The Supreme Court ruled this week that a public law school can deny the Christian Legal Society recognition because it bars gays from membership. The issue of homosexuality, of course, surrounds this case with a little more controversy, but ultimately it’s not all the ruling was about. The Supreme Court said that the society could not exclude based on sexual orientation or religion.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s president has suggested that evangelicals and some other religious groups could become second class citizens on college campuses as a result of the ruling. Even setting aside human sexuality, this ruling says that Christian groups on public campuses who exclude non-Christians from membership or leadership in any way can lose its recognition as an official group by the school.

On some campuses, losing official recognition could mean losing a share of student activity funds (which I think was probably never a good idea in the first place) but on others, it could mean losing access to meeting rooms and publicity channels. That’s a bigger deal. It doesn’t mean these groups won’t be able to do ministry anymore, but it will probably make it much harder, at least on campus. Since much of this will depend on each individual campus’s “powers-that-be”, I think some of the outcome probably rests on the working relationships Christian groups have built on those campuses through the years. Christian alumni can also have a lot of influence over these kinds of decisions.

Many churches have proven that you don’t need “official status” to be effective in campus ministry, you just need to be creative. I was involved in InterVarsity during my college years, and the first event I went to was an off campus pizza party that I heard about through word of mouth. While it was great having access to on-campus meeting rooms, the churches next to campus would have been almost as convenient, and I doubt our ministry would have suffered any major setbacks if we’d had to use their facilities.

Make no mistake, this ruling stings, but it won’t stop real ministry. Wesley Foundations, InterVarsity chapters, and various denominational and non-denominational campus ministries don’t need official status to carry out their missions. They never have needed it. But it sure helps!

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