Chicago’s public school bureaucracy has decided that the faith of a Bible college is suddenly disqualifying—and that should chill every freedom-loving American to the bone.
In a lawsuit now drawing national attention, the Moody Bible Institute alleges that Chicago Public Schools barred its students from student-teaching positions because Moody’s hiring practices require faculty and staff to affirm a biblical statement of faith and live accordingly. In plain English: because Moody hires Christians to teach in a Christian school, Chicago says they can’t send their students to teach in public classrooms.
Let’s be clear—Moody isn’t discriminating against anyone. It’s being discriminated *against* for daring to live out its faith.
What Chicago has done isn’t some paperwork misunderstanding. It’s a direct assault on the idea that religious institutions have the right to exist openly, consistently, and without apology in accordance with their own beliefs. CPS demanded that Moody sign a nondiscrimination policy that would forbid it from limiting employment to those who share its Christian confession. When Moody refused to violate its own conscience, CPS responded by kicking them out of the district’s student-teaching program.
That’s not inclusion. That’s coercion. And it’s the kind of governmental overreach our Founders specifically wrote the First Amendment to prevent.
The irony is rich. Chicago will gladly accept teachers from almost any secular institution that preaches every kind of ideology imaginable—but if your worldview happens to be biblical, you’re unfit to teach? What Moody believes about human nature, morality, and truth is not a PR slogan—it’s the foundation of their education model. Expecting them to “turn off” their faith to participate in a government program is like asking a doctor to renounce medicine before performing surgery. It’s absurd.
Faith-based hiring isn’t discrimination—it’s consistency. A Muslim school hires Muslims. A Jewish school hires Jews. A Catholic school hires Catholics. That’s not bias; that’s integrity. Demanding otherwise is the very definition of religious hostility.
Chicago Public Schools claims to oppose discrimination, yet it’s enforcing one of the most discriminatory policies imaginable—a viewpoint test for participation in public education. Worse, CPS partners with other religious colleges that maintain similar faith-based policies. So why target Moody? The answer seems obvious: the bureaucrats in charge don’t like these particular Christian beliefs.
It’s not about tolerance. It’s about control. It’s about enforcing a secular orthodoxy so rigid that any dissenting worldview—even one responsible for producing thousands of educators and missionaries over more than a century—must be silenced.
If CPS gets away with this, the consequences will not end with Moody. Every faith-based institution in America—from Catholic charities to Christian hospitals to Jewish seminaries—will be forced into the same impossible choice: abandon your beliefs or be banned from public life. That’s how religious freedom dies. Not with a single sweeping law, but with a slow, steady erosion of conscience—one “policy adjustment” at a time.
Chicago has already seen what happens when ideology takes precedence over excellence. Schools fail. Students suffer. Violence rises. And now, instead of welcoming a supply of qualified, committed educators, CPS is shutting its doors to teachers motivated by faith, service, and moral conviction. In a district already plagued by teacher shortages, that’s not just bad law—it’s bad leadership.
This isn’t simply a legal fight. It’s a moral one. If the government can punish a college for believing what it teaches, then none of us are safe. The rights we take for granted—speech, worship, conscience—all hinge on this same principle: the state has no authority to dictate belief.
The Moody Bible Institute is standing where many others have been too timid to stand—on the line between freedom and forced conformity. And make no mistake, that line is narrowing by the day. This lawsuit matters far beyond the walls of a Chicago courthouse. It’s a signal flare to every faith-based organization in America: the cost of silence is submission.
Moody’s case will likely take years to resolve. But the rest of us can’t afford to wait that long to decide where we stand. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and anyone who values conscience must rally behind the principle at stake: no government entity has the right to tell a faith-based institution to stop being faithful.
If America is to remain the land of the free, we must defend the right of every citizen—and every college, ministry, or school—to live by the truth they profess, even when it’s unpopular. The founders of this nation enshrined religious liberty as the first freedom for a reason. Without it, every other right eventually crumbles.
Chicago Public Schools may think they’re punishing one Bible college, but what they’re really testing is whether the First Amendment still means what it says. Moody Bible Institute is right to fight back. They are right on principle, right on the law, and right for the country. Because if we don’t draw the line here—we may never get another chance.