Considering A Christian University? Investigate 2 Things.

We’re in the middle of college decision season. High school seniors are busy reviewing their financial aid packages, exploring options, and preparing for deadlines for housing deposits and offer acceptances. Many are still visiting campuses, trying to get clarity about their next steps.

Recently, I spoke to a large group of parents who were on campus with their sons or daughters for Spring Preview Day at Biola University. I outlined our institutional priorities and commitments. There’s a telos embedded in every institution; the issue is whether that telos corresponds with reality and what God says is supremely important. So there are several questions parents should ask when exploring or visiting a Christian college or university—questions any institution should welcome as reasonable.

Faculty’s Convictional Alignment

First, families should ask about the faculty. I don’t intend for this to sound inquisitorial or suspicious. I do intend a “trust but verify” sentiment. Every institution is made up of imperfect people. Even amid our best intentions, without clear and stated expectations of conviction, it’s only a matter of time before the force of inertia causes drift. Such a drift generally originates among the faculty. The converse is also true: If an institution is healthy and thriving, energized by a love for God and his world, you’ll find a stabilizing center of gravity among the faculty.

In particular, parents are wise to ask how the school recruits and hires faculty. What doctrinal commitments are faculty members expected to affirm? Must they merely acknowledge the institution’s convictions, or are they required to affirm them as their own deeply held convictions? There’s a world of difference.

There’s a telos embedded in every institution; the issue is whether that telos corresponds with reality and what God says is supremely important.

Are professors expected to issue these affirmations only once, never again to engage with them? (A recipe for institutional drift). Or does the school have a recurring instrument, including in its contract structures, for faculty to renew their commitment and affirmation? Does the school have tenure? If so, how do questions of mission fidelity and theological alignment integrate into the tenure process, whether in the tenure application or in post-tenure review?

People change their views all the time. This is normal. But if a faculty member changes his or her view on a conviction the employer takes a clear stance on, it should be normal—and noncontroversial—for that individual and the school to part ways. Convictional misalignment among faculty festers over time and can become a major source of institutional drift.

Any school that claims to be distinctly Christian must have distinctly Christian convictions, which faculty are expected to joyfully and eagerly affirm without hesitation.

Faith Integration Across the Curriculum

It’s one thing to hold to foundational convictions. It’s another to master the skill of integrating biblical truth into academic disciplines. For a comprehensively Christian university to be functionally Christian, the latter is essential.

Parents should ask how schools cultivate meaningful faith integration across the disciplines, beginning with the professional development of new faculty members. Most of us who went to secular research universities for our PhD programs were well equipped in many ways, but we received no training on how to interrogate, reconcile, and integrate our fields of study within our calling as Christian scholars.

Much of that work must fall on Christian colleges and universities. The goal is to train and inspire faculty to practice deep, robust, holistic integration in their disciplines—not to pay lip service to faith integration, superficially integrate it in their classrooms, or check a box. True integration isn’t just being a Christian who thinks but someone who thinks Christianly, bringing our Christian identity to disciplinary studies so fully and organically that it becomes second nature.

Convictional misalignment among faculty festers over time and can become a major source for institutional drift.

Faith integration is important for both faculty members and the curriculum they teach. Parents are right to ask about what, if any, curricular requirements exist for students in Bible and theology. A curriculum is like a budget, inevitably reflecting priorities and values. There’s a finite amount of time and credit units to work with, so hard decisions must be made. But the squeezing out of theological and biblical studies from many Christian schools signals a Faustian bargain that has already brought a reckoning to many campuses. It’s possible to sustain a robust core in biblical and theological studies for all students alongside highly specialized and competitive majors in every discipline.

Parents should ask what practical vision of education animates the curriculum. What telos or outcome is most prized? Is it to form activists? To train upstanding citizens? To prepare students for the workforce? Does it seem to have any inherent purpose or vision, or is it a disparate salad bar of incoherent options for students? A distinctly Christian college should have a cohesive and animating vision for what it means to be human, to be made in God’s image, and to pursue knowledge out of love for God and neighbor. Those commitments must conspicuously shape the curriculum.

No Perfect Institution

No institution is perfect. At some point, every parent will be frustrated or disappointed by something within the college. But parents can and should expect schools to be honest about both our convictions and our aims.

Here’s the good news: Families have no small number of excellent choices for this kind of experience. Not all Christian colleges and universities are created equal, and the “just Christian enough” phenomenon is real and corrosive. But I’m regularly encouraged by the evidence of God’s grace in so many schools who, for all their diverse traditions and cultural contexts, exhibit the institutional integrity needed to garner and retain the trust of parents and students alike. May their tribe increase.