Wolfe on Religious Identity

The average Wheaton College student might struggle to recognize Boston College or Brandeis as meaningfully religious institutions.  Nevertheless, Alan Wolfe argues:

[E]vangelical colleges have much to learn from Catholic universities such as Boston College (BC) or the Jewish Brandeis. Each of these schools worries about losing its religious identity, since each has become remarkably successful, and success brings with it faculty and students who at BC have never been to mass and at Brandeis read their e-mail on Yom Kippur. For those who grew up in a world of strong religious attachments, the increasing religious diversity at BC or Brandeis represents a serious loss of community. Yet both 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. No doubt it will, in the process, lose some of the communal understandings that once informed it. But it will gain in return a religious identity made stronger by being exposed to, and having to defend itself against, other claims to truth, wisdom, justice, or the spirit. The community protected by faith statements at evangelical colleges can be a stifling one because it is so closed to challenge and disagreement.

Over at Touchstone, David Mills responds.