The College Fix reports that a “public university in Canada recently canceled a speech set to be given by a high-profile Christian speaker after one student complained.”
The philosophy department at the University of New Brunswick had invited Corey Miller, president of Ratio Christi, a Christian campus apologetics organization, to speak on September 21 on whether Christianity is good or bad for the world.
The event’s title was originally “Is Christianity Good or Bad for Civilization?” But to defuse hostility, Miller changed it to “Religious Beliefs: Axiological Reflections on Western Civilization,” which satisfied the university.
But “one student still raised concerns to faculty about Miller, which led to the talk’s cancellation,” reports 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 on Sept. 18.
The basis was apparently a story published five months ago in 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 experience regarding homosexuality in that story.
“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 was quoted as saying by the Signal. With legal assistance from the religious law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, Miller, Miller said he was exonerated.
But “UNB’s faculty appeared unwilling to risk its public image by hosting Miller,” says The Fix.
“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 a September 18 email.
Miller says that what happened to him will have a “chilling effect.”
“For Christian professors to operate — you’re operating clandestinely — and that’s why I’m not surprised by the fear and trembling by that department at the University of New Brunswick,” he said.
“Debating competing ideas is healthy,” Miller said, arguing that a more appropriate response would have been to invite an opposing speaker to him to offer balance.
“But instead, they acted sheepish for no reason and, as a consequence, have become part of the cancel culture problem,” Miller said.
