The Fellowship of Christian Athletes would appoint as “leaders” only students subscribing to its prohibition of homosexual acts and sexual relations outside of marriage.
by Massimo Introvigne
On July 11, 2024, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted a provisional injunction to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which had been excluded from the list of recognized student organizations at Jackson-Reed High School in Washington DC because of its conservative views of sexuality. The Court ordered Jackson-Reed, which is the largest high school in Washington DC, to reinstate the Fellowship immediately.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is an international Christian ministry promoting Christian values through school coaches and athletes, with more than 7,000 chapters in the United States. While everybody can be a “participant” in the Fellowship, irrespective of beliefs or sexual orientation, to be eligible to become a “leader” of the movement one should subscribe to its Statement of Faith, which embodies a conservative Christian theology. The Statement of Faith posits that marriage is only between a man and a woman and proscribes “sexual relations outside of marriage (whether involving individuals of the same or opposite sex)” and “any sexually immoral act… including homosexuality.”
Jackson Reed excluded the Fellowship in 2022, claiming that the portions about sexual relations of its Statement of Faith violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy. The local chapter of the Fellowship was told that it could be reinstated if it disassociated itself from the national organization or at least from the objectionable provisions of the Statement of Faith. Both attempts at settlement and administrative appeals failed, and the Fellowship sued.
The District Court ruled that the conservative sexual views of the Fellowship are based exclusively on religion and its interpretation of the Bible, and as such are protected by the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause and by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Court noted that the school applied its non-discrimination rules in a way that created discrimination against conservative Christians.
There are dozens of other organizations recognized by the school that a non-Christian or LGBTQ student can join, the decision stated, and in the case of the Fellowship such a student is not prevented from joining, only from seeking a leadership position there. Additionally, the school allows other approved organizations to discriminate, the District Judge said. For example, there are several female organizations in the school that only admit women as members. Jackson-Reed tried to counter this objection by emailing these organizations that they should admit men too, but this only happened after the lawsuit was filed.
The school also approves an LGBTQ organization called Gender Sexuality Alliance. It is true, the judge noted, that students do not need to be part of the LGBTQ community to join the organization, but those who are not are required to “show support” to the Alliance’s goals, i.e., they should be “ideologically aligned” with the group. This means that students supporting, for example, a conservative view of Christian values cannot join the Gender Sexuality Alliance as common members, let alone seeking a position as leaders. In other words, the school “permits secular groups to limit their membership to ideologically aligned students while denying the same right to FCA [Fellowship of Christian Athletes] with respect to its leadership.”
The court concluded that, “As a condition for reinstatement, the [School] District forced FCA to choose between official school recognition and its religious principles. Such treatment is at odds with that received by secular groups at Jackson-Reed that appear to limit membership on the basis of other protected characteristics and/or ideological alignment. At this stage, FCA has shown that the District’s application of its Anti-Discrimination Policy is likely to run afoul of, at the very least, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Free Exercise Clause.”
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
