Religious colleges and universities in America are growing at a breakneck pace. In this startling new book, EPPC adjunct fellow Naomi Schaefer Riley explores these schools -- interviewing administrators, professors, and students -- to produce the first popular, accessible, and comprehensive investigation of this phenomenon.
Call them the Missionary Generation. By the tens and hundreds of thousands, some of America's brightest and most dedicated teenagers are opting for a different kind of college education. It promises all the rigor of traditional liberal arts schools, but mixed with religious instruction from the Good Book and a mandate from above.
Far removed from the medieval cloisters outsiders imagine, schools like Wheaton, Thomas Aquinas, and Brigham Young are churning out a new generation of smart, worldly, and ethical young professionals whose influence in business, medicine, law, journalism, academia, and government is only beginning to be felt.
In God On The Quad, Riley takes readers to the halls of Brigham Young, where surprisingly with-it young Mormons compete in a raucous marriage market and prepare for careers in public service. To the infamous Bob Jones, post interracial dating ban, where zealous fundamentalists are studying fine art and great literature to help them assimilate into the nation's cultural centers. To Thomas Aquinas College, where graduates homeschool large families and hope to return the American Catholic Church to its former glory. To Yeshiva, Wheaton, Notre Dame, and more than a dozen other schools, big and small, rich and poor, new and old, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon, and even Buddhist, all training grounds for the new Missionary Generation.
With a critical yet sympathetic eye, Riley, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Weekly Standard, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, studies these campuses and the debates that shape them. In a post-9/11 world where the division between secular and religious has never been sharper, what distinguishes these colleges from their secular counterparts? What does the missionary generation think about political activism, feminism, academic freedom, dating, race relations, homosexuality, and religious tolerance -- and what effect will these young men and women have on the United States and the world?
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RECENT REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS
- "An exciting topic... More than proved her case."
— "Their Idea of a University," Charlotte Allen, Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2005
- "An informative and even entertaining read... Valuable insights."
— "A New View of Red vs. Blue," Roger K. Miller, Denver Post, December 26, 2004
- Hear Naomi Schaefer Riley on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC radio, December 21, 2004
OTHER COMMENTS
“America’s religious colleges and universities are terra incognita to many liberal and secular readers. Naomi Schaefer Riley offers an insightful, balanced, and respectful guide to this world, one that its own members will find provocative and from which strangers to it will learn a great deal.”
—Alan Wolfe, author of One Nation After All and The Transformation of American Religion
“Naomi Schaefer Riley spent a year touring the parallel universe of religious colleges, pen in hand, and brought back a book full of open-minded, sharply observed portraits of a fast-growing corner of America that most of the mass media prefer to caricature of ignore. The results are illuminating -- and important.”
—Terry Teachout, author of The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken
“A pioneer explorer into the unknown territory of America’s religious colleges, Naomi Schaefer Riley reports her findings from twenty campuses with verve and insight. Her writing is as light as conversation, but her thinking goes as deep as the dispute in American education today between reason and revelation.”
—Harvey C. Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University
“A fascinating journey through an America that few of us have been paying attention to: the country of the deeply religious, primarily Christian, young in the various colleges devoted to educating them, while keeping them safe from the spiritual corrosions of America’s youth culture. Told gently but searchingly, this story is not only interesting in itself but one that anyone who cares about the future health of this society cannot afford to let slip by.”
—Midge Decter, author of Liberal Parents, Radical Children and Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait
“In the world of American higher education, ‘diversity’ is always embraced in theory, but frequently disdained in practice. There is no better illustration of that fact than the ill-informed and incurious suspicion of the nation’s religious colleges emanating from the ranks of the ‘educated.’ For those in the grip of such entirely preventable ignorance, this splendid book is the perfect antidote. Anyone who still believes that America’s religious colleges are crudely anti-intellectual backwaters will be profitably shocked by the reality described in Naomi Schaefer Riley’s lucid and meticulously researched account, which vividly evokes the rich and varied texture of life in these unique institutions. And anyone who still believes that religious colleges must abandon or dilute their religious mission in order to make a real contribution to American society will discover that something close to the opposite is true.”
—EPPC fellow Wilfred M. McClay, author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America
“Naomi Schaefer Riley’s investigation into whether a common faith can bridge the racial gaps on a college campus yields fascinating results. Her account of the missionary generation’s attitudes on race is just one of a number of features that make this balanced, well-respected book a must read for anyone interested in America’s cultural and political future.”
—Abigail Thernstrom, member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and author of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning
“Naomi Schaefer Riley has written a thoughtful, well-reported account of the way in which the nation’s private religious schools are coming to terms with the issues of the day -- and issues of religion. She counters many secular stereotypes that religious schools -- Jewish, Mormon, or Evangelical Christian -- are populated by intellectual dodos and that they are indifferent to the concerns of modern culture. On the other hand, she shows that very few of the religious schools in the U.S. are likely to inculcate strictly sectarian values, and that, where they try hard to, the results are mixed. This book is a welcome addition to the debate over the contribution of religiously based schools to education in America.”
—Former EPPC fellow David Aikman, author of Great Souls: Six Who Changed a Century and A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush
“This book offers a clear, well-researched, sympathetic, but also searching account of colleges and universities that define themselves as religious. It is, to my knowledge, the best balanced, most analytical, and most through-provoking book of its kind.”
—Mark Noll, McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and author of America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
“As the cultural conflicts rage in the U.S., there is no more important battleground than our university campuses. Naomi Schaefer Riley gives a balanced examination of various religious universities that are achieving great success and bright, religiously committed graduates who will have a deep impact on America’s future. This book will surprise and perhaps trouble you.”
—Fr. C.J. McCloskey, research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute, Washington, D.C., and former Catholic chaplain at Princeton University
“Moving from Mormon, fundamentalist, conservative and liberal Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, and evangelical educational institutions, Naomi Schaefer Riley’s wide-ranging book is evenhanded, perceptive, and oftentimes surprisingly revealing. She examines the roles of women, race relations, student life, and various approaches to integrating faith and intellectual life. She is an astute observer who captures well the complex and multidimensional aspects of each tradition. Everyone working in religiously oriented higher education -- and even those outside it -- will want to read this volume and come to grips with the challenges -- and the opportunities -- that Riley highlights in this timely book.”
—EPPC Vice President Michael Cromartie
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