'Pervasively Sectarian' Label Excludes Christian University

'Pervasively Sectarian' Label Excludes Christian Univ. from State's Student Aid
Evangelical School in Colorado Sues State for Denying Participation in Program

By Jim Brown and Jody Brown
December 13, 2004

(AgapePress) - A Christian university has been branded as too religious by the state of Colorado, and its application to participate in state-funded student financial aid programs has been denied. The school has now filed suit against the state.

In Colorado, religious colleges are barred from participating in student financial aid programs if the state deems them "pervasively sectarian." Last month, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education placed that label on Colorado Christian University (CCU), a four-year interdenominational school located just west of Denver in Lakewood. The university has approximately 1,600 undergraduate and graduate students.

According to the school's website, CCU embraces declarations of the National Association of Evangelicals such as the Bible being the inspired and infallible Word of God; a belief in the deity of Jesus Christ and His bodily resurrection; and that "regeneration" through the Holy Spirit is essential for personal salvation.

Attorney Ben Bull is with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) which, along with the Christian Legal Society, recently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state. The suit alleges that CCU's exclusion from the aid programs violates the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Bull contends CCU is the target of religious discrimination. "Our client is a very strong, evangelical Christian university which is outspoken on issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia," Bull explains, "and that seems to be too radical for the state and ... 'too religious' -- so it's been blackballed."

Bull maintains the state should "not be in the business of determining when religion is too religious" and that students who choose to attend religious colleges "are no less deserving of aid than students attending non-religious schools."

And the attorney says when it comes to deciding who and who is not eligible for the financial aids programs, Colorado is playing favorites. "The state is effectively taking sides in lining up with certain religious universities, while excluding and prohibiting other religious universities from its program," he says. "And one thing that we can all agree on is that the state can't pick sides between competing religious institutions."

Although the state has excluded CCU from student aid programs, ADF says it has not barred Regis University, a Jesuit university located in Denver. The CCHE website also includes among its "authorized seminaries and Bible colleges" Rocky Mountain Bible Institute in Arvada, the King's College and Seminary -- based in Van Nuys, CA, and founded by Dr. Jack Hayford -- and Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, a ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention with a campus in Centennial.

The lawsuit, Colorado Christian University v. Weaver, et al., was filed on December 6 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.