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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What Jesus taught is that prayer is WAREFARE. It is the way the kingdom of righteousness prevails over the kingdom of evil. It is the men of today’s church who need to heed this call to arms. It is the men who need to reclaim prayer as the way to fight for our loved ones against the triumvirate, Satan, sin, and death who (though ultimately defeated), if unopposed in this world will bring enormous devastation into their lives.

Today, we continue the series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons. Every guy who gets this blog would stand at the door of his house with a shotgun to protect his family physically. But most Christian men feel inept and inadequate at fighting to protect them, spiritually. As we saw last week, Jesus told his disciples the ultimate weapon for defeating Satan is prayer. But if we are going to use this weapon effectively in spiritual battle, we need to understand it. This episode continues our study of what Jesus taught are the six basic parts of effective prayer, in Matt 6:9-13.
As we seek to follow Jesus’ mission for our individual lives, advancing the righteous reign of King Jesus over our heart loyalties and attitudes, as well as implementing his agenda in our role as husband, father, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, steward of resources, and ambassador of the kingdom, we must displace the kingdom of darkness. Just as a military invasion begins with cruise missiles and bombing runs, our efforts to advance the kingdom on the ground must begin with prayer, the only weapon capable of dislodging the enemy from its strongholds. Prayer is such a potent offensive weapon for advancing the kingdom of Christ over earth, that in Psalm 2 we hear God the Father identify prayer as the way Christ’s kingdom spreads. The Father promises the Anointed One, “ASK of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” As Christ-followers join Christ in ASKING that his kingdom would advance, the Father promises to act.
Jesus teaches the same six principles of prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 and in Luke 11:2-4. The only difference is that in Matthew, Jesus gives an explanation of three of the principles. He explains, may your kingdom come, (Matt 6:10a & Luke 11:2) when he continues may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10b). He explains lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13a, Luke 11:4) when he continues, but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13b). Jesus amplifies forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors (Matt 6:12 & Luke 11:4) two verses later in Matthew 6:14-15 when he says, For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Last week we saw how radically different prayer for Christ-followers is from the religious repetition of holy sayings regimented for certain prayer times in other world religions. These times in Judaism were 9 AM, 12 PM, and 3 PM. The two rote Jewish prayers to be recited were the Shema, Deut 6:4-9, and the Shemoneh ‘esreh, which means eighteen, because if consisted of 18 rote prayers to be recited. Jesus’ teaching about prayer was entirely different; it was not formal, structured, external, regimented words spoken to God as ritual, but an intimate, heart-driven conversation originating from a living, dynamic relationship with The Father. Let’s review the first three prayer principles, which we examined last week, before digging into the final three. So, by way of summary:
1. The principle of ADOPTION: Matt 6:9 Our Father in heaven, which gives us the ENVIRONEMNT for prayer. His help, and spiritual power don’t have to be pried out of his tight-fisted hands. Through Christ we are God’s adopted children and, as it happens, our particular father LOVES TO GIVE GOOD GIFTS TO HIS CHILDREN, especially spiritual power through the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Lk 11:11-13)! It is noteworthy that Jesus had used nearly identical words in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt 7:9-11), but in the Luke account, Jesus substitutes Holy Spirit for good gifts. Both are true. God loves to give good gifts to his children. But the best gift is the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.
I believe that Jesus viewed prayer much more as reporting to our forward battle station and launching a prayer assault against the kingdom of darkness for the advance of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness than he does, than emailing headquarters with a list of our needed provisions. It IS emailing that list, which we will get to in a moment. But prayer, as God designed it, is relentlessly fighting the enemy who wants to destroy you and your family and besmirch the reputation of God. It is being the man, the protector, that God designed Adam to be. “Your sonship,” says Jesus, “means being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who is the producer of spiritual fruit in our lives.” The first prayer principle to remember, is ADOPTION, the environment of prayer. We come to God as his beloved child, calling him Father, a father who loves to give good gifts and especially the power of the Holy Spirt to those who ask.
2.  The second prayer principle is ADORATION: vs 9 continues, Hallowed be your name. Here is the MOTIVATION for prayer. May your name be honored. May you be glorified. May your name be held in high esteem by the whole world. Jesus modeled this aspect of praying at the beginning of his prayer in John 17, When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son THAT THE SON MAY GLORIFY YOU.” A few verses later, Jesus reveals that this desire for The Father to be glorified was the focus of his life,  I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.  (Jn 17:4). At the heart of the request, “May your name be hallowed” is “a burning desire that the whole world may bow before God in adoration, in reverence, in praise, in worship, in honor, and in thanksgiving” (The Sermon on the Mount). The more our prayers are rooted in ADORATION—our desire to see the name and reputation of God honored, the more power they possess.
3. The third prayer principle and one which very often is neglected in our prayers is ADVANCING the kingdom: vs 10 May your kingdom come. Here we see the PURPOSE of prayer. “The focus of your praying,” says Jesus, “should be the advance of my kingdom of righteousness over earth.” Praying “May your kingdom come (i.e. may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven)” is the primary purpose of PRAYER because seeking Christ’s kingdom of righteousness is the primary purpose of Christians’ LIVES. We are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in human hearts and in the culture all over the earth, every square inch of which, King Jesus claims as his own.
In the book of Acts, Peter and John were arrested, warned not to proclaim the gospel, and released. In response, the church gathered to battle for the advance of the kingdom through prayer. In this prayer, they quoted Psalm 2. The opening verses of Psalm 2 speak of the cosmic rebellion against Yahweh, Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, AGAINST THE LORD AND AGAINST HIS ANOINTED. Psalm 2 continues, telling us that Yahweh laughs at their supposed power. Why? Because his answer to the rebellion of the kingdom of darkness is to send Christ, the Anointed One, to recover Adam’s lost kingdom. Palm 2:6 records God saying, As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill. (vs 6) Psalm 2 then describes the words of Yahweh to His Son recorded from the point of view of Jesus.
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But the disagreement, itself part of a larger debate about catholicity, does highlight the problems with that doctrine as it is often presented. By catholicity I mean the attribute of the church by which it is not limited to any one nation, class, or era, but is present wherever and whenever there is true faith and the bonds of the Spirit. It is a spiritual unity diffused through space and time: wherever there is true Christ-embracing faith, there is the church. Catholicity is not visible or formal unity as such, but unity in the Spirit and in the truth that he has revealed in word, sacraments, fellowship, charity and works, etc.). 

Last summer Derrick Brite published an article at Reformation 21, “William Perkins on Keeping It Catholic,” that occasioned a skirmish concerning catholicity by bringing forth a response from a Reformed Church in America (RCA) minister writing pseudonymously with Calvin’s nom de plume ‘Charles D’Espeville.,’ which in turn brought forth the remonstrance of R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary California. Many of the particulars do not merit reconsideration. Brite’s original article is no longer available, while the RCA’s minister’s fit of high dudgeon, while understandable given his personal history with Rome and its historic tyranny over the souls of men, was not pristinely accurate in all its representations.[1]
But the disagreement, itself part of a larger debate about catholicity, does highlight the problems with that doctrine as it is often presented. By catholicity I mean the attribute of the church by which it is not limited to any one nation, class, or era, but is present wherever and whenever there is true faith and the bonds of the Spirit. It is a spiritual unity diffused through space and time: wherever there is true Christ-embracing faith, there is the church. Catholicity is not visible or formal unity as such, but unity in the Spirit and in the truth that he has revealed in word, sacraments, fellowship, charity and works, etc.).[2]
The problem is not with the concept as such, but with how it is discussed. One, catholicity wants a better scriptural defense. Many people appeal to the concept as correct without any attempt to demonstrate its scriptural basis. There are passages at hand to do so like 1 Corinthians 1:2 and 12:13; Ephesians 4:3-6; Acts 9:31; 10:34-35; Revelation 5:9; and 7:9 (amongst others), but they want elaboration, even in accomplished theologians who are otherwise long on exegesis. The Scripture index for Berkhof’s Systematic Theology is 23 pages long, and yet he fails to reference Scripture a single time when discussing catholicity. The Scripture index of Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics is 47 pages long, yet his consideration eschews detailed scriptural reflection at many points: in two pages of consideration of catholicity (“The Church is Catholic,” Vol. IV, 282-284) his only reference to Scripture is in an Augustine quote that appeals to Jude 19 (rather dubiously for our purposes viz. catholicity).[3] He elsewhere cites Scripture plentifully, but in a single clause and without elaboration (322).
Nor has this lack of exegesis been limited to previous eras and longer works. Brite’s original article did not reference Scripture except obliquely in conclusion with an appeal to Jeremiah 6:16, and appealed rather to Perkins’ historical example to plead the cause of catholicity. Clark appeals to 1 Kings 19:18 (and Romans 11:4) and elaborates upon the practical outworking of Acts 1:8, but the bulk of his useful article is concerned with the confessional and historical nature of catholicity. To be clear, we do confess the church’s catholicity (Westminster Confession 25.1-4), and we find support for it in history; Clark is right to appeal to such things in his helpful consideration of catholicity.
But if one’s position is that many contemporary evangelicals are effectively radical sectarians (‘biblicists’) with a benighted view of the church and her history, then appealing more to history, confessions, and the opinions of sundry medieval and ancient teachers than to Scripture is not a prudent approach in trying to convince said evangelicals of the validity and importance of catholicity. Nor can this be limited to dealing with traditional bastions of evangelical belief like independent churches, for as that RCA minister’s article demonstrated, disregarding catholicity is common even in professedly Reformed denominations. Given that many evangelicals are not only ignorant of catholicity but actually take offense at it, convincing them that the concept is a real attribute of the church is best approached by establishing its scriptural validity, not with appeals to things that many evangelicals do not recognize at all (confessions, teaching of early church figures), or about which even the professed adherents or those of a more Reformed bent often have a lukewarm and inconsistent devotion (ibid.).
So it is with historical appeals as well. The proponents of catholicity argue that the Protestant churches and their foremost leaders have always been cognizant of their own catholicity, as evidenced by their practice of appealing to councils, creeds, and the opinions of earlier thinkers in establishing the continuity and fidelity of their own doctrine. That historical argument seems correct, but is naively practiced in many cases; for it does not accomplish much when one’s target audience regards the church as having veered into apostasy from an early date. Saying ‘see, this is catholic because Tertullian and Aquinas believed it too’ doesn’t work when one’s audience either doesn’t know who such people are or thinks that they are apostates whose opinion ipso facto doesn’t matter. The defenders of catholicity therefore make a practical error when they argue its validity primarily on historical and confessional grounds without first demonstrating the scriptural fidelity of the things to which they appeal.
A second problem with catholicity is that its typical form seems unlikely to win the people of Rome on the opposite side, for she has a different definition of catholicity than we. She regards its essence as lying in communion with herself: “Particular Churches are fully catholic through their communion with one of them, the Church of Rome” (Roman Catechism 834). Indeed, catholicity is another of the many things that we need to recover from the corrupt notions of the church that Rome has propagated.[4] When we therefore appeal to catholicity to urge the legitimacy of our churches, they are apt to dismiss us (e.g., their catechism refers to us as “ecclesial communities” (1400), not churches).[5]
This is the weakness in something like Perkins’ A Reformed Catholic, to which Clark and Brite appealed. Saying that a Reformed Catholic is one “that holds the same necessary heads of religion with the Roman Church; yet so as he pares off and rejects all errors in doctrine whereby the said religion is corrupted”[6] seems unlikely to convince most members of Rome, and as a dual polemic/irenic approach it contains another inherent weakness which is the third problem with catholicity. Catholicity requires careful explanation in relation to Rome. In that same work Perkins says of Rome “we take it to be no Church of God.” He never speaks of Rome being catholic, and actually juxtaposes the Roman and Catholic churches.[7] How then can we speak of catholicity having any part here? For catholicity is a mark of the church, and yet here we are denying that Rome is a true church, which would appear to mean that any concurrence of belief between us is a matter of coincidence, not catholicity.
The answer, which is already latent in Perkins, is twofold. One, catholicity is a mark of both the visible and the invisible church. Though Rome be no true church, yet we suspect that there are many faithful in her midst, who by their faith in the truth are members of the invisible catholic church in spite of the visible communion of which they are a part. “For the popish Church and God’s Church are mingled like chaff and corn in one heap: and the Church of Rome may be said to be in the Church of God: and the church of God in the church of Rome; as we say the wheat is among the chaff, and the chaff in the wheat.” Second, catholicity is a mark not only of the church, but of that body of faith and practice to which she adheres (albeit with greater or lesser purity), hence in his subtitle Perkins argues that “the Roman religion” is “against the Catholic principles and grounds of the Catechism” (defined as The Apostles’ Creed, Ten Commandments, Lord’s Prayer, and Baptism and the Lord’s Supper).
Establishing catholicity of belief, however, presents an enormous difficulty. Rome can simply say that what qualifies as catholic is what she officially approves, as demonstrated by such formal approval, ubiquity, and antiquity. Many a contemporary evangelical can simply see if something is prescribed or forbidden in Scripture and reject or accept it accordingly. We must consider whether a thing not only has a long and wide pedigree, but whether it comports with Scripture’s teaching. The more traditional Protestant, that is, has a harder task than both, for he may not merely take the church’s word for it or use Scripture as an encyclopedia of belief, but must have a broad knowledge of history and scriptural doctrine so that he can determine if a popular, long-established belief or practice is correct.
It is just here that a further difficulty arises, for it soon becomes evident that there are things that have a long and wide pedigree that are clearly at odds with Scripture (e.g., images). What then are we to make of a mistaken thing that large swathes of professing believers and whole institutional churches have done for centuries? That version of an evangelical conception of history that imagines the church departed into darkness in the second century and largely remained there until the Reformation, when the primitive church was reconstituted, might not be correct simpliciter, but it has abundant reasons and appears, as Allen and Swain note in the beginning of their book Reformed Catholicity, in no less illustrious a theologian than B.B. Warfield.
This brings me to the final difficulty with many present conceptions of catholicity, which is that they do not seem to have a good explanation for apostasy in the church, and especially take no notice of the great apostasy (or rebellion, 2 Thess. 2:3) that many believe finds at least partial fulfillment in Rome’s corruptions. Indeed, some of our retrievers and promoters of catholicity get carried away in their enthusiasm and greatly exaggerate the beneficence of various historical figures. Credo calls Aquinas a “beam of orthodoxy” in its issue about him, apparently forgetting that he taught the damning sin (1 Cor. 6:9) of idolatry (Summa III, Q. 25, A.4). This present fondness for catholicity means, in other words, that we risk having an imbalanced understanding of the church and her history, one in which we so much emphasize continuity and similarity in belief that we forget the ancient faults from which God has graciously delivered us (Ps. 80:3, 7; Ecc. 7:10; Lam. 5:21).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] For example, his claim that vatican means “diving-serpent” is contradicted by the Online Etymology Dictionary, and his claim about Rome “burning of hundreds of thousands of Christian martyrs” cannot be approved since, though Papal cruelty was often great, the precise number and means of death of people who died at the hands of members of that communion are uncertain, and since many victims would not be considered martyrs of the true faith.
[2] James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, pp. 57-60 (pdf version). Available here: https://www.monergism.com/church-christ-ebook
[3] Arguably this arises because of the organization of Bavinck’s discussion of the church. The section immediately prior (“The Church is One”), beginning on p. 279, does contain extensive scriptural reflection and ends with mentions of catholicity that are then elaborated in “The Church is Catholic.”
[4] Alas, her efforts to lay sole claim to catholicity have caused many Protestants to misunderstand its true nature and to take her definition (if unknowingly), of which the response to Brite’s article was an example. My local PCA church uses a modified form of the Apostles’ Creed that refers to the “holy Christian church.”
[5] But not necessarily in all cases. Matthew Levering, a Romanist professor, has praised Matthew Barrett’s The Reformation as Renewal. The difference between what the Roman communion officially teaches and what her people actually do and believe is a common difficulty in comprehending Rome.
[6] All quotes from Perkins have been modernized somewhat.
[7] In a single case he speaks of “Roman Catholics,” but elsewhere speaks of the “Roman” and “Catholic” churches as separate, most notably by saying that “the Roman Church, though falsely, takes unto itself the title of the true Catholic church” (all spelling modernized).
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