Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Church-related liberal arts colleges historically tack to the left and eventually separate from their founding denominations.  James Burtchaell, a Catholic scholar and author of The Dying of the Light:  The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), has outlined the way in which this usually takes place.  How much of this accurately represents a college or university near you?  As one of my graduate mentors would often say, “you be the judge.”  JDB

James Burtchaell’s 9 steps of Alienation in Christian Higher Education

1. A period of stagnation is evident in the life of the institution; a dynamic typically attributed to “depressive influence” by the institution’s sponsoring denomination.  This is then often followed by a time of social unrest and intellectual turbulence in both the denomination and the institution, because “fresh findings and methods and disciplines [raise] fearful philosophical challenges to theology.  Spokesmen for the church’s concerns, by a compound of incapacity and animosity, [exacerbate] the apparent hostility between the church and rigorous scholarship” (144).
2. An administrator, usually the president, is convinced of the need to raise the institution’s level of academic prestige and overall excellence.  However, the institution’s sponsoring denomination is seen as an adversary—or at best, an irritating obstacle—to the achievement of this goal (149).
3. Estrangement from the sponsoring denomination occurs during a time when it is financially profitable for the institution to accept funding from secular sources.  Further, the institution may justify the estrangement on the basis of the sponsoring denomination’s inability or lack of willingness to provide funds sufficient to meet the institution’s academic ambitions (152).
4. A “loyalty shift” occurs, i.e., there is a transfer of primary loyalty from the denomination to the academic guild.  This especially holds true for the faculty (153).
5. There is a decline of support for any institutional policy which requires active communion in church as a qualification for entrance to its constituencies, including its governance (board), administration, faculty, and student body.  A secondary effect of this dynamic is the university’s inability to identify itself as a unit of the sponsoring denomination (156).
6. There is a “progressive devolution” of institutional representatives who identify with any church at all.  Typically this involves a significant percentage of staff and faculty who first abandon the distinctives of the sponsoring denomination in their language and practices (i.e. from “Methodist” to “Christian”), then to generically religious and finally to overtly secular (157).
7. There is an anxiety and sense of urgency generated by the tension created when the institution attempts to appeal to one constituency (e.g., the state, intellectual elite, donors, etc.) while simultaneously trying to avoid antagonizing another constituency (e.g., the church and its campus representatives).  The solution to this tension is often to replace religious identity with “reductionist equivalents,” e.g., identifying the Christian mission of the institution with making contributions toward a more prosperous and socially conscious American public.  Additionally, a common substitute for deep religious faith was “morality;” the institution persists in its dedication to cultivate moral character within its students (158-60).
8. Theological studies/church ministry studies are separated from the academic center of the institution.  In the Vanderbilt case, this move was seen as an enhancement of autonomy and academic freedom for these departments, but in reality it was a marginalizing factor (161).
9. Active Christians are typically more effective in alienating colleges and universities from their faith-communities than are hostile secularists.  Historically, this change has occurred in three stages: a) First there is a “muting”—usually enacted by Christians—of all or most overt claims of the institution to be a functional limb of a particular denomination.  Statements, decisions and symbols that were historically public and unapologetic become private and bashful in their tenor.  b) The period following is often a time of high morale on campus due to the perception that academic standards and aspirations are rising, as are prestige and funding.  Faith is “mute” but still present.  c) This third and final period is marked by institutional control via a new breed of intellectuals whose obedience is fully to the academic guilds and their foundational assumptions, which are radically divorced from faith commitments or religion in general.  It is at this point that the institution becomes completely secularized.

* Taken from “The Alienation of Christian Higher Education in America: Diagnosis and Prognosis.  In Schooling Christians: “Holy Experiments” in American Education

by Stanley Hauerwas (Author), John H. Westerhoff (Editor) Eerdmans 1992.