Written by P. Jesse Rine |
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
In many ways, the Christian academy has entered an uncharted territory, one that will require the fortitude of a pioneering spirit. For the sake of our callings as scholars and practitioners within Christian higher education, now is the time to lay aside our neutral world maps and get to the business of negative world exploration, cartography, and construction. 

Leaders in Christian higher education must constantly wrestle with one fundamental question: How can we position faith-based institutions to flourish without losing their souls? While this perennial dilemma has taken various forms throughout American history, its complexity depends upon the degree of discontinuity between Christian orthodoxy and the values of society at large. In times of general alignment, this negotiation is fairly straightforward; in times of opposition, the challenge intensifies.
What, then, are we to make of our present moment? How and to what extent should Christian colleges relate to the wider culture in which they are situated? Conventional wisdom among many leaders within Christian higher education points to a constellation of cultural engagement tactics.
Seek middle ground. Promote pluralism. Exude civility and hospitality.
Articles appearing in the latest issue of Advance, the semiannual magazine published by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) and promoted as “the leading voice of Christian higher education,” illustrate how these tactics are typically justified. In “Stewarding Our Call to the ‘Middle Space’,” Jonathan Schimpf interviews Shirley Mullen, President Emerita of Houghton University and current member of the CCCU’s Board of Directors. Mullen describes the thesis of her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future, which argues that Christians have a “particular calling” to function as “agents of active hospitality in a middle space—hosting conversations of ‘translation’ and ‘bridgebuilding’ that allow those on either pole to see each other as fellow human beings and not enemies or abstractions.” Mullen understands this calling as not limited to individuals; it also extends to institutions like Christian colleges and universities: “As believers who are entrusted with the tools of higher education, we also bridge aspects of the current polarization within our culture.”
While Mullen advocates for dialogue as a tool for navigating differences within society, CCCU Chief Communications Officer Amanda Staggenborg argues that difference is itself a social good. In “Meeting the Need for Faith in Challenging Political Times,” Staggenborg acknowledges our highly politicized environment and encourages readers to “lean into challenging conversations with faith and purposeful unity.” And why should the reader take such a personal risk? Because, according to Staggenborg, “inspiring and engaging in pluralism is the goal of a civilized society, both in and outside of higher education.” After reassuring the reader that “what we are experiencing in this modern political and cultural climate is not unique to history,” Staggenborg concludes by asserting that difference could actually be a source of faith: “Christians have found faith, not only in spiritual guidance, but in humanity. The core of a democratic society is the celebration of valuable differences of opinion.”
An essay by Staggenborg’s CCCU colleague, Vice President for Research & Scholarship Stanley Rosenberg, further surveys the current cultural landscape. In “Academic Criticism, Civility, Christian Higher Education and the Common Good,” Rosenberg traces the contentious contours of a public square marked by “incendiary comments, inattentive listening, ego-driven and hostile criticism, and polarized political positions” and lays partial blame for the current state of affairs at the feet of “incivility found in the modern American university.” How should Christian higher education respond? By countering the “damaging phenomenon” of incivility through an embrace of the Chrisitan scholarly vocation, which Rosenberg describes as “a particular form of caring, of expressing love, for our neighbour.” According to Rosenberg, the cardinal virtue of this scholarly vocation is hospitality: “Entrusted with the tools and content of knowledge, we are called to welcome others into the community of knowledge. This extends the grace of participation, profoundly reflects the vision of integration, and expresses a vision for the love of neighbour.”
The common thread running through each of these essays is a confidence in Christian higher education’s ability to maintain its mission and position within the wider academy by adopting a cultural engagement strategy. On the surface, the espoused tactics of bridgebuilding, promoting pluralism, and exhibiting civility and hospitality appear unassailable. Upon closer examination, however, a necessary precondition for the strategy’s efficacy comes into focus: an academic milieu characterized by mutual respect, populated with good faith actors, and committed to institutional diversity. Does a sober assessment of American higher education confirm such a climate, or have national leaders misread the current state of play?
To fully appreciate the dynamics of our present moment, we must first look to the past, for where we are today is far from where we started. The history of American higher education is largely a story of departure from founding commitments. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the earliest American colleges were thoroughly Christian in nature and built upon a medieval model rooted in the Christian worldview. Over time, however, the American system secularized, beginning with the period following the Civil War. Although Christianity’s influence declined within much of American higher education over the following century, the system as a whole still sought to construct a unified understanding of the world under the banner of modernism, a scholarly project presupposing objective reality. This common intellectual framework fostered a forum where Christian colleges and universities could make the case for their particular truth claims.
The modern order would eventually give way to the postmodern turn, a cultural and philosophical movement that profoundly altered the postsecondary landscape. Instead of viewing language as a stable and unbiased medium of exchange for all individuals, regardless of personal background, postmodernists argued that meaning is inherently tied to one’s particular sociocultural context, and these contexts are inescapably shaped by power relations marked by privilege and marginalization. On the one hand, this reframing of reality resulted in the promotion of diverse perspectives within the academy, a move that appeared to be additive. This was the promise of postmodernism: intellectual discourse could be enlarged without diminishing existing perspectives. On the other hand, the ascendant critical theories that animated postmodernism sowed seeds of discontentment within the academy, which would flower into vines of ideological constriction. This has been the reality of postmodernism in practice: intellectual discourse must be policed to ensure that perspectives promoting oppression are excluded.
This progression within the academy at large—from principled pluralism to ideological gatekeeping—portends an inhospitable professional environment for Christian scholars, whose orthodox theological beliefs are viewed by many as oppressive. This gatekeeping is evident when detractors question elements of the emergent dogma, such as the concept of Christian privilege, which asserts that Christians enjoy certain benefits that accrue from the hegemonic status their religion has achieved in American society. Even the most rational and amiable of critiques can elicit a forceful rebuke.
Take the case of Perry Glanzer, a tenured full professor at Baylor University who has authored a dozen books and more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters. A scholar with particular expertise in the relationship between religion and education, Glanzer recently wrote a piece for the academic journal Religion & Education, a leading venue for publishing research studies that “advance civic understanding and dialogue on issues at the intersections of religion and education in public life.” His article explored complexities that are rarely acknowledged by scholarly treatments of Christian privilege, such as the disparities in experience across various Christian groups and the existence of secular privilege. It is important to note that while Glanzer critiqued certain narratives surrounding Christian privilege, he nevertheless accepted the notion that privilege exists and must be mitigated in order to foster an inclusive collegiate learning environment. His final paragraph concludes, “Overall, student affairs needs to champion and commit to creating the structures and conditions to which a just form of pluralism can flourish.”
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Written by P. Jesse Rine |
Monday, March 11, 2024
The question is not whether a college or university should be civilizational, but rather which sort of civilization it ought to cultivate and how that project can be pursued most effectively. Although the cultural fragmentation of our age has rendered these questions highly contested within the secular academy, the answers are far more straightforward in the Christian college context. In fact, the Christian intellectual tradition provides a storehouse of resources for defining the true, the good, and the beautiful in clear and compelling ways, and then applying those judgments to the pressing issues of our day. This requires, however, that Christian colleges be staffed with faculty who are confident enough in the Christian vision to make those applications amidst a hostile culture.

Can a college be both confessionally Christian and civilizational in its emphasis? This question lies at the heart of a recent essay by Jay Green, Professor of History at Covenant College, which caused a stir among pastors serving in the college’s sponsoring denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Green warns of the rise of “civilizational” colleges “lurking in the background” of the sacred/secular divide, places that use Christian faith to attract Christian families but don’t actually embody a Christian identity. The singular example he cites is Hillsdale College, where “faith is ‘honored’ rather than necessarily believed” and where “less time and attention are given to using Christian insights to critique things like Western Civilization and the American Founding.” In Green’s telling, Hillsdale essentially uses Christianity as both an enrollment marketing tool and a curricular garnish to achieve its real mission—advancing a decidedly conservative political agenda.
Now, it is true that Hillsdale does not fit the traditional definition of an evangelical Christian college. That descriptor has been historically reserved for colleges and universities like Green’s employer, Covenant College, that hire only professing Christians as full-time faculty members and senior administrators. This hiring policy is a baseline requirement for membership in the two national associations that serve Christian postsecondary institutions, the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) and the International Alliance for Christian Education (IACE).
Yet it is impossible to ignore the dramatic reassertion of faith that has occurred at Hillsdale over the last decade, a renaissance made all the more remarkable when placed against the backdrop of secularization that has afflicted most American colleges originally founded by Protestant denominations. In recent years, as many Christian colleges softened the edges of their identities in an attempt to appeal to a broader pool of prospective students, Hillsdale took the opposite approach by more emphatically embracing its institutional mission as a “nonsectarian Christian institution” that “maintains ‘by precept and example’ the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith.” The most striking example of this reassertion was the 2019 opening of Christ Chapel, which was placed in the heart of Hillsdale’s campus as a visible—and costly—marker of the college’s identity. The last decade has also witnessed the expansion of the college’s free online course catalogue, the topics of which—Genesis, Exodus, King David, Ancient Christianity, the Western Theological Tradition, and C. S. Lewis, among others—also testify to the institution’s renewed emphasis on its Christian identity.
On their own, an aesthetically impressive chapel and faith-based public curriculum do not a Christian college make. They do, however, represent the sorts of investments one would expect from an institution serious about its faith-based mission, particularly because both require significant resources and swimming against the cultural tide. Their existence also suggests an educational environment where Christian students and faculty can thrive. To his credit, Green acknowledged this reality in a follow-up piece that walked back some of his most egregious assertions while simultaneously doubling down on his original “distinction between ‘confessional’ and ‘civilizational’ ideas of a Christian college.” 
Green’s distinction fundamentally misunderstands both the societal function of higher education and the unique mission of the Christian college.
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Written by P. Jesse Rine |
Thursday, November 30, 2023
This is the diversity we need: Christian colleges and universities that are unafraid to pursue their distinctive missions regardless of the spirit of the age. When acting in accordance with its trademark commitment to curricular intentionality, faith integration, and programmatic integrity, Christian higher education offers something different in the marketplace than the vast majority of educational options available to prospective students. Professional handwringers may lament the lack of conformity to regnant ideologies, but the rest of us should applaud principled independence as a buttress to academic freedom, religious autonomy, and freedom of association. In an age of capitulation, American higher education—and the public it serves—are better for it.

Have you heard? Writers for The Chronicle of Higher Education are concerned. Very concerned.
It turns out that not all colleges and universities are exercising their academic freedom in the same way. In fact, some have even proposed alternative approaches to engaging diversity contra the antiracism of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi.
Now, you may be thinking this sounds exactly like what academic freedom should entail—different people approaching important issues from their own considered perspectives. But don’t worry, the higher education commentariat will set you straight.
You see, the only way for colleges and universities to foster success for all students is to implement Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Gender Ideology. It’s just a fact. People who question this fact are dangerous to democracy.
One such person is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Keith E. Whittington declares that DeSantis has unleashed a “terrifying plot against higher education” via his Stop WOKE Act, which threatens majors in Gender Studies and CRT. Presumably the threat to democracy also includes the 6 in 10 state lawmakers who voted for the bill, as well as the 6 in 10 Floridians who returned DeSantis to the governor’s mansion for a second term after the bill became law.
Lest you conclude that the problem could be limited to just one state, Megan Zahneis is here to alert you to the insidious consequences of anti-woke activity. She reports that the spread of anti-DEI legislation “is having a chilling effect on the recruitment of faculty members and administrators in Florida and Texas.” Even more worrisome is the totally real threat of brain drain from these states—plus Georgia and North Carolina—where a staggering one-third of faculty “said they were actively considering employment in another state.”
Conditions are so dire that colleges have begun building a modern-day underground railroad for beleaguered students. Amita Chatterjee profiles Colorado College’s Healing and Affirming Village and Empowerment Network (HAVEN), a program targeting students from the anti-DEI states of Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. This altruistic initiative aims to give refuge to as many as 10 transfer students, each of whom will receive credit for previous coursework, guaranteed campus housing, and full consideration for financial aid.
A clear picture emerges from these stories. Threats to democracy have so damaged American universities that faculty and students alike must seek shelter in the remaining academic enclaves that still know how to properly honor diversity. The situation is bleak, or so we are told.
By this point, you may have developed the sneaking suspicion that a certain political agenda is directing the reporting of one of our nation’s leading trade publications for higher education. Unfortunately, the next story will do little to disabuse you of that notion.
Helen Huiskes, herself a senior at Wheaton College (IL), reports that the woke wars have claimed another casualty—the integrity of Christian higher education. It seems many Christian colleges are reacting to the DEI controversy in ways both cynical and craven. Some are policing the content professors teach in class. Others are writing statements on CRT to attract more applicants. Few will host Jemar Tisby on campus anymore, and one can only assume that Tisby’s former boss, the aforementioned Kendi, won’t be receiving many more speaking invitations either.
In Huiskes’ telling, these developments point to Christian higher education’s willingness to abandon racial justice in pursuit of stronger enrollment. Hers is a shopworn progressive framing: “Don’t subscribe to critical theory’s worldview of power, privilege, and intersectionality? You must care more about the bottom line than about loving your minoritized neighbors.” Against the backdrop of recent trends in American higher education, however, the institutional behaviors she describes should be viewed as praiseworthy acts of courage and conviction, not recalcitrant avoidance of the real issues surrounding race in America.
For decades, leftist ideology steadily advanced through key American institutions, laying the groundwork for the cultural revolution that erupted in the summer of 2020. Colleges and universities were central sites for this advance, the activist spirit of which became more aggressive and transparent after the election of President Donald Trump. The trajectory of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), a national organization of scholars of postsecondary institutions, is illustrative.
The 2016 ASHE Annual Conference commenced the day after Trump’s election, which sent shockwaves through the left-leaning association. The following year, ASHE President Shaun Harper described American higher education as an enterprise conceived in racism and declared that scholars must fight the abuses of white power in the academy. The 2018 ASHE conference theme, “Envisioning the Woke Academy,” was promoted by an eight-minute video of scholars declaring that “current higher education research is in an awakening process.” The ultimate goal? To cultivate a critical consciousness that recognizes existing forms of systemic oppression, such as inequality and microaggressions, and brings about institutional “transformation for justice.”
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Written by P. Jesse Rine |
Monday, November 27, 2023
Although the careerist may value the institution’s unique mission, its faithful pursuit is ultimately incidental to his primary motivation: ascending to the next rung on the professional ladder. Maintaining the distinctive character of Christian higher education and ensuring its enduring efficacy will require intentional, robust, and principled leadership that both understands and resists the mechanisms of isomorphic homogenization. If Christian colleges and universities are to continue the vital Gospel work of changing hearts and renewing minds, their leaders must eschew the temptation to play the coward, copycat, or careerist.

The soul of Christian higher education is its distinctive institutional mission: to pursue the implications of the Lordship of Christ over every academic field and discipline. This mission defines the Christian college’s purpose, which distinguishes it from secular peers and provides an organizing framework for institutional action. Given its central nature, it is little wonder why so much thought has been devoted to understanding the role of institutional mission within Christian colleges and universities. Scholarly treatments have ranged from profiling specific ecclesial models for higher education, to constructing typologies that span various theological traditions, to examining the negative effects of denominational disengagement. Yet common to all is a recognition that these vital organs of the church will flourish only insofar as their unique missions are intentionally maintained.
It is therefore disheartening to witness instances of mission drift within Christian higher education, for we know where this path leads: further compromise and eventual secularization. Perhaps most insidious are the forms of drift that appeal to conditions or standards within the industry at large to justify a departure from the college’s historic character. Although the details may differ across cases, the formula remains constant: Campus leaders point to a particular aspect of the college’s historic character as a rationale for moving the institution into better alignment with recent trends. For example, one institution reaffirms its Christian commitment to caring for all students by approving an official student club for sexual minorities. Another institution demonstrates its devotion to institutional excellence by appointing a vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion to implement “best practices” for achieving racial justice on campus. A third institution expands the reach of its Christian witness by reducing its core requirements to attract greater numbers of prospective students. Whether compromising on sexual ethics, uncritically adopting secular approaches to race, or sacrificing curricular substance on the altar of the market, the institution has mutated even as its leaders declare its mission to be more vibrant than ever.
For those concerned with the continuance of authentically Christian higher education, it is imperative to understand the mechanisms that lead to this form of mission drift. To the outside observer, the above examples might appear to be separate, one-off occurrences of poor administrative decision-making. In actuality, these choices are united by a faulty view of leadership, as evidenced by the lack of integrity between the institution’s stated values and the behavior of its principal. This discontinuity betrays a troubling reality: The chief executive has conceptualized and operationalized leadership in ways that elevate deference to external entities above institutional self-determination.
The aforementioned approach is problematic because organizations operating within the same industry tend to become more alike over time as they respond to shared external pressures. This phenomenon is known as institutional isomorphism, and its effects can be seen within Christian higher education. Isomorphism is a natural and common occurrence across various industries, but it becomes corrosive when it pulls an organization away from its distinctive mission. College presidents who fall prey to the above character flaw—the tendency to subordinate the interests of their own institutions to the wishes of the wider academy—ultimately function as accelerants of mission drift because they go with the flow instead of resisting the homogenizing forces of isomorphism. Leaders who exhibit this trait regularly appear in one of three different small-souled forms, each corresponding to a particular mechanism of isomorphic change: Coward, Copycat, and Careerist.1
In their seminal work, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell describe institutional isomorphism as “a constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions.”2 This constraining process occurs through three mechanisms, and each pushes Christian colleges and universities to become more like the rest of American higher education. The first is coercive isomorphism, which DiMaggio and Powell describe as “formal and informal pressures exerted on organizations by other organizations upon which they are dependent, and by cultural expectations in the society within which organizations function.”3 These pressures can “be felt as force, as persuasion, or as invitations to join in collusion.”4
Two primary sources of coercive isomorphism within the field of higher education are government regulation and institutional accreditation. Both exert coercive force, though the former is more direct while the latter is more indirect. Numerous government regulations influence the behavior of postsecondary institutions, yet the most consequential relate to eligibility requirements for participation in the federal student loan program. Christian colleges are roughly 70% tuition dependent on average, which means they rely upon student tuition and fees to provide 7 out of every 10 dollars for their annual operating budgets. Moreover, most Christian college attendees depend upon the federal student loan program to finance their education. As a result, changes to eligibility requirements, such as compliance with Title IX regulations that define traditional approaches to human sexuality as discriminatory, have the power to induce coercive isomorphism within Christian higher education.
Institutional accreditation, itself a requirement for participation in the Title IV federal student loan program, presents another, softer source of coercive isomorphism. While postsecondary accreditors are staffed by full-time officials who coordinate the activities of the association, the site visit teams that actually review institutional performance against the accreditor’s standards of quality are populated by administrators from its member colleges and universities. These administrators not only issue requirements to address areas of noncompliance, but they also share recommendations they believe would benefit the institution, and these recommendations often reflect the consensus of the wider field that includes but goes beyond Christian higher education.
On its own, coercive isomorphism has the potential to exert significant pressure on Christian colleges, and this potency can turn pernicious when faith-based organizations are led by cowards.
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