Civilization requires civility. We no longer have that.
The College Fix: A public university in Canada recently canceled a speech set to be given by a high-profile Christian speaker after one student complained.
The University of New Brunswick’s philosophy department invited Corey Miller, president of Ratio Christi, a U.S.-based Christian campus apologetics organization, to speak on Sept. 21 on whether Christianity is good or bad for the world.
Miller told The College Fix the title of his speech was initially “Is Christianity Good or Bad for Civilization?” However, he said, to appease some concerns, he changed it to “Religious Beliefs: Axiological Reflections on Western Civilization,” which passed muster.
Yet one student still raised concerns to faculty about Miller, which led to the talk’s cancellation, according to emails reviewed by The Fix.
“The student was not stridently angry, but was concerned that you might have anti-LGTQ views,” Robert Larmer, chair of UNB’s philosophy department, told Miller in an email on Sept. 18.
The “controversial headline” was a story published in May of this year by the Daily Signal titled “Christian Professor Who Nearly Got Fired for Wrongthink on LGBT Issues Now Leads Campus Ministry.”
Miller, a former ethics professor, discussed his teaching methods regarding homosexuality in the interview.
“We were talking about human sexuality, and I gave another viewpoint in addition to the textbook, and I happened to have a student in the class that semester who was a former pastor who had turned gay and charged me with creating a suicidal environment,” Miller told the Signal.
With the pro bono help of the conservative law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, as well as two atheist students from the class who defended Miller, he said he was exonerated. The controversy — which took place well over a decade ago — is something Miller has been very open about, also speaking to The College Fix about the experience in a May 2019 article.
But UNB’s faculty appeared unwilling to risk its public image by hosting Miller.
“I and my colleagues were concerned about the effect the headline might have in terms of creating controversy around the lecture series, resulting in its cancellation by university administration,” Larmer told Miller in the same email on Sept. 18.
Miller said he believes UNB’s faculty ultimately decided to cancel his speech because they thought they were “already under the spotlight by the university for being a bit more Christian and conservative at a secular university.”
“They speculated that it probably wouldn’t be worth the risk because they thought that this probably would explode,” he said.
