Professing in the Postmodern Academy: Faculty and the Future of Church-Related Colleges

A Typology of Church-Related Colleges and Universities

A Typology of Church-Related Colleges and Universities 297 Attempts to classify religiously affiliated institutions of higher learning span the twentieth century. The first appeared in 1906 as part of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s “First Annual Report,”1 which developed a fivepart typology of church colleges based on the extent of their control by religious denominations. The Carnegie spectrum ranged from “absolute control and ownership” to “no formal . . . but strong sympathetic . . . connection.”2 Several classification systems were advanced in the 1960s and 1970s, as researchers refashioned the wheel invented by others.3 The Danforth Commission Study of 1966 distinguished four varieties of church-related institutions: (1) the defender of the faith college; (2) the non-affirming college; (3) the free Christian college; and (4) the church-related university.4 In 1972, C. Robert Pace offered his own four-pronged schema for grouping Protestant colleges. He distinguished: (1) institutions that had Protestant roots but were no longer Protestant in any legal sense; (2) colleges that remained nominally related to Protestantism but were probably on the verge of disengagement; (3) colleges established by major Protestant denominations which retained a connection with the church; and (4) colleges associated with evangelical, fundamentalist, or interA Typology of Church-Related Colleges and Universities STEPHEN R. HAYNES 298 STEPHEN R. HAYNES denominational Christian churches.5 In 1978, Merrimon Cuninggim offered yet another set of categories: (1) the consonant college, the Ally of its denomination; (2) the proclaiming college, the Witness of its church; and (3) the embodying college , which “is the mirror, almost the embodiment, of the denomination to which it gives fealty.”6 A new attempt to describe the variants of church-relatedness was advanced in 1992 by William E. Hull of Samford University . Hull outlined “three basic ways in which most denominations have sought to define a Christian dimension in higher education”: (1) administrative control; (2) academic components; and (3) campus ethos.7 Hull concluded that while these approaches to Christian higher education had long influenced the character of denominational colleges and universities , they were insufficient inasmuch as they “marginalize[d] Christianity by entrusting its claims to only a few key administrators , religion professors, or campus ministers.” Hull advocated a fourth way of defining the Christian university, one operating “on the boundary between faith and learning, seeking to integrate the entire spectrum of human reason with the entire scope of divine revelation into a living whole.”8 There is significant diversity among these attempts to develop a typology of Christian higher education. The Carnegie Endowment classification focused on issues of autonomy and control. The Danforth Commission report emphasized college values and adopted a position of neutrality toward the variety of expressions of church-relatedness. Pace illumined the nature of the church connection and the extent to which colleges had moved away from their sponsoring denominations. Cuninggim too focused on collegiate expressions of church affiliation, but his typology was purely descriptive and was not intended to predict the strength or longevity of this connection . For his part, Hull stressed the various modes in which a college’s Christian identity may be embodied. Each of these typologies is useful for illuminating certain aspects of religious affiliation on college campuses; yet each ignores a pivotal dimension of church-relatedness foregrounded in this book. This is the role faculty play in envisioning , articulating, and embodying an institution’s affilia- A Typology of Church-Related Colleges and Universities 299 tion with a religious body. Because faculty have been conspicuously absent from discussions of church-related higher education for at least the past thirty years, it is difficult for many to imagine them exercising such a role. For this reason it is instructive to remember that between 1920 and 1960 many of the pockets of real religious vitality in American higher education were faculty-led. The Faculty Christian Fellowship, which provided an ecumenical forum for advocates and employees of church-sponsored institutions,9 is particularly notable, since it was established by and for faculty. Organized in 1952, the FCF’s goal was “to uncover the basic presuppositions of the various academic disciplines and to explore the tensions existing between them and those of the Christian faith.”10 To this end, during the 1950s and 1960s the FCF’s journal The Christian Scholar devoted many articles to the relationship of faith and the academic disciplines. In its heyday, the Fellowship involved nationally recognized scholars and...