The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from their Christian Churches
A review by Coty Pinckney Vol. XIV, No. 5, May 2001
Why have so many colleges and universities abandoned their Christian roots? Is the
process of disengagement similar across denominations? Is this disengagement inevitable?
In The Dying of the Light, Catholic scholar James Burtchaell addresses these
questions through seventeen case studies of American colleges and universities. At the
time of founding, each of these institutions served a Christian constituency, and publicly
proclaimed that religious objectives were vitally important to its mission; over time each
one has become more secular in orientation, with many abandoning all denominational and/or
Christian ties. In lively prose and with biting wit, Burtchaell chronicles this sometimes
rapid, sometimes lengthy process, clearly drawing out the surprisingly common elements in
the different stories. The book consists of eight chapters, one for each of the seven groups of colleges he
considers (Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, and
Evangelical), and a concluding synthesis. Each chapter provides a brief introduction to
the denomination's engagement in higher education, followed by two or three case studies
and some reflections on the denomination's experience. The depth of the case studies
varies widely, depending upon the documentation available and the complexity of the story:
Dartmouth (56 pages), Beloit (35), Lafayette (54), my alma mater Davidson (51),
Millsaps (21), Ohio Wesleyan (31), Wake Forest (48), Virginia Union (16), Linfield (12),
Gettysburg (38), St Olaf (17), Concordia (15), Boston College (71), New Rochelle (35), St
Mary's of California (35), Azusa Pacific (36), and Dordt (28). The numerate reader will
quickly conclude that this is a lengthy book, "of a size usually reserved for major
wars," as the author notes. Rather than plowing through from beginning to end, he
recommends reading it in an unusual way: read the case studies of the schools most
familiar to you, then the synthesis chapter; use that synthesis to spark your interest in
other case studies. Many readers will begin this book expecting a story something like this: Founders set
up Christian institutions, where there was a vital link between faith and intellectual
investigation. Colleges and denominations worked closely together to their mutual benefit.
Over time the colleges accepted the secular academy's definition of excellence, and
abandoned their Christian roots. The churches were left like a deserted spouse.
Burtchaell argues that the stories are all much more complex than this, and that
elements of that view are simply wrong. Many of the initial links between church
and college were for convenience only the church was necessary for existence, providing
both revenue and students. Education was not Christian in most cases, but classical,
patterned after Greek ideals of learning and virtue. There was little or no academic study
of the Christian faith, "no respectable Bible study." Religion on campus was at
times vital and active in personal lives, but there was little or no link between personal
religion and academic course work. Often, religion was seen as important on these campuses
primarily because of its impact on behavior, not because it presented unique and valued
insights into the intellectual activities. In this atmosphere, when other sources of financing and students became available,
colleges systematically but carefully moved away from their religious roots. Carnegie
money for professors' retirement is available only to "non-sectarian"
institutions, so a number of colleges show that they comply; there is a vague possibility
that government grants may be limited to institutions not connected with a particular
denomination, so governance is changed; graduate programs without any Christian component
or requirement make money, so they are added; students from outside the denomination are
necessary for existence, so they are welcomed; when these students complain about chapel,
it first becomes non-religious and then is eliminated. One of the central stories here is
that institutions, even those founded for a specific religious purpose, very quickly come
to see continued existence as their primary goal; if religious affiliation is perceived to
raise the probability of failure, then goodbye religious affiliation. The faculty play a key role in secularization in most institutions. The author contends
that even at the beginning, most faculty members did not have sufficient grounding in
theology, philosophy, and history to see how faith could inform intellectual inquiry.
Instead, the faculty served initially as role models of men of personal faith, often
leading religious services on campus. Some institutions required agreement to a
confessional statement of all faculty. But as professors began to specialize and identify
themselves more as professional academics than Christian teachers, as they began to move
from institution to institution during a career, faculty as a whole lost interest in their
religious role, turning their responsibilities over to the administration. The
administration, in turn, often turned these roles over to "religious
functionaries," sidelining religion from all of the important parts of the
institution, relegating it to at best a minor role on campus. In consequence, confessional
statements for faculty generally were ignored, then watered down, then dropped altogether.
So when in 1996 Davidson removed the final requirement of religious affiliation on its
faculty that members of the religion department must be Christians "several
current members said they had not been aware of the requirement when they were
hired." (232) One of the surprises in these stories is that the churches most often did nothing at
all to stop the process of secularization. In no case did a denomination use its authority
to ensure that its colleges live up to their religious commitments. Sometimes an orthodox
president, trustee, or local pastor would take a stand, trying to stop the process, but
often these attempts backfired either by creating tension that the next president
resolved through a fuzzy redefining of the college's religious mission, "saying much
and affirming little" (825), (inevitably leading to further secularization), or by
taking such an obviously anti-intellectual position that those who might have supported a
true Christian retrenchment find themselves in the other camp. Ironically, in the process of freeing themselves from church authorities who had
interfered hardly at all in the running of the institutions, the colleges subjected
themselves to much more interference from governments and accrediting agencies:
"Colleges that for fifty years have refused to disclose to their patronal
presbyteries how many Presbyterians they enroll are faithfully reporting to the federal
government how many students of Samoan extraction they enroll" (834).
The evolution of the meaning of "non-sectarian" mirrors the overall
secularization. Originally intended to mean that the institution would not take sides in
disputes among, say, the Baptists, it transmogrified over time into
"non-denominational," then "non-Christian", then
"non-religious." Today any absolute truth-claim might be labeled
"sectarian." Burtchaell throughout offers his commentary on the process of disengagement, cutting
through the fuzzy, duplicitous rhetoric used so often to hide what is really going on: On
Dartmouth: "It requires stamina to study this cascade of discourse about religion,
because its inclination toward elegant and earnest inanity ..." (51). Davidson offers
"a relatively pure example of the poker-faced artifice we behold in more
helter-skelter form in other narratives" (232). On a Davidson committee report in the
sixties arguing that despite disregard for the organized church, religious life on campus
was "wondrously authentic" because of the prominence of community service:
"this report ... [was] one of the purest manifestations of works righteousness since
it had been anathematized by the sixteenth-century Reformers" (219). He also offers
humorous and sharp one-liners that keep the reader's attention: "Deism, the religious
equivalent of safe sex" (842). When the author uses his wit to lambaste the hypocritical college officials who change
the description of their institutions depending upon the audience in front of them, many
Christian readers might be tempted to offer a hearty, "Amen!" There will be more
disagreement with his contentions that the pietism associated with the Great Awakenings so
exalted affect over intellect that the disengagement between intellectual and religious
inquiry was virtually inevitable (was it not Jonathan Edwards, the leading light of the
first Great Awakening, who struck the biblical balance between intellect and emotion in Religious
Affections?) and that Baptist attempts at higher education have failed in
part because of "clandestine tradition," excessive individualism, and simplistic
exegesis that combine to make it difficult to create "an intellectual field of
Scripture-animated discourse that enlivens and integrates their minds' work" (438).
What are the lessons for those who see a vital need for truly Christian colleges and
universities, which critique the culture and the academy from a biblical perspective? The
author chooses not to enumerate these lessons, stating in his last two sentences:
The failures of the past, so clearly patterned, so foolishly ignored, and so lethally
repeated, emerge pretty clearly from these stories. Anyone who requires further
imagination to recognize and remedy them is not up to the task of trying again, and
better. (851) The story of Linfield College of the American Baptists shows that the common strategy
of holding faculty, president, and trustees to a confession of faith, along with legally
binding agreements on campus activities, is insufficient. In 1921, seeing the drift of
many institutions away from their Christian roots, President Leonard Riley identified
"careful selection of trustees and of faculty" as key: teachers were to
"know Jesus Christ and to do His will;" their theological views were to be
scrutinized carefully (428). This sounds rather like Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
under Al Mohler. Furthermore, the original grant of land for the school stipulates
"title would revert to the local school district if alcohol were ever sold or served
there" (425). Today, the college "does not ask and does not know" the
religious affiliation of its faculty, the President is Methodist, Catholics outnumber
Baptists among the students two to one, and the chaplain states the campus community is
"largely unchurched." What about the legally-binding ban on alcohol? Since 1987
the college has hosted the International Pinot Noir Celebration. Burtchaell remains upbeat about the desirability and possibility of genuinely Christian
higher education. Acknowledging that higher learning, like wealth and power, present a
powerful temptation to abandon faith, he nevertheless states "this book is written in
the belief that the ambition to unite 'knowledge and piety' is a wholesome and hopeful and
stubborn one" (851). Yet it is clear that the success of such endeavors will require
continued, daily diligence, continued daily dependence upon the power of God, and a true
integration of faith and learning an integration so rarely achieved in the last few
centuries. Burtchaell's book scholarly, opinionated, detailed, and compelling should be
mandatory reading for all engaged in the life of the mind and the life of faith,
particularly those who serve as teachers, administrators, trustees, students, or parents
of students at Christian colleges and universities.