SPRING ARBOR – The East Coast team of Soulforce Equality Ride met with students, faculty and community members in Spring Arbor Saturday afternoon. Joining the 25 activists were about 20 students and community members.
Spring Arbor refused to allow the activists on campus, so the group met across the street at Township Park for four hours.
Across M-60, troopers from the Michigan State Police, deputies from the Jackson County Sheriff's Department and officers from Spring Arbor Township patrolled the campus of this conservative Christian university. Spring Arbor students say they heard administrators tell student leaders Soulforce came to Christian universities to "embarrass" the universities with "megaphones," and plans to get arrested.
However, Soulforce had already promised they would not enter the campus and they didn't. They spent the afternoon having a barbecue picnic, tossing a football, playing on the playground equipment and discussing transgender issues with the gathered students and faculty.
They did promise they would be back next year.
"Spring Arbor will definitely be on the list," Katie Higgins, co-director of the Soulforce team, said. "We want to continue this conversation."
After a careful and rousing chorus of Om Shanti, the group launched into what organizers called a dialogue.
Drew Hinkle, an SAU student who is openly gay, told the gathered Soulforce team what LBGT and ally students have endured in the last months while attending SAU, including harassment of students who attended a bowling event recently. "Apparently you're not allowed to bowl with gay people," Hinkle said. "They think we're intolerant of their religious perspective."
Joanne Nemecek, wife of Julie Nemecek the transgender professor recently fired by Spring Arbor, joined the group and spoke as well. She told the story of her struggle to accept Julie, and her struggle with God, which she says was resolved when she prayed. "I told God I didn't love the whole person,"she said. "I turned it all over to God, and God turned my heart right around."
She spoke of seeing the "fingerprint of God" in all people, and finding an amazement at God's diverse creation.
Soulforce arrived without incident and left without incident. They added the stop to the Equality Ride after a concerted letter writing campaign to bring them to Spring Arbor. The university was between a stop in Ohio and the group's next stop in Grand Rapids, where they will attempt to dialogue with students, faculty and staff at Calvin College and at Cornerstone University.
– See additional coverage by Sara Mieras of Soulforce events at Cornerstone.
