A student at a private Catholic university said his grade was marked down for referring to God as a male.
Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, a professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, reportedly gave the student a bad grade on a paper because he used “male-gendered language for God repeatedly,” according to the College Fix.
The student emailed Gonzalez-Andrieu after receiving the poor grade to contest it, saying, “Your comment that I referred to God as a male – I should not have gotten any points off for that,” the student wrote.
“MULTIPLE times throughout the Bible God is referred to as a ‘he,’” the student continued. “I feel targeted by your comment, as I was raised in the church with the belief that God is a male.”
Gonzalez-Andrieu then offered the student the opportunity to “resubmit your paper and add a footnote stating your reasons as a scholar to opt to preserve male language for God,” but refused to change the grade until after that had been done.
“As I indicated to the class community several times, in the footnotes you can have a conversation with other scholars,” she wrote. “This gives you a way to highlight and support the reasons for your choices regarding multiple questions. Please resubmit your paper and add a footnote stating your reasons as a scholar to opt to preserve male language for God. I am sure you can do this well. That’s all you need to do and I will then review your paper once more.”
Will Donahue, chairman of the school’s College Republican branch, slammed Gonzalez-Andrieu’s actions as a “personal attack” on the student’s “freedom of religion.”
“I am appalled by this blatant heresy coming out of the theology department,” Donahue said in a statement. “This type of compelled speech cannot be tolerated by LMU.”
