Drive down Massachusetts Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in the tony, hyper-educated city of Cambridge, and you will spot two handsome Episcopal churches located a few blocks apart. Both houses of worship are usually festooned with rainbow flags, Black Lives Matter banners, statements on transgender rights and so on. The churches epitomize what might be called “Harvard Christianity”—a Christianity that is fully conformed to modern liberalism and the opinions of the meritocrats who teach and study at the elite university nearby.
But other strands of Christianity—those that conform themselves to the faith’s timeless moral teaching and uphold its sexual anthropology—are not so welcome at the university. Indeed, Harvard is now determined to ostracize, censor, and ultimately root out orthodox Christianity from a university that was founded to train ministers in the Puritan tradition. That is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the school’s little-noticed decision this year to suspend and defund the largest evangelical fellowship on campus.
I have a feeling that the transient, nebulous line between "acceptable" Christianity and
wrongthink will eventually include all forms of Gospel proclamation, including those palatable Episcopal parishes. That is the historical dynamic, anyway.