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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Oh and UCCF was originally part of SCM, but split off some point in the 1910s.

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Originally posted by angelfish:
I am fairly sure that the faults mentioned above are not so much arising from UCCF official policy but more the result of the Christian Unions lacking leadership from seasoned Christians.

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Originally posted by angelfish:
I am fairly sure that the faults mentioned above are not so much arising from UCCF official policy but more the result of the Christian Unions lacking leadership from seasoned Christians. In my experience the worst excesses of judgmentalism and exclusivity come from the nineteen year olds who sit on committees, organise meetings and put themselves forward as though they were ordained church leaders.

If I was being kind, I would say that these young men and women are out of their depth so fall back on Biblical literalism and legalism to give themselves a sense of certainty and solidity because really they haven't got a clue what they should be doing.

But yes, there is also that annoying "we are right and all other views are unsound" ethos that permeates much of evangelicalism, UCCF included.

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Originally posted by scuffleball:

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Originally posted by angelfish:
I am fairly sure that the faults mentioned above are not so much arising from UCCF official policy but more the result of the Christian Unions lacking leadership from seasoned Christians.

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I think my issues with the OICCU actually stemmed more from the macrocosm than the microcosm, actually; at the grassroots its leaders were agreeable people, genuinely compassionate and caring. (apart from one who had a creepy obsession with a certain aspect of sexuality which is probably beyond the remits of the ship because of confidentiality.) A lot of them were quite sensible and politically minded. It really depended on what college you were in.

I think part of the problem was that we had a very big conservative evangelical church which was known for having "a secret /support group/ for Lesbian and Gay people which is so secret I cannot tell you of its existence, let alone who is involved with it" and that didn't allow female preachers. This church tended to have a lot of influence.

OUSU is an equally weird body, mind; because lots of decisions are taken at a JCR level, OUSU tends to get a reputation as being rather extreme-left and unrepresentative on things like minority groups.

I am interested to know of the experiences of open-/left-of-centre-evangelicals on this, though. Some did okay within the OICCU, and due to its decentralized nature, such things did tend to vary phenomenally according to cohort and college. (ken? You work in a university, right?)

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

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Originally posted by scuffleball:

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Originally posted by angelfish:
I am fairly sure that the faults mentioned above are not so much arising from UCCF official policy but more the result of the Christian Unions lacking leadership from seasoned Christians.

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I think my issues with the OICCU actually stemmed more from the macrocosm than the microcosm, actually; at the grassroots its leaders were agreeable people, genuinely compassionate and caring. (apart from one who had a creepy obsession with a certain aspect of sexuality which is probably beyond the remits of the ship because of confidentiality.) A lot of them were quite sensible and politically minded. It really depended on what college you were in.

I think part of the problem was that we had a very big conservative evangelical church which was known for having "a secret /support group/ for Lesbian and Gay people which is so secret I cannot tell you of its existence, let alone who is involved with it" and that didn't allow female preachers. This church tended to have a lot of influence.

OUSU is an equally weird body, mind; because lots of decisions are taken at a JCR level, OUSU tends to get a reputation as being rather extreme-left and unrepresentative on things like minority groups.

I am interested to know of the experiences of open-/left-of-centre-evangelicals on this, though. Some did okay within the OICCU, and due to its decentralized nature, such things did tend to vary phenomenally according to cohort and college. (ken? You work in a university, right?)

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Sorry - what are OICCU, OUSU and JCR? *attends a former polytechnic*

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Originally posted by Amos:
*ok, that one I made up. The other examples really happened.

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by angelfish:
I am fairly sure that the faults mentioned above are not so much arising from UCCF official policy but more the result of the Christian Unions lacking leadership from seasoned Christians.

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But yes, there is also that annoying "we are right and all other views are unsound" ethos that permeates much of evangelicalism, UCCF included.

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Originally posted by would love to belong:
I think all Christian organisations should be banned from tertiary education campuses.

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However since so much is so tightly controlled from UCCF Central (what passage of Scripture every CU in the country is studying at the weekly meeting, and what questions should be asked about it)

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:

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However since so much is so tightly controlled from UCCF Central (what passage of Scripture every CU in the country is studying at the weekly meeting, and what questions should be asked about it)

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This is rubbish. That is all.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:

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However since so much is so tightly controlled from UCCF Central (what passage of Scripture every CU in the country is studying at the weekly meeting, and what questions should be asked about it)

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This is rubbish. That is all.

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My uni's CU doesn't even have Bible studies in the main meeting, it's just a worship song followed by a dull lecture on how the World hates Good Little Evangelicals, followed by another worship song, ending with a reminder to bully your uni mates into converting.

The Bible studies elsewhere in the week are definitely controlled by UCCF head office though.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Re SCM and theology, SCM doesn't have any kind of doctrinal basis, let alone a woolly one - individual members belong to a range of churches. Lots of Methodists, but also Catholics, Anglicans, evangelicals, Quakers. SCM is primarily concerned with social action, not theology.

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Speaking personally, I felt very excluded from CU because I didn't attend the 'right' church and felt like the CU was missing the point in terms of mission

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:

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Speaking personally, I felt very excluded from CU because I didn't attend the 'right' church and felt like the CU was missing the point in terms of mission

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You should try being the token evangelical at an SCM meeting: officially excluding anyone is unnecessary when sniffy condescension will do the trick just as effectively.

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Originally posted by scuffleball:
I think my issues with the OICCU actually stemmed more from the macrocosm than the microcosm, actually; at the grassroots its leaders were agreeable people, genuinely compassionate and caring. [...]

OUSU is an equally weird body, mind; because lots of decisions are taken at a JCR level, OUSU tends to get a reputation as being rather extreme-left and unrepresentative on things like minority groups.

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Re SCM and theology, SCM doesn't have any kind of doctrinal basis, let alone a woolly one - individual members belong to a range of churches. Lots of Methodists, but also Catholics, Anglicans, evangelicals, Quakers. SCM is primarily concerned with social action, not theology.

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I'm going to take issue with this.

My uni's SCM group may have officially 'focused on social action' but you know what? The CU were the ones who were actually out on the streets feeding the homeless, rather than sitting on a common room talking shop. Yes, there's a tendency that re-emerges every couple of years among CUs to become a narrowly focused campus mission society and ditch everything else, and that tendency needs to be resisted because IME, that's invariably when the CU is smallest and least effective. Thankfully, there are usually people around to resist it to a smaller or larger extent.

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Speaking personally, I felt very excluded from CU because I didn't attend the 'right' church and felt like the CU was missing the point in terms of mission

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You should try being the token evangelical at an SCM meeting: officially excluding anyone is unnecessary when sniffy condescension will do the trick just as effectively. I'd say I've been involved in both organisations to a similar extent (my own uni, visits to friends' unis and a national conference or two) and they are almost exactly equivalent in being arsy to people they don't like.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
And really you don't need to be able to impose penalties from the centre when you deploy pressure to conform and the threat of disfellowshipping and/or denunciation for any who repeatedly voice disagreement.

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This is verging on libellous. I challenge you to find one example anywhere of a CU being threatened with disaffiliation for not using the correct Bible study sheets.

I did a quick google like Jay-Emm trying to find termcards. Apparently it is no longer de rigeur for CUs to publish their term programme in advance, but even in the city in which I am a minister I have been asked to speak at 3 different CUs on three different books of the Bible this last year. No one from "head office" even sent me any notes to work from.

No one forces anyone to go to a CU or a CU to affiliate to UCCF. If you don't like it, university's the ideal time to plough ahead and start your own group, and stop whinging. CUs fairly regularly disaffiliate and even more regularly new groups start or existing university groups affiliate.

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
And really you don't need to be able to impose penalties from the centre when you deploy pressure to conform and the threat of disfellowshipping and/or denunciation for any who repeatedly voice disagreement.

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This is verging on libellous. I challenge you to find one example anywhere of a CU being threatened with disaffiliation for not using the correct Bible study sheets.

I did a quick google like Jay-Emm trying to find termcards. Apparently it is no longer de rigeur for CUs to publish their term programme in advance, but even in the city in which I am a minister I have been asked to speak at 3 different CUs on three different books of the Bible this last year. No one from "head office" even sent me any notes to work from.

No one forces anyone to go to a CU or a CU to affiliate to UCCF. If you don't like it, university's the ideal time to plough ahead and start your own group, and stop whinging. CUs fairly regularly disaffiliate and even more regularly new groups start or existing university groups affiliate.

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Originally posted by wheelie racer:
Wondering how much people know about Fusion and what experiences of them you've had? They were setting up as a bit of a rival to UCCF when I was a student about 15 years ago and targeting the more open evo / charismatic student population

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Originally posted by would love to belong:
What about Navigators, or Navs? Honestly, all these acronyms for quite appalling-sounding single-age, irrelevant student groups would put anyone off exploring the claims of Christianity. What are the authorities doing allowing all these groups to canvass impressionable youngsters? All so different from the mid 70s when I was a student. Mind you, back then, there were plenty of things to get stuck into eg anti-apartheid, the sit-in at the Scottish Daily Express building, Jim Sillars' Scottish Kabour Party.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

I just don't see how UCCF haven't been reprimanded by the NUS already for some of the actions of CUs which are incredibly offensive and harmful to student bodies as a whole, eg Bristol CU excluding women from speaking unless their husbands are present.

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Originally posted by Avila:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

I just don't see how UCCF haven't been reprimanded by the NUS already for some of the actions of CUs which are incredibly offensive and harmful to student bodies as a whole, eg Bristol CU excluding women from speaking unless their husbands are present.

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The UCCF groups aren't affiliated to NUS because they don't comply. In my day they rented space directly from the university for meetings.

The presence of MethSoc* etc in the union gave a Christian presence inside not just a voice outside.

*Almost all student union clubs and societies were called ....Soc - some kind of student tradition I guess...

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Originally posted by would love to belong:
I think all Christian organisations should be banned from tertiary education campuses. Students should attend a local church of their choosing, and mix with all types and ages represented there. It might help them to grow up. I'm convinced this studenty-type Christianity puts off others and feeds into the later colonisation of some churches as hang-outs for young professional couples with kids.

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Avila, not in my daughter's experience. She's now graduated, but when she started at university there was no MethSoc or CathSoc, only the CU and Islamic societies. The other societies had folded and there wasn't much in the way of chaplaincy support.

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My uni's SCM group may have officially 'focused on social action' but you know what? The CU were the ones who were actually out on the streets feeding the homeless, rather than sitting on a common room talking shop. Yes, there's a tendency that re-emerges every couple of years among CUs to become a narrowly focused campus mission society and ditch everything else, and that tendency needs to be resisted because IME, that's invariably when the CU is smallest and least effective. Thankfully, there are usually people around to resist it to a smaller or larger extent.

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When I was at university many years ago, the CU was the biggest club on campus, and the SCM could have met in a telephone booth.

One of the reasons for this was that the SCM had become so theologically vacuous, that many students who would have belonged to it in an earlier student generation, joined the CU instead because it was still meaningfully Christian, even though they disagreed with aspects of its beliefs and practices.

If the SCM were to be described with the same self-indulgent and bigoted generalizations used of CUs in earlier posts, perhaps the following would be the result:-

“The SCM consists of a wishy-washy liberal mixture of old-fashioned Enlightenment rationalism and post-modern relativism and syncretism, gratefully seized upon by insecure adolescents not quite up to jettisoning the faith completely, but petrified of losing social acceptance by alienating their secular peers, and desperate to assert their new-found adult status by spurning any semblance of the historic, orthodox, credal Christianity in which they were brought up”.

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The SCM didn't appeal to me as it was very concerned with social activism. I would have been happy to help homeless people but they were more about campaigning on big issues, and I have always been one for the aspects of Christianity which are about trying to change yourself rather than the aspects about changing the world, since I have never felt well qualified to tell the world how to improve.

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Originally posted by would love to belong:
Jim Sillars' Scottish Kabour Party.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
And really you don't need to be able to impose penalties from the centre when you deploy pressure to conform and the threat of disfellowshipping and/or denunciation for any who repeatedly voice disagreement.

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This is verging on libellous. I challenge you to find one example anywhere of a CU being threatened with disaffiliation for not using the correct Bible study sheets.

I did a quick google like Jay-Emm trying to find termcards. Apparently it is no longer de rigeur for CUs to publish their term programme in advance, but even in the city in which I am a minister I have been asked to speak at 3 different CUs on three different books of the Bible this last year. No one from "head office" even sent me any notes to work from.

No one forces anyone to go to a CU or a CU to affiliate to UCCF. If you don't like it, university's the ideal time to plough ahead and start your own group, and stop whinging. CUs fairly regularly disaffiliate and even more regularly new groups start or existing university groups affiliate.

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I know of CU members and student leadership members who have been disfellowshipped/shunned/fired for asking questions and trying to stop the CU from being quite so bigoted as usual. The social implications are used to keep people in check.

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I just don't see how UCCF haven't been reprimanded by the NUS already for some of the actions of CUs which are incredibly offensive and harmful to student bodies as a whole, eg Bristol CU excluding women from speaking unless their husbands are present.

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