Evangelical University Considers Changing Lifestyle Policy for Employees
by Jim Brown
February 28, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A conservative evangelical university in Michigan is considering whether to discontinue its policy barring employees from drinking alcohol, smoking, and gambling. A team of five faculty members at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids has been reviewing the school's "Personnel Lifestyle Statement" for 18 months and has crafted a new draft statement that has yet to be adopted.
Cornerstone University president Dr. Rex Rogers says the administration has been discussing how it can do a better job of "encouraging faculty and staff toward holiness and modeling a biblically Christian worldview." While the school is "not talking about changing any student policies," he notes, "we're looking at what, really, we need to ask of our faculty -- our adult employees, faculty and staff members."
The university is trying to make a determination regarding the standards that need to be set for and expressed by members of its faculty and staff, particularly "as they make discernment in their lives, as they exercise Christian liberty, as they're away from this campus or its events," Rogers explains. He says the school seeks to determine as well "whether or not these issues -- which are, in scripture, matters of Christian liberty -- need to be restricted in a personnel policy statement like that anymore or simply left to the individual."
Cornerstone's current Personnel Lifestyle Statement forbids not only gambling and the use of alcohol and tobacco but also "every form of immorality, including immoral sexual behavior, homosexuality, lying, stealing, and cheating." The school's president says he personally believes gambling is intrinsically evil and a sin, whether one bets a little or a lot; but using alcohol or tobacco in moderation, on the other hand, is not.
"When it comes to alcohol or tobacco use, of course, tobacco's not even mentioned," Rogers asserts. Meanwhile, he notes, "Alcohol is mentioned in terms of excess and drunkenness and otherwise allowing our minds, our bodies, our souls to be captured by something other than the Holy Spirit of God. But it is not directly condemned in Scripture, and I believe those are matters of Christian liberty."
Gambling, however, is another matter entirely. The university administrator, who has been president of Cornerstone University since 1991, is a recognized expert on the subject and has written a book called Gambling: Don't Bet on It (Kregel Publications), which presents a biblical analysis of the damaging, addictive, and potentially devastating pastime. He is also the author and voice of a daily radio show and nationally syndicated newspaper column called "Making a Difference."
Rogers writes and speaks extensively on Christian higher education, leadership, political issues and social and cultural trends. While he is refraining from making an official public statement on whether the Cornerstone personnel's lifestyle standards statement should be changed, the school's president has observed in a university blog post (http://www.cornerstone.edu/news/?news_ID=2055) that he believes Cornerstone's faculty and staff members are outstanding Christian leaders of character and commitment. That, he insists, is what defines a Christian university.
Without such individual standards of Christian leadership and commitment, Rogers asserts, no policies, handbooks, covenants or lifestyle statements, nor any doctrinal statements, rules or standards, denominational affiliation, or historic affirmations can guarantee that a Christian university will remain truly Christian. "What matters," he says, "is people."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
