A Christian university
What makes a Christian university Christian? Phrased differently, what’s the difference between a Christian university, a “Christian In Name Only” university, and a post-Christian university?
A friend put that question to me recently. I won’t answer in substantive terms (i.e., the sort of beliefs and practices that make a claim to being Christian “truly” Christian). But here’s a stab at a formal answer, in zigzag order.
A post-Christian university is one that was founded as a Christian institution, or still technically contains an element of Christian identity (for example, through the presence of an ineliminable but terribly embarrassing seminary on campus), but otherwise exists for all intents and purposes as if none of that were true, or at least that it exists solely in the distant past. Such a university does not advertise itself as Christian, does not encourage its faculty to profess Christian faith or to perform piety in the classroom or with students, and when and where appropriate publicizes its non-Christian bona fides through student life, faculty scholarship, courses offered, and issues and causes supported.
A Christian university is the inverse of a post-Christian university (or vice versa). Its Christian identity is up front and center; that is why a family or student would desire attendance there, and the university actively seeks to elicit such desire on that basis. The faculty is entirely or mostly Christian (confirmed through local church membership or the signing of a statement of faith); the staff and administration are as well; the curriculum reflects and incorporates biblical and theological teaching, just as student life does the same with holistic spiritual formation. Chapel is sometimes required and nearly always offered in some form. Professors are encouraged to be involved in students’ lives beyond the classroom and are expected to make their faith known in the classroom through various means (prayer, personal stories, connecting the faith to their discipline). A Christian university’s employees would, in general, affirm the statement that, granting the diversity of doctrinal convictions and moral and political opinions across campus, the institution as a whole is sincerely and legitimately working toward a common end: the formation of mature Christian adults ready to enter the world of work and family with as much knowledge, skills, and faith that the university could impart.
A CINO university is somewhere in between these two options, and invariably on a journey from the second to the first. (The transition only happens in one direction.) A CINO university maintains the trappings of its former Christian identity without the full force of its institutional muscle behind it. Its administration largely, though not wholly, lacks either personal faith or the institutional desire to make faith central to the university’s mission. Vestiges of the old way remain—a semblance of chapel, certain curricular oddities, a seminary or religious studies department—but no one quite knows what to do with them (and that includes their members): they are neither resented nor beloved, just there. A CINO university absolutely continues to permit and, at times and in certain departments, solicit and encourage the presence of faith in the classroom, or the integration of faith and learning. But many departments discourage and even look down on this as sub-scholarly practice, bad pedagogy, and/or coercive religious imposition. Above all a CINO university has the feel of a certain momentum, a wind at the back of those key figures leading the charge away from “Christian” toward “post-Christian,” while a small but noble band of resisters—call them reactionaries if you want—fights tooth and nail to preserve the “Christian” as long as possible. But most of this latter group’s allies sees the futility of their cause and can’t quite bring themselves to expend the sort of energy required to support them; best to keep one’s head down and do one’s work. Which, to be sure, they are left perfectly free to do, including if that work is explicitly Christian, theological, or contrary to the moral or cultural zeitgeist. That’s part of what makes the university CINO and not (yet) post-Christian.
In any case, that was, or rather is, my answer to my friend’s question. No doubt the definitions are fuzzy, and real-life cases would either split my terms or call for the overlap of a Venn diagram. But that’s how the situation appears to me at the moment.
