Cult-Like Separatist Christianity never went away. It appears little has changed from the early days’ of 1920s fundamentalism and the first megachurches, but there is now a major change – institutions have had, in the last half century, a public face that attempts to mitigate accusations, from and to, ‘the world’ and, from and to, themselves as personal believers, on the separatist behaviour.
Citipointe Christian College had been, again, facing public accusations of, not merely, discrimination as it is in the law, but a public misbehaviour, which is to pretend to provide a public service, as a pretext, to creating a closed-off community. The actual accusation at the current time is technical. It is requiring parents to adhere to an enrolment process where the enrolment must have the intended student identify as the gender of the birth certificate.
It is too easy to justify and legitimatise behaviour through a bureaucratic process. The media press statement from the College, stated:
“We have always held these Christian beliefs and we have tried to be fair and transparent to everyone in our community by making them clear in the enrolment contract…Citipointe does not judge students on their sexuality or gender identity and we would not make a decision about their enrolment in the College simply on that basis.”
I am deliberately not saying anything specific here, of the context in the gender debates. Context is important. The challenge is how it muddies the waters. Citipointe as the College, and the larger corporation of which the college is a small part, has had a history of similar accusations, and worse. These include a scandal in the Thai ‘She Rescue Home’ run by the Brisbane-based Pentecostal megachurch, Citipointe, where the College division of the corporation is housed. It would be useless to dig up a history of contested accusations, but the point here is that Citipointe should not be thought of as some ‘loving, personable, church community’ but a corporation with legal responsibilities and ethical obligations if Christian doctrine is to be believed. Yes, there is a ‘loving, personable, church community’ there, but enclosed in the mentality of the corporation.
This is the heart of the legal and ethical problem, not all the howling from either side of the debate. It is contestable that Citipointe is being fair and transparent under a bureaucratic process, but that is a minor point, and the revealing statement is the whole phrase, “…we have tried to be fair and transparent to everyone in our community…[emphasis added]” Fairness and transparency to ‘the world’ is not commented upon, and thereby avoids the ‘real’ world statements (‘social reality’, as in Peter Berger).
The statement, “does not judge students on their sexuality or gender identity,” is suspect with that omission. The media statement says that the College works from what is more to ‘the basis’, but omits the full statement of such, not only for public examination, but for its theological values. And then states, “We unequivocally love and respect all people regardless of their lifestyle and choices, even if those choices are different to our beliefs and practice.” First, I believe that the College’s basis is nuanced, but in my belief, I see it is institutional realpolitik, with the motto ‘do not be caught out in your cunning.’ These are tactics in avoiding having to address significant problems with one’s own stance, fallacies such as false dilemmas, omissions, and ‘strawmen’ arguments. I have no doubts that these fallacies are employed on both sides of the debate, but that does not neutralise the problem for Citipointe.
The College says that “our faith-based education as a choice among many other schooling options available to parents”, but there is the same realpolitik here. Citipointe’s faith-based education becomes, in the institutional behaviour, Cult-Like Separatist Christianity, a closed community which is not open to the reasons why ‘the world’ find the institutional behaviour unacceptable, and it is not to do with rejecting Christian belief (per se; whose belief?), and more to do with rejecting the liberal thinking of John Locke.
Citipointe’s faith-based education has a public face that says we are ‘fair and transparent’, but ‘we are playing the game according to the rules of the State’, in realpolitik form. And if we can get away with creating a closed community with public funds, we will do it.
Sources:
Media Statement. Citipointe Christian College, 30 January 2022.
7News Australia YouTube channel, Carindale School releases contract that could see gay students expelled, 30 January 2022.
Ally Foster. Brisbane Christian school blasted for ‘inhumane’ enrolment contract, Sky News, News Corp Online.
ABC News Radio Bulletin, 9.00 AM, 30 January 2022.
Steve Cannane, Cambodian mother accuses Australian church of separating her from her children, filmmaker charged over dispute urges Julie Bishop to intervene, ABC LateLine, ABC Online, 8 April 2022.
Further Academic Sources can be requested on this literature:
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Anchor Books, New York.
Featured Image: Christian Heritage College, Home Webpage.
Neville Buch
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