Perry L. Glanzer

A 2018 volume on Mainline Protestantism opened by asking the question, “Is American mainline Protestantism a relic of a bygone era, the religious equivalent of Howard Johnsons’ Restaurants or Sears, a former giant now fighting for cultural relevance?” On one hand, one could argue that things are not quite that bad at the moment in…

Remember all of that negative press about Christian Higher Education (CHE) declining? (see my posts on this topic here, here, and here). The just-released IPEDs Fall 2023 enrollment numbers should hopefully put a rest to that story for at least a year. The good news is that even though higher education as a whole faces…

While doing some interviews among leaders and faculty at a Catholic institution this past year, I heard the phrase, “Charity is clarity” used among administrators. I loved the phrase since I think it accurately captures how ambiguity in Christian teaching, scholarship, and administration is often a failure to love. I think the phrase can also…

One of the oddest and most interesting educational developments during the past few decades is Protestants’ embrace of classical education at both the K-12 and higher education levels. What makes it odd is that certain Protestant Reformers thought key elements of classical education were suspect. After all, they attributed the too-friendly embrace of some of…

Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth. The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the…

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Col. 3:17 This past year a group of us published an empirical finding that will not be surprising to Christians. We found that students who indicated higher levels of certain virtues…

If you look at the most well-known lists of virtues, even lists of Christian virtues, you will likely not see this virtue discussed. Yet, this virtue makes the list of eight explicit virtues that the Biblical writers tell us to imitate because the triune God demonstrated it. The most well-known of these eight are agape…

What is now jointly named Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day should serve as a reminder to Christian scholars. Some of our past brethren in the universities and Church used their power and intellectual abilities to justify the enslavement and mistreatment of Native Americans. But this day should also remind us of a noble band of Christian…

One of my most memorable birthdays was a special gift from my wife. Although she was worn down from health challenges to our one-year-old son while living in Moscow, she gifted me with a whole day to spend at my favorite art gallery, the Tretyakov Gallery. Unfortunately, like most things in Russia, its marketing today…

One of the exercises that I often have both classroom students and survey respondents do is to prioritize their identities. I first ask them to consider the range of identities they might apply to themselves, and then I ask them to rank their top three. I find the answers produce significant clarity about my audience,…

Throughout our scholarly careers, we have consistently been struck by an empirical finding we often encounter. The most important religious variable predictor in studies is usually not how people identify (e.g., Christian) or what they believe (e.g., certain views of the Bible). Instead, it is simply a weekly action. How often do they go to…

In 2018, a group of us at Baylor helped start the Baylor Faith and Character Study (see here for more). We did so for a variety of reasons. First, we wanted to know the faith and character of our incoming students. As any good missiology or pedagogy course will teach you, you have to know…

Every Christian university requires at least one English composition, writing, and/or literature class. Thus, one would think that someone reviewing those course descriptions would find considerable evidence demonstrating how Christianity relates to these basic courses. You would be wrong. We recently analyzed the required gen ed course descriptions at all Protestant and Catholic universities that…

Since I still see people panic about Christian higher education every time the news emerges that a Christian college or university with less than 700 students closes, I thought it would be helpful to look at the bulk enrollment numbers again using the most recent 2021 total enrollment figures from the Digest of Education Statistics.…

I remember seeing the headlines and reading the stories while visiting relatives in Canada. In June of 2021, Sarah Beaulieu, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley, claimed to have found the graves of 215 Indigenous children at the site of a former Indigenous school in Kamloops British Columbia (later revised…

One virtue that briefly made headlines a few months ago is rarely discussed today. At least, I rarely hear of it talked about as a virtue or placed on lists of Christian or public virtues. Indeed, one of the intriguing things about moral language in the academy, whether in Christian or secular circles, is the…

This past year I wrote about the bodily stewardship crisis on Christian campuses. In a national survey of student affairs leaders, I noted that our research team asked them to rank sixteen themes they might emphasize on their campus. Educating students about stewardship of the body finished dead last. The second most neglected topic was…

Developing a theologically-informed vision of excellence about any topic, such as Christian higher education, requires not only serious theological and empirical study but also two other important things: 1. Studying the topic’s history; 2. Making international comparisons. Regarding the latter, one of the wonderful things about doing international research in Christian higher education is that…

Since it is an election year, I wondered if I could find evidence that Christian universities help their students contemplate excellent Christian citizenship. As mentioned in an earlier post, my research team examined the general education requirements at 231 Protestant colleges requiring at least one Bible or theology course. We chose these institutions because they showed…

Public speaking is one of the most common courses that one will find in the general education curriculum. Yet, we recently discovered that every Protestant university but six does not use a bit of Christian rhetoric when describing what they teach for that required class.In cases where the institution used a distribution model and allowed…