The new school spirit
Wariness. Not surprisingly, Riley finds significant differences among religious schools, particularly in their attitudes toward secular subjects. Many at Bob Jones and Yeshiva U., for example, share a wariness toward the secular fields; they are seen as necessary evils, helpful to one's eventual career, perhaps, but to be viewed with suspicion (at Bob Jones) or with a kind of cynical indifference (at Yeshiva). Yet at Notre Dame and a number of evangelical institutions, the ongoing effort to revive Christian humanism--with faith informing knowledge, and vice versa--flourishes.
While most of the students at the schools Riley profiles are from "red" America, she notes that many--contrary to stereotype--express uneasiness about combining politics with faith. "Compared with people in the Christian Coalition," says Riley, "these kids see things in a much more nuanced way." Undergraduates at religious schools, she adds, find that their faith is challenged--and even complicated--by their learning, not simply reinforced. "It's not just evangelical fervor you find on these campuses," Riley says. "It's not just an emotional spirituality. It's much more intellectual."
As successful as these schools have been in strengthening the "missionary generation," is there any chance their popularity will bring about a sea change in the wider academic world? Riley thinks not, and UCLA's Astin concurs, pointing out that the largely baby boom-generation professoriate tends either to be ideologically committed to secularism or, in some cases, to feel constrained by campus mores from exploring faith in an academic setting. "We seem to have a hidden or implicit rule that we don't discuss these sorts of things in the classroom," says Astin.
Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe points to another group that resists strengthening the religious identity of schools like his own Jesuit-founded institution: parents. In his view, the majority of parents at "mainstream" institutions see a too overtly religious orientation as inconsistent with what the larger society deems to be a good university. "Sociology rules," Wolfe says.
Perhaps. But, says Notre Dame historian George Marsden, the academy's postmodern certainties about relativism and diversity are no longer going to get as easy a pass in a society increasingly populated with religious college grads. All early-American institutions of higher learning started as religious, he explains, but they never had to justify or argue for their generally Protestant Christian assumptions. Today's religious schools, by contrast, must do just that, making "a deliberate effort to relate religious traditions to what is being studied in secular courses," Marsden says.
In doing so, they exemplify a form of profound intellectual diversity that is, paradoxically, often threatening to the self-described champions of that ideal on the majority of the nation's campuses. "There is still pressure," Marsden says, "to uphold the view that diversity trumps everything else, including the view that there may be absolutes." Yet it's precisely that devotion to absolutes that seems to account for the appeal of God on the Quad 's quietly thriving colleges.
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