Whether professors at religious colleges perform ministerial functions

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. MorrisseyBerru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020), this Court instructed lower courts to consider a variety of factors in determining when the ministerial exception applies. Yet, in clear conflict with that decision and those of other, lower courts, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected Petitioner Gordon College’s designation of its faculty as “ministers,” even though Gordon’s professors are “Christian educators” who are the College’s primary means of accomplishing its religious charge—to “transmit, carry, and advance the Christian mission through teaching, scholarship and service,” App.120a—by integrating their evangelical Christian faith in all their teaching and scholarship. Instead, the court focused on the fact that this faculty member did not teach religion and was not required to lead devotional, prayer, or chapel exercises. That decision misunderstands the importance of the integration of religious faith with academic disciplines, exacerbates a split of authority, and presents two questions for review: 1. Whether professors at religious colleges perform ministerial functions when the college exists to spread its faith, and the college requires faculty, as a primary component of their position, to integrate Christian doctrine into their work and academic disciplines, engage in teaching and scholarship from a decidedly religious perspective, and serve as advisors and mentors for student spiritual formation. 2. Whether the First Amendment requires courts to defer to the good-faith characterization of a ministerial position by a religious organization or church.