Trinity Western University has been added to CAUT’s list of universities and colleges that have a faith or ideological test as a condition of employment. The action follows a detailed investigation by professors William Bruneau of the University of British Columbia and Tom Friedman of Thompson Rivers University and approval by CAUT’s Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee.

Created under CAUT’s Proce­dures in Academic Freedom Cases Involving Allegations of Requirements of an Ideological or Faith Test as a Condition of Employ­ment, the Bruneau-Friedman committee reported that “TWU’s Statement of Faith, its Res­ponsibil­ities of Membership statement and the univer­sity’s policy on academic freedom allow for unwarranted and unacceptable constraints on academic freedom.”

The report added that “this is specifically affirmed in TWU’s statement of academic freedom that it recognizes academic freedom only from a ‘stated perspective’ — ‘within parameters consistent with the confessional basis of the constituency to which the University is responsible’.”

Bruneau and Friedman found that academic staff at TWU are well-qualified academics, carrying out programmes of post-secondary education at standards approved by relevant provincial and national authorities.

“This is not about whether or not a university has a religious mission,” said CAUT executive director James Turk. “The report makes it quite clear that many Canadian Christian institutions of post-secondary education assert their religious character, yet welcome applications by persons who hold no religious views, or who hold religious views at variance with those that guide the institution. But un­like Trinity Western, they do not pursue their mission by trying to create a religiously homogenous community.”

Turk said CAUT has investi­gatory committees examining the situations at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg and Atlantic Baptist University, recently renamed Crandall University, in Moncton, where similar concerns have been brought to CAUT’s attention.