Can religious groups discriminate?  On college campuses, as we’ve noted, the issue often boils down to whether sponsored student clubs have the right to insist on restricting their leadership to students who share their faith.

Historian John Turner offers some thoughts on these continuing battles in a recent essay on The Anxious Bench.  As the author of the go-to book on Campus Crusade for Christ, Turner has some unique perspective to share on the issue.  As Turner concludes, “If universities actually believe in the diversity they attempt to promote, they have to make room for evangelical, Catholic, Muslim, and the many other student religious organizations.”

Also intriguing is the comment from “Marta L.”  As she points out, many campus groups object to having their student fees pay for groups to whom they are ideologically opposed.  Students at Texas A & M, for instance, did not want to pay to support an LGBT Resource Center.  If conservative groups want to be included in the diversity of campus life, Marta argues, they must be willing to enter into this community agreement.  Christian students, Marta says, must “be willing to fund groups that don’t represent them.”

She makes a crucial point.  It is one thing to welcome a true diversity of opinion to a university campus.  It is another thing to insist that every student pay for all of them.  In practice, a Catholic student group would likely fund groups that support ideas about contraception and abortion that are anathema to the Catholic Church.  Similarly, atheist or LGBT groups must pay for groups that explicitly discriminate against gays or the non-religious.

Can this be the new definition of diversity?  We must all agree not only to welcome, but to foot the bill for those with whom we fervently disagree?