Campus Crusade for Christ to change name after 60 years

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8: 38)

Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), a mainstay of Christian outreach ministries at universities across the United States for the past 60 years, is changing its iconic name. Their reasoning is because “the word ‘crusade’ has negative associations with the bloody Christian conquests of the 11th to 13th centuries.”

The new name the organization as decided on us Cru which is, you guessed it, short for Crusade and missing Christ. I see a bit of a flaw in the line of reasoning the organization is trying to sell their supporters on in the choice of their new name. 

Campus Crusade for Christ’s president, Steve Douglass, said that after six decades the time had come for a new branding. “Our leadership team and board of directors are united in their belief that this is the right time to embrace a new name, and this name meets our objective of achieving a greater level of effectiveness in ministry.”

As for the elimination of  “Christ” from its name, CCC said that change does not imply less emphasis on the Christian gospel that is the foundation of its mission. “Cru enables us to have discussions about Christ with people who might initially be turned off by a more overtly Christian name,” the organization explained in a statement.

Founder of CCC, the late Bill Bright, is said to have been open to changing the name of the organization but I find it difficult to believe he would have approved of removing Christ from the name.

In my next post I will highlight another organization that recently made a politically correct rather than a Biblically correct decision.