Today, as a board, we reaffirm our responsibility to steward the Christ-centered mission of Azusa Pacific University. We commit the following to each member of the APU community and to all who share in the 2,000-year legacy of Christianity that forms our bedrock:
- We remain unequivocally biblical and orthodox in our evangelical Christian identity. The Bible serves as our anchor.
- We stand firm in our convictions, never willing to capitulate to outside pressures, be they legal, political, or social.
- We affirm God’s perfect will and design for humankind with the biblical understanding of the marriage covenant as between one man and one woman. Outside of marriage, He calls His people to abstinence.
- We advocate for holy living within the university in support of our Christian values.
- We declare that our clear mission to equip disciples and scholars to advance the work of God in the world is more necessary today than ever before.
Last week, reports circulated about a change to the undergraduate student standards of conduct. That action concerning romanticized relationships was never approved by the board and the original wording has been reinstated.
We see every student as a gift from God, infinitely valuable and worthy in the eyes of our Creator and as members of our campus community. We believe our university is the best place for earnest and guided conversation to unfold with all students about every facet of life, including faith and sexuality. We embrace all students who seek a rigorous Christian higher education and voluntarily join us in mission.
We pledge to boldly uphold biblical values and not waiver in our Christ-centered mission. We will examine how we live up to these high ideals and enact measures that prevent us from swaying from that sure footing.
Through prayerful obedience to God’s Word, we believe APU’s best days lie ahead.
Grace and peace,
APU Board of Trustees
On Friday evening, Azusa Pacific University’s Board of Trustees rejected administrators’ policy decision to embrace LGBTQ romances on campus. The board stated they are “never willing to capitulate to outside pressures, be they legal, political, or social.”
Azusa was chartered as a Free Methodist college and is now officially non-denominational. But the school’s Board of Trustees reaffirmed its “unequivocally biblical and orthodox in our evangelical Christian identity” and “pledge to boldly uphold biblical values and not waiver in our Christ-centered mission.”
The administrators’ earlier decision to permit LGBTQ relationships on campus was announced last Tuesday, September 18. One suspects the university garnered an outpouring of pressure and frustration from alumni, parents, students, faculty, and staff. And in the same vein as the 2014 World Vision debacle, a swift reversal was enacted.
We should applaud Azusa’s Board of Trustees for their commitment to biblical values and reaffirmation of traditional Christian sexual ethics.
Please read the Board of Trustees full press release:
Dear APU Community,
Comment by MikeS on September 29, 2018 at 11:00 am
It’s nice to see an evangelical college reaffirm what it traditionally is supposed to believe. But the fact that the dust-up happened at all should be worrisome to traditionalists. Obviously there are people embedded at APU who are trying to push the limits. They lost this time, but do you suppose they will simply give up? I have no connections to APU, but if I did, I would hope to see a statement from the trustees about how this happened at all, what the consequences are for those who pushed it, and how and why it won’t happen again. The statement published above does not give the full explanation.
Comment by diaphone64 on September 29, 2018 at 11:26 am
Would be nice if the UMC took a lesson from APU’s fortitude. Of course APU will be labeled intolerant and “un-Christian” by the very ones demanding tolerance
Comment by senecagriggs on September 30, 2018 at 12:25 pm
I’m an alumnus; was about to pull the plug on my monthly giving. Thanks goodness the trustees took a stand.
Comment by David on September 30, 2018 at 2:40 pm
“We affirm God’s perfect will and design for humankind with the biblical understanding of the marriage covenant as between one man and one woman.”
Well, you need to do more reading of the Bible. Polygamy appears a number of times, sometimes in the person of concubines. We might ask why the early church was so hostile to marriage. One early church father described it as being only a small step above fornication.
“In the early Church there was still no marriage ceremony, it was not important for the couple to be blessed by a pastor or priest. There was no formal liturgy for marriage in contrast to formal liturgies that were established early on for baptism and the Lord’s supper. This may reflect the early church’s ambivalent attitude to marriage and seeing the absence of family-ties and celibacy as a preferable state. There is no detailed account of a Christian wedding ceremony until the 9th Century, it wasn’t until the 12th Century that a priest became involved in the ceremony and not until the 13th Century that he took charge of it. Many Christians today would be surprised to find that the church did not consider itself to have a role in marriage for almost half its history.” —Signposts 2.
Then there was the rite of St. Sergius and Bacchus that appeared in both the Latin and Greek churches when marriage ceremonies first appeared. The exact nature of these same sex unions remains very controversial for obvious reasons.
Comment by Steve on September 30, 2018 at 8:41 pm
Uh huh, but what did Jesus have to say about it? Didn’t Jesus have one mother? And wasn’t he against divorce?
Comment by Phil on October 1, 2018 at 12:51 am
David is looking more like a troll. All he does is post things that have been dealt with and easily found on the Internet.
Comment by David on October 1, 2018 at 9:50 am
Yes, things can be easily found on the internet today, but how many bother to do so? People vainly imagine that what exists today has always been the case. You cannot claim to have historically based beliefs when the history is to the contrary. Comments should be judged by their truthfulness and not whether you like the opinion or not.
Comment by Phil on October 1, 2018 at 6:23 pm
No, what you post is a distortion. Laura Flack explains it concisely.
Comment by John Smith on October 4, 2018 at 6:26 am
Is there some official printout for this? Its obviously cut and paste. I’ve seen almost the exact wording several times when people are trying to confuse issues and pretend they can’t seem to tell the differences between history, apostasy, heresy and divine instructions. Its all smoke and mirrors to hid people doing whatever they want.
Comment by West on October 5, 2018 at 3:12 pm
Sure polygamy appears. Even with some of the great heroes of the bible such as David or Salomon. It also never works out well. In the case of David it lead to tragedy. With Salomon disaster. Surely we should take that as a warning rather than an example
Comment by D. Scott MacDonald on October 5, 2018 at 4:38 pm
David comments we should do more reading of the Bible, followed by one sentence about the Bible and then paragraphs about what the early church did or believed. I throw it all out but the one sentence, and then find it lacking, as what appears in the Bible may or may not be right; in this case, as others have well stated, polygamy was not God’s plan and did not receive His endorsement. Yes, David; read the Bible, indeed!
Comment by Laura Flack on September 30, 2018 at 8:47 pm
Marriage was stated in Genesis. The “Church” is not God and goes beyond what God ordained.
Polygamy was not ordained by God. As was then, as is now, people do things but God doesn’t approve of them.
Read Genesis and then Matthew for what marriage is according to God.