change it. And it was like gasp. Like if we changed a syllable, the donors would freak out. We lose funding. I'm like, who the hell cares about that? Like, let's, let's be true to what we believe. Like this web money is going to some donor that doesn't have, and this is going to be,

this is sound negative. There are some donors that aren't as theologically equipped as the bubble faculty. They're all PhDs and you know, it's like, well wait, why, why do they have a stronger say? It's like, well, they give like $10 million a year to the school. I'm like, who cares? And there's like, well, no, that's, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision.

And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision.

And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. And then you have to make a decision. But that is at least partly what goes on in some of these Christian institutions. I think it's pervasive. Maybe it's not as pervasive as I think, but I just, I just find that so

profoundly un-Christian and un-gospel. And I don't know why Christian institutions still operate that way. Tell me where I'm wrong, Joey. Correct me, fix me. All right. Well, I would say, I would say two things. First, donors are actually not allowed to have undue influence per accreditor regulations. So for a school to maintain its good status with an accreditor, they actually can't be too beholden to outside influences and can't have undue influences is the term. And so a school actually should be able to say, we're going to do the right thing. And they should educate their donors about why they're doing it, but not be afraid of falling out of line with your creditors if they're swayed too much by the

donors. But that legally donor could say, okay, you can do what you're doing. And I'm not going to invest in this anymore. And that's perfectly legal, right? There's nothing. Yeah. And I mean, they know that that's what's going to happen. Don't, a donor is not going to support a school that doesn't line up with his or her beliefs. Right. You're just saying legally the donor can't say, if you do this, I'm going to pull my money or they can't threaten like verbally threaten that. Is that what you're saying? Or well, this, the school can't be influenced unduly influenced by the donor.

Donor can say whatever they want, but the school needs to do the right thing because it's within its mission. They are not supposed to be, I mean, we're talking what should happen here, I realize, but should not be. They shouldn't be influenced by money. Not be influenced by the donor.

Now, does that happen? Of course. But I would by the donor. Now, does that happen? Of course. But I would say the other side, though, I think what happens more than that even, that happens. But I think what happens more than that is you do something, let's say that it is the right thing. You make some updates to your doctrinal statement. Let's go with that one.

And you've got a group of more liberal alumni and donors who say they don't like it and they raise a big fuss. They post on social media and all these things and talking about how we're gonna quit giving to the school, we're gonna encourage donors not to give and things like that. And then you look into kind of the voices who are saying, we're gonna stop giving to this school

if you continue to go down this path. Most of the time they don't give it all or they give very little. That's actually much more common where the people raising a stink about whatever you're doing. And this is usually, it would happen in both directions, but I see it more in the direction of a school's

holding to its religious convictions and the more liberal groups want to move it more liberally. And they threaten, oh, we're going to quit giving you the school. And you look and they're not giving. That's pretty common. Okay. And I'm't even, I'm not even, if I was a donor and I thought the school was drifting from what I think it was a healthy mission and now it's going into bat, I don't even, of course, I wouldn't fund give to something I no longer believe in. So I'm not even saying I think

the donors are making wrong decisions. I guess I'm just bemoaning a system where at the end of the day, the power of money is playing a significant role in the mission and decisions made by the school. Maybe that's just inevitable, I don't know. Like I don't know the other answer because the schools do need money to exist, right? I mean, so I don't know.

I don't know, it's just a- I do lament that as exist, right? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. It's just a- I do lament that as well, but I do think, you know, generally speaking, if a school is going to do something that it thinks is the right thing, and there may be donors who disagree with that and stop giving, but you potentially open up a whole host of new donors who value where you're going. So I think the impetus should be more on the school to stand firm and do the right thing rather than give in. Because if you can make your case,

then you should be able to make your case to a whole new swath of donors. That's honestly, that's what I think. Um, I think sometimes schools, not just schools, but just institutions, organizations that kind of fear making a decision they want to make because they're going to lose support. I'm like, well, if you're doing something good and beautiful and biblical, and hopefully there's people out there that would want to get behind that. But I do, I mean, I'm very sympathetic with people that are like, look, I got bills to pay, I have kids to feed, kids going to college, I need a fund. Like if I rocked a boat too

much and this whole thing collapses or I lose my job, like I'm sympathetic. I mean, I don't, again, I don't celebrate that, but I'm sympathetic. I mean, I don't, again, I don't celebrate that, but I'm sympathetic with it. Yeah. It's hard. Yeah, it would just be so cool if Christian institutions were completely just driven by their mission and satisfying people that aren't driving that mission

wasn't really an issue, if I can put it like that. Well, I mean, I would hope that the people who you're talking about who are supportive of schools having a strong Christian mission, are they invested? Are they giving of their time? I hear so many times where someone's heard something negative about some school doing something that's perceived as liberal, and it just gets passed around as fact. And no one's actually taking the time

to do any sort of due diligence. And so if you are going to talk about, I didn't like what the school did and well, are you actually invested enough? Like are you giving, are you looking into, are you like on their list that they would email you about something because you're already invested? When you hear about something and then want to pile on, it's tough if you haven't shown that you actually care about the institution. I've shown this story before. So, I was at a small Bible college, eternity Bible college.

And I remember, you know, we had a good doctoral statement, but it was, again, it was formed, it was a lot dated. It was one of those where like, the faculty were like, I don't know if this is the best way to word it. There was even something like, if you don't believe in a young earth, you don't believe in the authority of the Bible or is some kind of like, because we believe in the Bible, therefore the earth was created in six days. I'm like, first of all, do we need a younger statement in there? Like it's fine if majority believe it, but is that really already planting our stake here? And they're like, I don't

think we should. I'm like, and also just the logic of only young earthers believe in the Bible. I can like, yeah, we should get rid of that. So, so we changed it. And then in, um, I was kind of tweaking my views based on further study of the Bible on the doctor of hell. And, and I was like, Hey, I don't know if I can sign this anymore. Like I, and I, you know, and, and the higher ups we got in a room, we'd hashed it all out. And they said, you know what? They were like, I don't know if we agree with your position, but you are clearly arguing from scripture, so we will adjust a doctrinal statement to make room for your view. I just thought that's the way it should be done. It was relationally driven.

It was actually textually centered. It was reformed and always reforming. Like hopefully as a faculty, we don't have it all figured out. We're a bunch of like young 30 something people running the school. Hopefully as we keep studying, our views are going to shift and grow. So the doctoral statement should go along with that and shift and morph with our further exegetical study. But that was, you know, it was like a hundred people to Bible college. We, you know, we can hardly even afford to pay. We didn't have all the big money that we were worried about, you know, but there was something just beautiful about that too. Like we are actually going to go with the text leads. We don't just teach our students that go with the text leads when

the entire institution isn't doing that. No, we are actually going to do that as well. But I don't have you ever heard of another school where they adjusted the doctoral statement to make room for a faculty that had grown. But again, this, this from another vantage point, people were like, yeah, that's why we change our view on marriage because we had affirming faculty member that based on further study, the gods were, they change their views. So we, so, and I'm like, well, no, I don't think that's legit, but that's, yeah. Yeah. I'd be rather than changing the doctrinal statement. The most common way that schools

do that is allow exceptions to statement of faith. So they have, um, they might have a really robust statement of faith that includes a lot of denominational specific things. You can take exception to something here or there, or you have to adhere to certain creeds and canons and stuff. And so you might disagree with some interpretation of something. So rather than changing the statement, most schools allow exceptions. Is that, so we're talking offline, we're not going to name schools, but I do know several schools where I'm like, wait, your school is part of a denomination that has a traditional view of marriage.

The school itself has a traditional view of marriage. And I know several faculty that are totally affirming. Is that how they, I was like, get away with that. Is that how that that I was like, get away with that. Is that how that's able to happen? Is faculty might not be required to believe or even positively teach and support the statement, they just can't teach against it? Is that a common?

Yeah, so that is one way that some schools operate, which is here's our beliefs. You have to agree to not advocate against them. Okay. And others say you have to agree with the, you know, some actually separate it. You have to agree with these kind of core faith statements, but then there's a denominational piece

that you have to not advocate against. So schools do it in different ways. And there are some schools that would say, taking an exception to our view of marriage is actually not OK. And some would say, some might say it's OK, but most, I think, would say that that type of exception. One exception that's common in my circles is in the Westminster standards, it talks

about the view of the Sabbath and it even prohibits recreation on Sabbath. Oh, really? And that's one where people would commonly take an exception of like, actually I think recreation and fellowship can be a way to further the ideal of the Sabbath and how you form your Sabbath habits. But something like marriage, that's not an area where you could take an exception. So some schools have, here's areas where you can take an exception, others you have to agree.

I think some schools get in trouble when they didn't have that clarity upfront, right? And then they hire faculty. Maybe the faculty used to believe in traditional marriage, but then no longer does. But there was nothing. They had to kind of like, there was no legal reason for them to even say anything or whatever. And then now the school's like, gosh, you know, third of our faculty is affirming, what are we going to do? Have you seen that happen? And they're trying to figure out how to move forward? Yeah, that definitely happened as well.

One of the things that I recommend for schools is that whatever your faith statement is, it should actually be an annual affirmation to ensure that you do have current faculty and staff who are aligned with what you believe. And it's not just something you do at the beginning when you hire and then let it go. It's actually a continual thing. And that would be true, you know, in best practice, I would say for board members as well. Well, Joy, I've taken you over a lot of time.

Thank you so much for the intriguing conversation. And I just love knowing that I know somebody that is in this space because I know hardly anything about the space you're in. So yeah, I just find you to be a thoughtful and trustworthy voice. So thank you for what you do and thanks for being a guest on Theology in Rome. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Greetings and God bless. This is Tyler Burns.

And this is Dr. Jamar Tisby. And we want to invite you to check out our podcast, Pass the Mic, Dynamic Voices for a Diverse Church. Pass the Mic has been speaking directly to the core concerns of black Christians for over a decade. On our show, we've got interviews from theologians, historians, actors, activists, and so much more. Not to mention heartfelt open dialogue on some of the heaviest issues facing the church in the United States. Be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you there on the next Pass the Mic.

Hey friends, Rachel Grohl here from the Hearing Jesus podcast. Do you ever wonder if you're truly hearing from God? Are you tired of trying to figure it all out on your own? The Hearing Jesus podcast is here to help you live out your faith every single day. And together together we will break down these walls by digging deeply into God's Word in a way that you can really understand it. If this sounds like the kind of journey you want to go on, please join us on the Hearing Jesus podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever

you listen to podcasts.