[Russ]

Originally Posted by towny

It depends on your definition of 'non-believer'. The UCCF has a written statement of faith which those running CUs affilliated to it are required to sign. This ensures that the CU has a consistent belief despite the fact that, being made up of students who arrive, study, graduate and leave, its membership is constantly changing and will have changed completely every three or four years.

There are plenty of churchgoing people who would very much like to run a CU, seeing as it is the singlemost recognised representative of Christianity on a university campus, but who would find it difficult to sign up to even half of the statement of faith (UCCF calls it the 'Doctrinal Basis'). We had just such a situation at Lampeter with people who had difficulty with basic articles of faith like the virgin birth and the physical resurrection. I don't propose to start a discussion in this thread about how much you have to believe in order to be a Christian, but in order to run a Christian Union whose statement of faith includes those things, you have to be a Christian who believes those things.

Your last line is my contention. As long as those in the Union sign a statement professing their Christianity then I can see no problem. If someone was not willing to do so, I'd say their reasoning would need to be studied.