Theologies of Exclusion: Christian Universities and Discrimination against Sexual Minorities¹

1 The author thanks Allison Schnable, Andre Audette, Andrew Fullerton, the editor, the anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Southern Sociological Society and the 2018 Younger Scholars in the Sociology of Religion for their helpful feedback on the paper. Please direct correspondence to Jonathan Coley, Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, [email protected].

Abstract

In an era of rapidly evolving attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, why do some Christian colleges and universities continue to discriminate against lesbian, gay, and bisexual students? The most intuitive answer to this question might point to many religious traditions’ conservative teachings about same-sex relationships. Nevertheless, many schools associated with socially conservative religious traditions are actually inclusive of their sexual minority students. Building on recent insights from the literature on religion and the “culture wars,” and analyzing original data on student handbook bans on same-sex relationships and “homosexual behavior” across 682 Christian colleges and universities, I show that it is when schools are associated with individualist religious traditions that emphasize personal piety that conservative teachings on same-sex relationships are associated with discrimination against sexual minorities. The study holds implications both for research on the exclusion of sexual minorities in schools and for theoretical debates on the relationship between religion and social injustice.

Notes

1 The author thanks Allison Schnable, Andre Audette, Andrew Fullerton, the editor, the anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Southern Sociological Society and the 2018 Younger Scholars in the Sociology of Religion for their helpful feedback on the paper. Please direct correspondence to Jonathan Coley, Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, [email protected].

2 I do not focus on bans on gender transitions or transgender identification in this study, because few Christian colleges and universities have adopted explicit policies on transgender issues in their student handbooks. This is not to suggest, however, that Christian colleges and universities are inclusive of transgender students: As Coley (2017:103) found, only 10% of Christian colleges and universities have adopted nondiscrimination policies inclusive of “gender identity” or “gender expression.”

3 A potential additional source for data on discriminatory policies at Christian colleges and universities might be the Title IX waivers that the U.S. Department of Education began issuing to Christian colleges and universities toward the end of the Obama administration, allowing religious schools to discriminate against transgender students in particular (Gjelten 2018). However, the Trump administration rescinded protections for transgender students—in essence issuing a “blanket Title IX waiver” for religious schools to be able to discriminate (Soulforce 2018)—making these waivers redundant and leading many schools to stop requesting them (Allen 2018).

4 Note that some schools (13.7%) adopted broader bans on “homosexual/heterosexual intercourse.” For my initial analyses, unless these schools separately indicated that they believed same-sex relationships to be intrinsically immoral or that they believed marriage should be between only a man and a woman, I did not code schools with such bans as having discriminatory handbook bans.

5 I cross-checked Fuist et al.’s (2012) classifications and filled in occasional gaps in their study with my own review of official materials provided on the websites of these denominations.

6 Although Fuist et al. (2012) consider only formal denominations in their study, I code independent and nondenominational Christian schools as individualist given that their doctrines generally align with evangelical Protestant denominations (Association of Religion Data Archives 2018). Indeed, past research shows nondenominational Christian churches to be deeply individualist in nature, perhaps unsurprising given that they reject formal association with other congregations (e.g., Cohen and Hill 2007).

7 Although I classified many nondenominational Christian colleges and universities as socially conservative, given that their doctrines generally align with evangelical Protestant denominations (Association of Religion Data Archives 2018), if I found specific documentation that a school had broken off from a Christian denomination in reaction to its social conservatism, I coded that school as “liberal.”

8 I also estimated results from multilevel models that conceptualize school (i.e., student body and institutional) characteristics as nested within denominations and found that the results were consistent with the logistic regression models that follow.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan S. Coley

Jonathan Coley holds a PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University and is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. His research agenda is situated within the fields of social movements and the sociology of religion, focusing on processes related to minority-group inclusion within conservative, religious settings. His first book, Gay on God’s Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities, was published by The University of North Carolina Press in 2018. He has also published articles in journals such as Social Currents, Sociological Perspectives, Mobilization, and Social Movement Studies and the series Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change.