We'll Choose Choice for You

Thanks to Rob for posting about Alan Wolfe's brief for Boston College-type schools over Wheaton-type schools.  Isn't there a contradiction on the face of the argument?

[B]oth BC and Brandeis recognize that in today's world, religion has gone from being an ascribed status to an achieved one; more and more Americans choose their religious identity rather than having it chosen for them.

In today's world, religious diversity is a fact of life, and the only choice for a college or university grounded in one faith is to open its doors to others.

Let's see.  (1) Students should be able to "choose their religious identity rather than having it chosen for them."  (2) But the "only choice" that should be available as a model for religious engagement and formation at a college is the diversity-of-faiths model, not the communal-faith model.  (3) So (it seems to follow) students should have the diversity-of-faiths model of religious identity formation "chosen for them." 3 contradicts 1.

(To anticipate the counterarguments:  It seems clear to me that the diversity-of-faiths campus and the communal-faith campus are, indeed, themselves competing models of religious identity and formation, with real, differing effects on that formation.  One may be better kind of identity than the other (as Wolfe argues), but that's a different question from whether there is a choice among identities.  And under the communal-faith model, students still make a choice of identities -- to seek the communal one by attending such a college in the first place.  I've made a similar argument here that the relevant categorizations of American religious identity include not only "Catholic vs. Protestant vs. Jew vs. Muslim etc.," but also "assimiliated faiths vs. sectarian faiths.")

Tom