A Messiah College ad hoc Study Committee on Homosexuality and Premarital Sex began its work in October 1977. It was chaired by Pastor Robert Ives at the request of President Ray Hostetter, who was asked by Dean of Students Robert Barr to have something prepared for the Student Handbook. Its other members were faculty members Dr. Jan Marie Evans and me, and student resident advisors Ernie Leighty and Joyce Kaiser. Later Kaiser was replaced by student William Hardy. The ad hoc Messiah College Study Committee passed its work onto the Student Development Committee, which presented a recommendation to the faculty on April 21, 1980. Three words were added by amendment (see parentheses in the text below). The results remain unchanged in the handbook today. The text as voted by the faculty is as follows.
The practice of homosexuality is a complicated issues [sic] in our society today. There is presently a strong lobby for full acceptance of homosexuals, while at the same time it is recognized that homosexuals can be excluded from many relationships due to fear or prejudice. However, homosexual behavior is consistently condemned and nowwhere [sic] commended in the Bible, which sees such activity as destructive to the family and the social order and as not fulfilling God's plan for human sexuality.* As a Christian community, Messiah College views homosexual activity as failing to constitute an acceptable lifestyle. The College is prepared to provide counseling and personal help for those who may have homosexual tendencies since it assumes that a change of lifestyle for the homosexual is both possible and necessary. This Christian community affirms that a homosexual lifestyle is not God's plan for humanity and that the full resources of His grace are available to those who trust Him and follow His ways. Therefore, no practicing homosexual who has (either) received (or refused) counseling and who continues to practice that lifestyle shall continue as a member of the community.When the Brethren in Christ Church sought to formulate a statement about homosexuality, it was satisfied with the work that Messiah College had done, and approved a statement along the same lines. President D. Ray Hostetter in boasting at one point that the College was an asset to the Brethren in Christ Church, leading the way in dealing with issues, cited the church's adoption of this statement as an example.* In the Old Testament, Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 forbid homosexual acts. In the New Testament, Rom. 1: 18-32, I Cor. 6:9-10, and I Tim. 1:8-10 do also.
In the early 1970s, Messiah College students had organized a Believers' Church fellowship on campus. The language, "although a sin, homosexuality is also like an illness," that appears in the minutes of the 1977 Study Committee is borrowed from the manuscript, "Documents of the Believers' Church," prepared by that unofficial student organization.
In 1978, according to unofficial minutes of the Grantham Church Board, a practicing homosexual defended that position in a Messiah College class held in the Grantham Church fellowship hall. On April 2 of that year, the Grantham Church Board voted that such a defense should not be allowed to be presented in Grantham Church buildings. According to Martin Rock, then-president of the pro-gay Brethren/Mennonite Council for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (BMC), in 1979 two BMCers spoke in a Messiah college class, resulting in the non-renewal of the contract of the professor who invited them (Rock 2). Yet I had no problem in my Fall 1993 freshman seminar on abortion and homosexuality when I invited a representative of BMC to speak. Perhaps adequate preparation of the students makes the difference in their welcoming dialogue with a view with which they disagree.
I read my paper, "Homosexuality: A Case Study in Holiness" (Chase [1974]) to a Messiah College Faculty Interdisciplinary Fellowship audience of about eleven to summarize what help was available then for people who wanted to deal with homosexuality. As a result I was interviewed on local television (WHP-TV, 1976; videotape available), and the abstract of the paper in the CAPS Bulletin brought requests for the paper from around the world. Few Evangelical authors 23 years ago had addressed the question of homosexuality and holiness. Since then, the quantity of helpful material has exploded. A growing booklist of resources supports the view that change is possible from predominately homosexual to predominately heterosexual psychic response. See the Exodus International web site under Books for a current list.