At Wheaton College, an evangelical school in the Chicago suburbs, Chief Enrollment Management Officer Silvio Vazquez says he does often encounter folks who assume Wheaton is liberal or conservative. But he hopes students won’t draw too many conclusions without experiencing the school firsthand.
Amanda Staggenborg, chief communications officer for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, a global association of more than 180 Christian higher education institutions, told RNS that when students and their families make snap decisions based on a school’s perceived political identity, they miss the big picture.
“A university is made of so many different things, not just a label of conservative or progressive. You have many different layers of academics, social clubs and student life. You can’t label an entire university in that respect, because everyone’s experience could be different.”
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Isaac Willour, a junior political science major at Grove City, told RNS that students and parents have a right to find colleges that mirror their values. The problem arises, Willour said, when colleges allow political ideology to guide academic inquiry and become “citadels” and “training camps” for creating “good little conservatives and good little liberals to go out and fight the culture wars.”
“That’s not what college is supposed to be.”
John Hawthorne, a retired sociologist who studies religion, politics and higher education, predicts that as younger generations become less religious, prospective students will be more likely to avoid Christian colleges due to perceived political conservatism rather than perceived liberalism.
“There are not enough conservative parents out there to support all the conservative schools who want to show how conservative they are,” said Hawthorne. “Especially among Gen Z, smaller and smaller percentages every year are into those harder, more narrow, right-wing stances.”
Mary Elizabeth Parker, a junior international relations major at Samford College in Birmingham, Alabama, originally wanted to attend a progressive, nonreligious school anywhere but her home state.
“Especially growing up being far more left leaning than the rest of my peers, I thought the only way to escape the evils I heard about the Republican Party and the red states was to go out of state for school and never come back.”
When financial challenges landed her at the Baptist University two hours away from the conservative community she was raised in, she cried for weeks. Years later, Parker says she’s the happiest she’s ever been. Now a campus tour guide and vice president of Samford Democrats, Parker says she loves engaging in honest academic dialogue about subjects that matter, even — and perhaps especially — when she disagrees with her peers.
“I would say, if you do identify as a Christian, pray about it,” Parker said about the college decision process. “Wherever God is telling you, whatever God is putting on your heart, listen to that, whether it aligns with your political beliefs or not.”
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This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
