Things should be what they are, in higher education as elsewhere. Colleges advertising a liberal-arts curriculum should immerse their students in literature, history, and philosophy. STEM giants such as Georgia Tech should provide, to the extent possible, world-class labs. Community colleges should offer affordable credits to local residents. The University of Alabama should teach football. (I’m joking. Mostly.)
This principle is particularly true for religious schools, which have a special obligation to be faithful to their stated purposes. Zaytuna College, a Muslim institution in California, should (and does) teach the Koran. Jewish Yeshiva University ought not to shill for “Palestine.” Christian colleges, buffeted by declining religiosity and the contempt of Democratic administrations, must take extraordinary care not to devolve into secularism. Do they? In some cases. Yet the story of Christian higher education in America is increasingly a narrative of faithlessness, compromise, and decline.
Most of the information needed by a prospective Christian-college consumer is online, ready to be accessed.Why this matters depends on one’s perspective. For the non-Christian but right-leaning reader, the separation of institutions from their principles is inherently suspect—one more blow against the Burkean “little platoons” that stand between the people and an overweening state. For the Christian parent, the untrustworthiness of the local faith-based college is a far less abstract disaster. Every year, tens of thousands of well-meaning families save and sacrifice to afford private-Christian tuition. If the colleges in question teach Wokeness with Protestant Characteristics, or “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” then real harm has been done. Little Johnny would have been much better off at State U.
Happily, this isn’t 1990. Most of the information needed by a prospective Christian-college consumer is online, ready to be accessed by those in the know. What follows is a consideration of how that research ought to be done, in the form of four leading questions and answers. Full disclosure: I am a Christian and have in mind orthodox, Biblical Christianity. The college shopper belonging to a liberal Protestant tradition is advised to ignore the advice herein—or reverse it.
1) What Are the Rules?
I do not contend that an authentic Christian university must enroll only Christians. I do contend that an unbelieving student at such a college should feel awkward as hell. (Sorry.) Because a faithful Christian institution will necessarily hold to Biblical teaching on sexuality, campus rules should reflect the doctrines that marriage is a state uniting a man and a woman, that homosexuality and transgenderism are sinful, and that extra-marital sex is an offense against God.
In practice, this means that a Christian college will regulate the after-hours mingling of men and women and forbid outright the practice of homosexuality. It means that dorms will be sorted according to biological sex, not postmodern notions of “gender.” One is highly likely to find a university’s student handbook online, allowing one to peruse at one’s leisure the “rules of the road.” If the handbook isn’t online, request a copy during a campus visit. In either case, one will surely encounter current undergraduates on one’s tour. Ask two or three what rule enforcement at the institution actually looks like.
Of course, not every important regulation concerns human sexual ethics. Though I would strike from my list any Christian school that boasted, say, a university-sanctioned LGBTQ+ club, other matters are similarly relevant. Must enrolled students attend weekly “chapel” services? Are Bible classes mandatory for all undergraduates, or may students opt out of them by claiming some other faith? What about the campus health clinic? If its advertised services include the dispensing of abortifacients, one is obviously no longer in the realm of Christian higher ed.
If a professedly Christian college hires non-Christians to teach, it is deceiving its customers.2) Who Are the Faculty?
Here I must draw a red line. If a professedly Christian college hires non-Christians to teach, it is deceiving its customers. I’ll go further: A robust and orthodox statement-of-faith requirement is the minimum standard that a Christian university must meet to deserve the label. As anyone who works in Christian higher ed learns in five minutes, applicants for faculty positions regularly attempt to deceive hiring committees about their religiosity. (Yes, the academic job market really is that bad.) Prospective students and their parents should thus read the required faculty faith statement and research the extent to which the institution enforces it.
How is this done? To begin with, find the college’s “Careers” website or its listings on HigherEdJobs.com. A sincerely Christian university will describe its faith requirements in each job posting and will probably link to the statement itself. Yet even if the language in question is flawless, the careful consumer has more work to do. He or she should visit two or three higher-ed communities on social media (r/Professors is a good subreddit) and search for the institution under review. How is the school perceived by others in the higher-ed sector? Do unbelieving applicants describe being thwarted by the statement of faith?
Of course, the religion department’s faculty composition is more important than the math department’s. Here I would spend extra time, going so far as to glance at the titles of faculty publications. One needn’t be a Sunday School teacher to know that journal articles in the “Queering the Apostle Paul” vein are a bad sign.
Nor must one be a theologian to peruse with discernment a list of chapel speakers, all of whom should be considered “temporary” or “one-day-only” faculty. The presence on the schedule of, e.g., New Age mental-health zealots should immediately remove an institution from consideration, but so might the appearance of suspected race-hustlers in the Robin DiAngelo camp. If a chapel speaker’s (easily searchable) biography reveals a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) obsession, one ought to be worried. Either the institution believes that a noxious leftist fad is reconcilable with Christian doctrine, or it has lost control of its chaplain’s office. Neither possibility is encouraging.
Genuflection before the “diversity” gods is both bad in its own right and a signal of hidden heresies elsewhere.3) How’s the Wokeness?
Speaking of DEI, a search for that acronym on a university’s website is likely to be highly instructive. I would search, too, for the individual constituent terms themselves. This is not to say, of course, that any mention of “diversity,” “equity,” or “inclusion” is disqualifying. But it is certainly the case that genuflection before the “diversity” gods is both bad in its own right and a signal of likely hidden heresies elsewhere. DEI is the tip of the spear, the canary in the coal mine. If an allegedly Christian university has capitulated to it, what other ground has it given?
With that in mind, I offer the following sub-questions for the reader’s practical use. Again, no single violation is damning, but any unsatisfactory response ought to give the discerning campus visitor serious pause.
• Are any woke courses mandatory for all undergraduates?
Visiting the website of my own denomination’s college, I am saddened to discover that all undergraduates must take at least one course with a “Diversity” classification. Though some of the options sound harmless (e.g., “Hispanic Literature I”), others are surely leftist and propagandistic in character (how could “Social Diversity & Inequality” not be?). More importantly, the very existence of the mandate speaks to a creeping progressivism on campus. What other leftist preoccupations have found purchase in that fertile soil?
• Must students undergo implicit-bias or “microaggressions” training as a requirement?
The former is anti-scientific hokum, while the latter is sheer political muscle-flexing. Neither has any place at a Christian school.
• Did the university release a “George Floyd statement” during the summer of 2020?
And, if so, what did it say?
• Did the institution ask for an “exemption” to Obama-era Title IX requirements?
During the second Obama administration, numerous Christian schools requested and received a religious exemption to new regulatory requirements concerning “nondiscrimination” against gay and transgender students. Since complying with those regulations would have meant abandoning important Biblical doctrines, I have very serious questions about any university that didn’t opt out.
The list of colleges that did can be found here. (See page 21.) But note also that some Christian schools (such as Hillsdale) don’t accept federal money and aren’t beholden to Title IX in the first place. Consider that a super-exemption.
Out of every dozen “Christian” schools, a solid 11 are likely frauds.4) Who Are the Alumni?
My last question is in some ways the hardest to answer. Nevertheless, prospective Christian-school students and parents ought not to ignore it. What does a social-media search for a college’s graduates reveal? If every alum one finds is obviously a progressive secularist, it is worth asking what the institution is teaching. If committed Christian adults abound, one ought to be encouraged.
Another way of looking at the same issue is as follows. Any orthodox Christian college operating in 2024 will attract controversy. Do the online complaints bemoan the school’s rigidness and refusal to compromise, or do they lament its lack of missional integrity? For that matter, who’s doing the complaining: conservative Generation X or far-left Generation Z?
Conclusion
As should be obvious by now, the advice in this article isn’t for everyone. Neither are Christian universities, which necessarily lack some of the free-speech and viewpoint-diversity policies that are valuable on public campuses. If, furthermore, consumers could rely on any single marker of authenticity (e.g., a school’s membership in a Christian-college organization), intensive research wouldn’t be necessary. Sadly, we can’t, and it is. Out of every dozen “Christian” schools, I suspect a solid 11 are frauds. Even that may be overly generous. This doesn’t mean that Christian parents should despair—merely that we should be wise, prayerful, and deliberate. It’s a fallen world out there.
But, hey, how about the state public flagship? At least there the kids will know they’re in the lion’s den and can act accordingly.
Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.