North Carolina college requires teachers to sign pledge opposing same-sex marriage and abortion
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—A Christian college in the North Carolina mountains that’s long been associated with the Billy Graham family is in turmoil over the school’s insistence that faculty and staff sign and live in accordance with a new document that opposes same-sex marriage and abortion.
Montreat College’s “Community Life Covenant,” which was recently added to faculty and staff handbooks, uses loftier language and includes many widely admired tenets like “be people of integrity” and “seek righteousness, justice and mercy.”
What’s become controversial are those parts of the covenant that expect those who work at the school to affirm “the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman” and the “worth of every human being from conception to death”—phrases that translate into condemnations of same-sex marriage and abortion.
Also an issue with some: The covenant appears to favor a literal interpretation of the Bible, calling the book “the infallible Word of God and fully authoritative in matters of life and conduct.”
Some faculty and staff have refused to sign, effectively ending their employment at the college as of mid-May, when the current semester ends.
A small number of the 876 students enrolled at the close-knit college held a public protest on Wednesday, hoisting signs reading “Make Montreat Montreat Again” and “Don’t Break Our Family.” Students are not required to sign the covenant.
The controversy has even riled up some in Montreat and neighboring towns. Black Mountain resident and lifelong Presbyterian Ina Jones Hughs wrote a fiery column for the Asheville CitizenTimes:
“What Montreat College has just done is alarming and disgusting. Demanding its faculty and administration to sign a pledge which … treats LGBT Christians as outside the fold and their relationships as spiritually unworthy; stands opposed to women’s reproduction choices; and declares theirs a literal interpretation of the Bible … Montreat College hard-handed ‘covenant’ … brings shame to the history and reputation of Montreat as a welcoming community.”
The new covenant, as well as the college’s mission statement, vision statement, and statement of faith, “are rooted in core biblical values that have been central to Christianity for 2,000 years and central to the college throughout its 101-year history,” according to a statement emailed by Montreat College spokesman Adam Caress. “They do not represent a change in the college’s core beliefs, but are rather an affirmation of what the college— and orthodox Christianity in general—has always believed.”
Some who oppose the covenant are pointing a finger at the conservative Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), which last month contributed $100,000 to the college’s scholarship fund.
The school and the BGEA both denied that the Charlotte-based ministry—now headed by Franklin Graham, a Montreat College alumnus and an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage and abortion—had any involvement in writing the covenant or insisting that faculty and staff sign it.
“BGEA had no role,” said its spokesman Mark DeMoss. “There is a 70-year relationship between the college and the Graham … family, with many gifts being given over the years from individual Graham family members and the BGEA.”
The Graham family and organization have had a say in Montreat College policy for years. Ruth Graham, Billy’s late wife, served on the school’s board of trustees for nearly a decade. (She and Billy were married in the college’s chapel, which now bears their names). Will Graham, Franklin’s son, has also been a trustee.
And two sources told the Charlotte Observer on Thursday that David Bruce, executive assistant to 98-year-old Billy Graham and one of the college’s current trustees, will soon become the new chairman of that board.
The elder Graham, who still lives in the family’s mountaintop home in Montreat, never strayed from a literal reading of the Bible. But in his later years, he appeared to mellow, emphasizing God’s love and offering a more inclusive vision that he said left the judging of others to God.
But Billy’s son Franklin, who read a Scriptural passage in January at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, has become a polarizing figure in his sometimes confrontational quest to promote socially conservative views he says are mandated by the Bible.
Corrie Greene, an English teacher at the school, said Montreat College’s new covenant may or may not have been Graham’s idea, “but it certainly didn’t hurt the relationship between the BGEA and the school.”