Five years ago, the activities fair on Bradley University’s Olin quad was, as always, a bit of a hot mess. For Jo Treadway, the cacophony was a little much. Far from the bold young woman she has become since, Treadway was just a timid freshman at the time looking for, among other things, a Bible study group.

Her family had attended church regularly while she was in high school.

“When I first went to Bradley, it was important for me to find a Bible study, to at least, like, just get myself started and meet people,” she said.

And when it comes to Christian organizations, Bradley has options. Some tables had students holding pamphlets and Bibles, asking directly if students had “heard the good word.” But Treadway found Cru because a student in a shirt for the organization approached her just to ask how her first weekend at school was treating her, how she liked Bradley.

The Cru organization at Bradley is just one finger on the hand that is Cru Peoria, itself one of many appendages attached to Cru, the U.S. body of Campus Crusades for Christ International.

“She wasn’t really pushing Cru or anything,” Treadway said. Instead, the student invited Treadway to join her at an event over at Laura Bradley Park. She even said they could meet outside Treadway’s dorm building and walk over.

Treadway double majored in health science and religious studies. She would eventually come to identify as pansexual, and is now dating a girl who is a current Bradley student. At the time, though, Treadway did not have a strong connection to the LGBTQ+ community until her cousin, Lilo Hester, came out to her. Before that, she said, it was “not even something on [her] radar.”

“[Lilo] had been struggling with their sexuality, and then they were figuring out their gender, as well, and that kind of began my exposure to the LGBT community,” Treadway said.

Treadway and Hester were both only children, and they grew up spending a lot of time together. “They’re one of my best friends and like an older sibling,” Treadway said.

Freshmen in Cru are placed in different small groups for Bible study that meet throughout the week to work with different students’ schedules. First semester, Treadway’s all-girl group was lead by two students, one of whom was a nursing major who enjoyed tying in science and history to whatever verse was being discussed.

And according to Treadway, it really was a discussion. Different members gave their perspectives and understandings of the readings and that individuality was celebrated within the meetings.

“Cru exists just to point people to Jesus and to give them an opportunity to hear the gospel and respond to what Jesus did for them,” said Lindsey Stewart, a staff member for Cru Peoria who sometimes works on campus. “All the environments we have exist to help people know Jesus.”

In addition to the small groups, freshmen are assigned a sophomore or junior mentor to get to know and discuss their faith one-on-one.

“As I got into it,” Treadway said, “and this might have just been only my experience, but it felt less like I was sitting down with someone to have as like a mentor and get to know and bond with and more on how to follow your religion.”

The relationship did not sit well with Treadway, but she mostly brushed the weirdness aside.

“I am from a relatively progressive church, so this was kind of my first exposure to anything like this where suddenly there’s this regiment on how to follow your belief system.”

Every Thursday, Cru meets as a whole in the Garrett Cultural center, one of the smallest buildings on Bradley’s campus. In an open room with rows of plastic chairs, students gather to worship.

“90 percent of it is just singing Christian rock,” Treadway said.

The service focused on the same chapter that all the small groups discussed that same week. Sometimes students would give testimonies, or there might be announcements, but that was it.

Kaleb Campbell, a senior engineering student who attended Cru as an underclassman said, “it tries to be like a miniature church service with time to hang out before and after.”

Treadway recalls that the musically inclined students would get to perform with lyrics to their worship songs projected for all the students to join in.

“I did really enjoy the Thursday nights because it was just kind of a lowkey,” she said.

But things started to change second semester when Treadway switched Bible study groups to accommodate her new schedule. Aside from the group leader, Treadway said the group was quieter. There was less discussion and more receiving the group leader’s interpretation of things.

“She didn’t quite know how to lead Bible study sessions, and she was very much about pushing her own personal agenda and belief,” Treadway said. “If my thoughts even remotely disagreed with what she was trying to say, she was very quick to challenge me.”

“That small group that she was in was a very trying one. It just– the mix of people wasn’t the best,” Stewart said. “That was a hard Bible study.”

One thing Treadway did enjoy was that this leader would prepare verses from other parts of the Bible to look at how the texts related.

“Her lessons would usually boil down to what we as Christians have to do, and what it would usually boil down to is we have to fix society,” Treadway said.

At one particular meeting, the group was discussing John 8:7-11. The passage about an adultress who is almost stoned according to the law until Jesus commands her would-be stoners, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” In the end, no stones are thrown.

The leader had also brought up 1 Corinthians 13:4. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant.”

The discussion turned to kinds of love, with the leader saying that it was their job as Christians to love sinners, whether they be adulterers, anything else. One type of sinner she listed was gay people, and Treadway ended up in a back and forth with the student-leader.

“She’s like, ‘Don’t you see it as this way?’ and I said, ‘No, I really don’t.’ And she just got very disgruntled and very worried, and she’s like, ‘Well you should see it this way because that’s what God said.’ This way being you know you should see this as being gay is a sin.” ‘You know, there was nothing in there that was like ‘love is between a man and a woman’’

Isaac Oliver, an assistant professor of religious studies at Bradley University, and one of Treadway’s former professors, said the use of either of the above-stated passages to justify anti-gay sentiments is surprising.

“Jesus doesn’t deal with [homosexuality] anywhere. You can infer, of course. You can assume. You can build on–you can reconstruct a context.”

A more commonly cited part of 1 Corinthians is verse 6:9-10 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality … will inherit the kingdom of God.”

However, looking to the Bible for thoughts on same-sex love and marriage is largely a fruitless endeavor according to Oliver.

“It’s anachronistic to speak about, in any case, same sex marriage. That’s a foreign concept for anybody in antiquity,” he said.

“They’re not thinking about this mutual, consensual, romantic love between two informed adults who want to be committed to each other in some kind of monogamous relationship,” he said.

Although same-sex love did exist at the time, as evidenced by such historical figures as Hadrian, the Roman Emperor who had a male lover whose death he mourned intensely.

“The more progressive religious circles, they place more emphasis on limiting the meaning of the text to an original historical context and then from there thinking about how the text might be relevant or not relevant to today,” Oliver said.

Treadway’s altercation with her Bible study leader bothered her, so she reached out to Stewart but was told to contact her mentor first.

But when Treadway went to meet with her mentor, she was greeted with instructional packets about sin. Her concerns were not addressed.

That was the end of Treadway’s freshman year. When her sophomore year began, she did not return to Cru, but that was when the text messages started coming in. Treadway called it harrassment and then walked her words back, but she did say they would not stop.

Every Thursday she was getting texts asking why she was not at Cru.

“We do want to invite students, and I’m assuming that instead of experiencing that as caring, she felt that as judgemental, which is a bummer,” Stewart said.

Treadway remembers telling the messengers that she had a lot on her plate. Between eighteen credit house, sorority leadership, and other commitments. “I have to kind of cut and figure out which clubs I want to stay in this year,” she said.

But that was not enough. After a few weeks, Stewart texted Treadway asking to meet for coffee, her treat. Treadway figured it would be worth it to get the coffee, and agreed. Stewart told her they would meet at the Student Center, and Treadway assumed the two would head to Starbucks from there.

When she arrived, Treadway said she was ushered into a meeting room in the basement of the student center. Stewart remembered it differently. She said it was in the Student Center atrium. The atmospheres of the two locations are distinct. The meeting rooms are closed off rooms with oval tables, the circle tables in the atrium are out in the open with daylight able to pour in through the massive wall of windows.

Stewart said she did not remember much from the meeting five years ago. “I didn’t know that our conversation had gone poorly until afterwards,” she said. “I’ve changed a lot in five years, and so hopefully, I’m sure there are some ways I could have handled it better, that I potentially could have done something super embarrassing.”

According to Treadway, she was told she was wrong for loving and supporting her cousin who was struggling with their gender. Treadway said she was told she needed to get them out of her life immediately.

Stewart does not remember a cousin coming up. “I only remember her referencing her having neighbors, but it was a long time ago, so she might have mentioned something about having a cousin,” she said.

When asked about her views on homosexuality, Stewart said, “I always am hesitant to say things very directly or just in a matter of fact approach because it’s very much people’s lives and there’s so much feeling and emotion attached to it … I do believe that that is a big hole that the church has unfortunately done a very bad job of listening and loving the people from that community.”

Despite her hesitancy, she did say, “I would say the Bible does say that homosexuality is sinful both in the old and the new testaments.”

Additionally she said, “I don’t believe that particular sin is any worse, nor do I think they should be discriminated against by any means, but I do believe that it’s outside of scripture.”

Afterwards Treadway continued to receive text messages but eventually they stopped.

The next spring, Treadway remembers running into a member of Cru who had not been involved in the whole situation.

Treadway remembers the conversation. She said, “‘I just can’t believe what’s going on?’ and like ‘Well, what’s going on?’ She’s like, ‘You’re going to hell.’ And I said, ‘What makes you say that?’ And she’s like, ‘I just heard about why you quit Cru, and that you would choose your cousin who’s such a sinner over me.’”

In the end, Treadway came away from Cru with her faith intact. “I mean there’s a lot that I still don’t agree with in terms of organized religion,” she said.

Her current pastor is a woman and a feminist and is helping to fund her transgender grandson’s hormone replacements.

“I’m one of the lucky few who was able to kind of harmonize, you know, who I am with kind of how I see the world,” she said.

When informed that Treadway is still pursuing her faith, Stewart said, “I really love to promote churches that uphold [God’s] word and have a really high view of scripture cause I don’t want people trying to lead Christian lifes based on how they feel.”

She added, “But I’m so happy that there’s space for people to disagree, and I’m really glad that she wants to continue to pursue her faith.”