TURLOCK, Calif. – California State University is refusing to reinstate a Christian student group to its Stanislaus campus because the group’s bylaws require leaders to practice what they preach.

Students with Chi Alpha, a student group founded in 1953, recently wrote a letter to university officials requesting a formal reinstatement on campus after the university system last year banned religious groups that require leaders to believe their mission and beliefs, Diverse Education reports.

Chi Alpha is open to any student, but the group’s constitution requires its leaders who lead Bible studies and worship services to affirm their Christian beliefs. That requirement led Cal State Stanislaus to rescind Chi Alpha’s recognized status, and forced the group to cancel more than a dozen previously approved events, according to the news site.

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The group’s leaders submitted a new constitution to meet the university’s new standards last fall, along with a statement condemning the policy as unconstitutional. School officials didn’t like the latter, and initially demanded that Chi Alpha remove the criticism from its constitution, but later reversed course after the group appealed the decision to the university president.

Yet despite the change of heart, the university continues to ban Chi Alpha from the Stanislaus campus, according to media reports.

“How can someone lead us if they don’t share our mission?” Chi Alpha’s Stanislaus chapter president Bianca Travis said in a statement Monday. “It’s impossible to genuinely lead a worship service or Bible study unless you believe what you’re teaching.”

Adele Keim, attorney for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty representing Chi Alpha, pointed out the hypocrisy of the Cal State policy for Diverse Education.

“Chi Alpha did everything Cal State asked four months ago. But Cal State officials keep moving the goal posts,” Keim said. “Cal State Stanislaus allows fraternities to limit their leaders and members to men. So why can’t a religious group require its student religious leaders to practice what they preach? We call on call state to reinstate the Chi Alpha chapter immediately.”

Keim elaborated further in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle.

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“Timothy White, the chancellor of the California State University – the largest in the nation – has decreed that religious student groups that ask their student leaders to share their beliefs are engaging in ‘religious discrimination,’” she wrote.

“In other places, asking someone to believe in what they teach is called ‘integrity.’ In White’s world, it’s bias.”

Keim also pointed out the issue at Cal State goes beyond Chi Alpha, and administrators seem to be targeting Christian groups, specifically.

“White’s implementation of this policy, which he inherited from his predecessor, has been even worse. Although on paper it applies to all religious student groups, starting last August administrators appear to have systematically targeted Christian groups, telling dozens of them to drop their religious leadership requirements or be shut down,” she wrote in the Chronicle.

“In some cases, entire organizations — including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (a Bible study group started at Cambridge University in the 1870s), Cru and Chi Alpha — have been told that as long as they have a religious-leadership requirement, they are not welcome anywhere in the CSU. Meanwhile, White continues to let fraternities and sororities limit both their membership and leadership to men or women only.”

And while Keim acknowledges that Cal State officials continue to allow the Christian groups to meet on campus – refusing to do so would be “flatly unconstitutional,” she said – she believes “the chancellor has been utterly disingenuous about his policy’s effect.”

“To pretend that this will not affect the way religious students are perceived on campus is a farce,” she wrote.

The evidence of how policies shape perspective was highlighted recently by the New York Times in a report on a Jewish student-government candidate at UCLA.

In that case, a student government leader questioned the candidate on how her religious beliefs might bias her work as a member of student government, then asked the candidate to leave the room while student government leaders discussed her religious beliefs for about 40 minutes, according to Keim’s Chronicle editorial.

“Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” the student asked his classmate.

UCLA officials described the incident as “intellectually and morally unacceptable,” but Keim contends the situation is exactly the type of behavior Cal State’s new policy seems to promote.

White “has it exactly backward: Asking students to believe what they teach is integrity, not discrimination,” she wrote. “White should scuttle his wrongheaded policy and treat the CSU’s religious student groups at least as well as he treats its fraternities.”