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 Mainline Protestant (MLP) higher education. The last Howard Johnson’s Restaurant closed in 2022, and there are only eight Sears stores left. I can point to more than eight MLP higher education institutions (98 to be exact).
On the other hand, I cannot point to eight MLP1 institutions that try to operationalize their Christian identity or mission in significant ways. Thus, the danger to MLP institutions is currently not their enrollment. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, they had a healthy 2.8% enrollment growth between 2022 and 2023. In reality, MLP higher education institutions are in dismal shape due to their unfaithfulness.
Moreover, the reality is that MLP higher education institutions are secularizing at an amazingly fast rate. When we undertook the study for our recent book, Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide just four years ago my co-authors and I identified 120 Mainline Protestant institutions (we did not include those MLP-related institutions associated with the CCCU).
This past month I decided to recheck our Excel spreadsheet rating the Christian operationalization of Christian institutions to see how the MLP institutions are doing when it comes to the operationalization of any part of the Christian mission. I ended up reclassifying fourteen MLP institutions as secularized and another three are scheduled to close or have merged with a state institution. After shifting four Missouri-Synod institutions and one Cumberland Presbyterian institution in the list to another category (most classifications of MLP denominations do not include those two denominations as Mainline), I determined that there are now only 98 MLP institutions that operationalize their Christian identity in any identifiable way (for more on how I made this determination see the first chapter of our book).
I did not realize secularization would be happening so fast. This secularization is the most important threat to MLP higher education. All told the secularized MLP institutions enrolled 22,218 students (which means a loss of that many students attending an institution with at least some operationalization of a Christian mission). In contrast, the three MLP institutions that closed or will close had only been enrolling 2,893 students.
The secularization is also happening in numerous ways among the remaining institutions. Only 26 of the 98 have any reference to Christianity in the mission statement that goes beyond mentioning a denominational affiliation or a generic reference to “Judeo-Christian values.” Half of the institutions that recently had a VP for Mission or chaplain on the Executive Leadership team no longer do. The number of institutions that require a Christian course has shrunk to 20 of the 98 and only six require two or more courses. On my rating scale of 1-27, which measures the degree to which institutions operationalize a Christian identity, 82 of the 98 institutions score 5.5 or less. The main ways they operationalize a Christian or “church-related” identity is by privileging a voluntary Protestant worship service and holding a few seats for church bureaucrats on the Board of Trustees.
Secularizing for Hospitality’s Sake
What is the reason for this situation? Maria Earling claims in a chapter of the book referenced earlier that we must simply recognize the difference between Christian colleges like those in the Council for Christian Colleges and church-related colleges. “Church-related colleges may have a religious dimension to their educational mission, but they may also have a much looser understanding of a religious or Christian approach to an educated life.” The language telling. “A looser understanding of a religious or Christian approach” in this case is code for secularization (or what I prefer to call institutional unfaithfulness).2
Eearling even admits that secularization happens in a piecemeal fashion due to benign neglect and attempts to pacify an increasingly pluralistic faculty, staff, or student body on campus. She cites how Gettysburg College (which no longer operationalizes any aspect of its former Christian identity) voted to start having classes on Good Friday and stop offering an Easter Holiday. In addition, the faculty debated over whether they should continue beginning faculty meetings with prayer:
A junior faculty member announced his atheism and mentioned reservations in his hiring interview. The search committee then gave assurance that the affiliation did not really mean that much. His shock at being forced to participate in a prayer at the beginning of the meeting felt to him like a “bait and switch.” A Muslim faculty member objected to the privileged role of the institution’s chaplain….The prayer practice ended.3
Of course, all of these decisions are made in the name of Christian hospitality to the strangers among us—a problematic appeal. In the end, their institutional policy simply mimics that of secular private elites or public universities which are their new ideal. The institutions move from being Christian to being church related to being private copies of public universities in how they manage religious diversity.
The Survivors
Today, only five MLP institutions score a 10 or above when it comes to operationalizing Christian identity: three institutions are in the Reformed tradition and two are American Baptist. Interestingly, two of these institutions are former CCCU members.
| Institution | Confessional ID | Score |
| Eastern University | American Baptist | 17 |
| Hope College | Reformed Church in America | 11.5 |
| University of Dubuque | Presbyterian USA | 10 |
| University of Sioux Falls | American Baptist | 14 |
| Waynesburg University | Presbyterian USA | 12 |
Often the only Christian influence or heritage that the other institutions appear to celebrate is their openness, tolerance, and hospitality. As I have written before, they have taken their hospitality so far, that they have lost themselves. The Gettysburg College example indicates how that happens. In order not to offend anyone, they give up operationalizing any aspect of their Christian identity.
For all intents and purposes, the operationalization of Christian identity by institutions affiliated with MLP churches is on life support and will diminish even further within the next three decades and likely shrink to these five institutions in the coming decades. I do not mean the institutions will disappear (although that will happen to some). They will simply secularize. MLP higher education institutions are an important reminder not to focus on other priorities and forget one of the most important Christian virtues when governing a Christian university—faithfulness.
What about Mainline Protestant Administrators in Christian Universities?
I would also add one final caution to Christian leaders in light of this unsurprising empirical evidence. Any Protestant or Catholic Christian university whose leadership is tempted to turn to liberal Mainline Protestants for administrative leadership should also consider this trend. Grove City College professor Carl Trueman recently received some attention for a particular quote in his First Things article explaining why he is not a Catholic. He noted that one reason is, “[T[he present pope seems to be nothing more than a liberal Protestant in a white papal robe. And as a Protestant, I am acutely aware of the damage such people do.”
Indeed, I often observed the damage produced by liberal Mainline Protestant administrators in my research and experience. They appear not to know how to combine the strong operationalization of a Christian identity with love for non-Christian faculty, staff, and students. For them, showing care to non-Christians means secularizing their discourse and any overt Christian elements in their institution. They also are easily captured by other academic goals and trends. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that our institution will be the exception to historical trends regarding how unfaithfulness progresses, why it progresses (e.g., a mistaken understanding of what it means to love one’s non-Christian neighbor) and through whom it progresses.
Footnotes
- Mainline Protestant denominations are usually considered to consist of the following: American Baptist Churches, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, Congregationalist, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Moravian Church in North America, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church. See James David Hudnut-Beumler, and Mark Silk, editors. The Future of Mainline Protestantism in America (Columbia University Press, 2018).
- Like Mainline Protestants do, Earling also cites affiliations that are meaningless in practice. Whereas I now find only 98 MLP institutions that operationalize any aspect of Christian identity, she claims there are over 100 higher education institutions affiliated with the Methodists.
- Maria Earling, “Futures for Mainline Protestant institutions” in The Future of Mainline Protestantism in America, eds. James David Hudnut-Beumler, and Mark Silk, (Columbia University Press, 2018), https://books.google.com/books?id=pQY8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT7&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Spot on. “The institutions move from being Christian to being church related to being private copies of public universities in how they manage religious diversity.”
Pano Kanelos, president of UT-Austin, said in an interview recently that institutions should reconsider “becoming mere copies” of public institutions (paraphrasing), because what they end up doing is winning in the short term only to lose in the long term. Sure they may attract more faculty or students in the first few years, but by removing what makes them unique (their niche), what they end up doing is assuming a role indistinguishable from any other institution but still charge 3-4 times the prices. How long can that last? I think your data give us the answer.
Dr. Glanzer: Your research is a stark reminder that in the name of diversity and fitting in, we Christian schools have sacrificed our own diversity–thus falling in line with the status quo. Those who steer away from the ‘road less traveled’ too often melt into the vast abyss of the easier path, which can diminish the call God has on our life and work. Your reminder that Sears and Howard Johnsons somehow failed to lean into the uniqueness of their brand is a good analogy. Christian colleges and universities can learn much from failures in the corporate world. If our “brand” is Christianity, perhaps we embrace Christianity–not distance ourselves from the movement.
This blog provides solid analysis about mission drift through short-term incremental decisions. Additionally, I note that many MLPs have other factors that create their current stance. First, many were founded during the enlightenment when reason was separated from and elevated above faith. Their original educational missions were heavily influenced by rationalism. As this worldview wanes, they lack internal resources to reshape their missions and practices. Second, MLP educational missions wove Christian faith and U.S. citizenship together tightly. Citizenship in a pluralistic culture now requires greater flexibility and openness. Yet many MLPs find it difficult to distinguish Christian beliefs and practices from the demands of 21st century American citizenship. Third, since the public values financially rewarding careers as a primary educational outcome, it is difficult to convince MLP institutions that faith-based learning matters. The current context is not a catalyst for such change. Thankfully, a few MLP institutions as well as many Catholic, evangelical, and Reformed universities and colleges don’t fit this American mainstream; and worldwide Christian colleges and universities already on the religious margins know their missions are countercultural. Still, Perry’s blog should caution us all.
Another secularizing aspect of mainline liberal Protestant colleges and universities is that they often retain antibodies against religious belief. They can end up being more vigilant than public universities in controlling the infiltration of “fundamentalist” beliefs and believers. Plus, the remaining religious apparatus can function like a European state church that uses its establishment clout to keep out competition from what they term “sects.”.
In the ELCA for years several; groups of professors purporting to be experts in “church-related higher education” kept insisting in books, articles, and consulting efforts that the schools need not hire Lutherans or believing Christians, but rather just have the right mission statement, e.g., “open and rooted” and that would suffice. So the schools were slowly drained of Lutherans and orthodox Christians. Now even the famous Lutheran colleges,e.g., St. Olaf, rate low on Perry’s scale. Very sad but predictable, given such mistaken advice for years.
Robert Benne