Michael, just to play devil’s advocate, at one point in my Bible College days, I was told that it was ok for the college to impose non-biblical behavior requirements on students (no jeans on Sunday, even off campus. No swimming on Sunday. No playing cards. No beer. etc.) on the grounds that “the college is not a church” and thus could impose whatever restrictions it chose. To be fair. they were consistent on the issue: they wouldn’t allow communion celebrations at chapel or on campus unless these were sponsored and attended by elders from an area church. I’d be interested in your thoughts on this.

What really got me mad, though, was when they finally began to admit that they were dead wrong on these issues (except drinking), but then came out and told the students that they had to continue the policies (no jeans to class or on Sunday, etc.) because if they did make the change, they would lose their funding base. (They had to back down on no going to movies because of technology… the VCR put that whole thing to rest.) Funny thing is, even with the rules in place, they ended up closing; they lost their student base, in part because they were unable to attract enough local part-time students to replace the shortfall when full-time enrollment dropped off.

I wrote a paper once on the whole enterprise of using Romans 14 vindictively. We used to call some people “professional weaker brothers” – they ran around looking for “offensive” behavior, then sprang up and announced that the behavior had to stop because they took offense. So if I come off as hard on this issue, it’s because I’ve dealt with a lot of abusive behavior in my time.