|
|
Article: Christian colleges: A dying light or a new refraction?
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- April 21, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
AS A PRESIDENT of a church-related college, I find much criticism of church-related higher education to be well-intentioned but wistful nostalgia. Critics such as James Burtchaell, whose book The Dying of the Light was reviewed in these pages by Ralph C. Wood (February 3-10), have simply not indicated realistically how, in the face of massive changes in society, church and human knowledge, church-related colleges could have maintained their traditional church-relatedness in all its 19th- or early 20th-century glory.
Consider a partial list of developments since just World War II: a broad national decline in denominational loyalty, changes in ethnic identity as ...