Interest Surges : Enrollments Born Again at Bible Colleges

Carol Hulgus, the daughter of a United Mine Workers official, is an ambitious 22-year-old who is going out into the working world this spring armed with everything a new college graduate could want--from a nearly flawless academic record to a lucrative job offer from a prestigious corporation.

But Hulgus, who passed up both Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley, to attend school in Southern California, believes she has something going for her that is even more important than an impressive resume: She is a graduate of an evangelical college.

As far as she is concerned, Biola University, a little-known Christian liberal arts college 22 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, is one of the few places in the country that would let her combine her rather considerable academic and career aspirations (law school and an eventual position as a labor-management arbitrator) with her commitment to Christ.

Ever Greater Number

She is not alone in her thinking. Indeed, Hulgus is one of a growing number of determined young people who are attending Protestant evangelical colleges with the expressed purpose of taking their religion out of the church and into the classroom, the laboratory and the headquarters of corporate America.

This new interest in evangelical higher education has come as welcome, if somewhat unexpected, news to educators at liberal arts colleges in this country that consider themselves “Christ-centered” or fundamentalist in character.

As recently as five years ago, church-related colleges--long seen as the backwater of the academic world--were said to be on the verge of extinction. Enrollments were dropping, funds were drying up and some colleges were even closing their doors.

Part of the reason, many educators suspected, was that church colleges simply did not know how to resolve conflicts between secular mores and religious values. Unwilling to compromise their fundamentalist tenets, their rules often were more stringent than those of the churches they represented: strict dress codes, mandatory chapel attendance, regimented Bible study, required “missionary” work in their local communities, prohibitions against smoking, drinking and sometimes even music and dancing.

In the last couple of years, however, there seems to have been an almost miraculous resurgence of interest in church-related higher education.

This interest has focused not so much on the 200 or so traditional Bible institutes that provide training primarily for the ministry. Rather, the new popularity has been for the country’s 100 evangelical liberal arts colleges that offer a wide range of academic programs and operate much like secular colleges and universities. More than 70 of these colleges are fully accredited by private academic organizations and are recognized by the state and federal government, according to the Christian College Coalition, a Washington-based consortium of accredited evangelical colleges.

As evidence of their institution’s new broader appeal, educators at evangelical colleges report that their students are no longer limiting themselves to careers as overseas missionaries or to related “helping” professions such as teaching or nursing. Today, they say, the No. 1 major at evangelical colleges is business.

“These colleges are doing well--remarkably well,” commented Clark Kerr, a former president of the University of California who recently completed a major study of educational leadership that took him to many of the nation’s college and university campuses.

“And it’s not just the famous ones--(those founded by) the Jerry Falwells, the Oral Robertses, the Bob Joneses,” Kerr said in a telephone interview from his home in Berkeley. “There are a vast number of colleges most people have never heard of that are absolutely thriving. Money is being poured into them. Students are being turned away.”

Take just one example, Kerr said. “George Fox College in Oregon. How many people have heard of it? It is out of the mainstream. It has less than 1,000 students. Yet it is enormously successful. It has better physical facilities than any I have seen in the entire state of California.”

A Quaker college, founded by the Friends Church as Pacific Academy in 1885, George Fox, like many fundamentalist institutions, is located in a rural community. Yet it has a large and attractive campus, with nearly all major facilities completed since 1962.

A wide variety of majors, from computer sciences to fine arts, is offered. Students have long been active in local missionary work and voted, as a student body, to turn over 10% of the student government budget every year as a tithe to needy individuals, families and local and regional Christian social service agencies.

Movement in Society

“The spiritual emphasis of the college,” according to a college advertisement, “centers around the belief that a fundamental understanding of man’s relationship to God through Jesus Christ as Savior distinguishes the truly educated person, and that Christianity provides direction for solving the problems of today’s world.”

What has made these church-related colleges so attractive to so many people?

One obvious answer is that the popularity of religious education has simply paralleled the much-discussed return to fundamentalism in society as a whole.

“It’s hard to say (what the reasons are for the growing interest), but the numbers are clearly there,” said John Novotney, a spokesman for the Christian College Coalition.

According to studies by the National Institute of Independent Colleges and Universities, the number of full-time freshmen entering accredited fundamentalist colleges in 1983 increased by 3.4%--a significant turnaround from the overall decrease of 7.3% the year before. Last fall the overall numbers did not rise again, which is not surprising considering the projected nationwide drop in college enrollment. Yet, the National Institute found, evangelical enrollments did hold remarkably steady, with some institutions reporting sizable gains.

King College, a 118-year-old Presbyterian College in Bristol, Tenn., reported an 11.4% increase in full-time students, while Palm Beach Atlantic College, a 17-year-old Southern Baptist College in West Palm Beach, Fla., grew by 33%.

Billy Graham’s alma mater in Illinois, Wheaton College, which is often referred to as the Harvard of the Bible Belt, long has had more applicants than it could accept. This year the 125-year-old interdenominational college recorded 1,096 applicants, compared to 1,074 who applied the year before for the 500 or so spots in the entering class.

Ron De Jong, director of admissions at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, explained his institution’s nearly 4% growth in enrollment this way: “. . . We have all prayed, and I believe the increase in enrollment is an answer to our prayers.”

And Dori Emerson, director of student recruiting at Grand Canyon College in Phoenix, said of her institution’s 6% jump, “The Lord’s really been blessing us because we’ve been good stewards with what we have.”

Being good stewards of what they have has not meant that evangelical colleges have sat passively by and waited for students and money to come their way. In fact, many have admitted to becoming quite “worldly wise” in the ways of recruiting students and raising money.

Some, for example, have begun to exploit the well-publicized growth of fundamentalist secondary schools--now said to be by far the fastest growing sector of education in this country.

The Christian College Coalition recently published an elaborate, glossy, 151-page “Guide to Christian Colleges”--17,000 copies of which are now in circulation mainly among students who have had at least some exposure to “faith-related” education. Individual colleges also have mounted sophisticated advertising campaigns aimed at evangelist youth clubs and periodicals.

Necessary Hard-Sell

The hard-sell approach has become necessary, officials said, partly because of the high cost of attending an evangelical college. While tuition and fees may be on the low side--$6,000 to $7,000 a year--compared to some prestigious private liberal colleges and universities, which can run $12,000 to $14,000 a year, the costs of an evangelical education are substantial compared to those of state colleges and universities, with which church-related colleges primarily compete.

The quality of students they are able to attract may not be as high as some educators would have hoped, yet many evangelical colleges have shown a remarkable ability to turn out successful graduates, even during periods when they have gone begging for students.

According to a 1981 report by Harvard sociologist David Riesman, “some of the residential evangelical institutions have redoubtable records, for they accept students with SAT total scores as low as 700 and rarely as high as the national median of around 900; yet as many as a third of their students or even more go on to graduate or professional study. . . .”

Few Big Donors

When it comes to raising money, few evangelistic colleges have been blessed with big donors, as have many secular universities. Nonetheless, fundamentalist educators--like fundamentalist preachers--have proved themselves effective money gatherers.

So far, their message has been simple: God has ordained them to ask for money for their colleges and, if their followers are good Christians, they will answer the call.

That certainly has been the response to the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s pleas for money for his newly founded Liberty Baptist College. When Falwell’s face fills the TV screen and his voice moves across the airwaves exhorting viewers to get on the phone and “Pledge that $200! Get a framed certificate telling everyone you are training a Christian for Christ,” literally thousands of people who have never even seen the Lynchburg, Va., campus pull out their checkbooks.

Other fundamentalist colleges have been somewhat more original, if not more subtle, in their money-raising methods.

Unusual Arrangement

Messiah College, which considers itself “one of the best-kept secrets in Central Pennsylvania,” is a 1,600-student campus affiliated with the Brethren in Christ. Located near Harrisburg, Pa., the college recently entered into an unusual business arrangement that could prove to have substantial fund-raising implications. It has created a new corporation and turned over a portion of the land adjacent to the campus to a project for building a retirement community. “It’s an easy and quick way,” said one campus fund-raiser, “to expand our group of ‘friends,’ “--people who can contribute money to the college.

Even in the midst of their successes, however, evangelical colleges have not been free of serious problems.

Largely because of their strong commitments to fundamentalist religious tenets, both types of colleges have run into trouble with the law.

Two of the most famous legal battles waged by fundamentalist colleges ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

One recent case involved Grove City College, a Presbyterian Church school with fewer than 2,200 students in rural western Pennsylvania.

Because it refused on philosophical grounds to sign a federal form guaranteeing that it did not discriminate on the basis of sex, the college was accused by the U.S. Department of Education of violating Title IX, a civil rights law banning sex discrimination by schools and colleges that receive federal funds. As a result of the violation, the department said it would cut off federal student-aid funds to the college. The college responded that it was the students, and not the college, who received government support. Therefore, the college said, it was not subject to government regulation.

Only after a protracted legal battle did the college convince the court that it was right.

Civil Rights Laws

In another case involving other civil rights legislation, however, the supreme court ruled that fundamentalist colleges are governed by anti-discrimination laws. In that case, the supreme court rejected arguments of Bob Jones University, a 5,000-student campus in Greenville, S.C., that it had the right to ban interracial dating and marriage simply because officials there thought that God intended for the races to remain separate.

In the same case, the court also rejected the arguments of the Goldsboro Christian Schools in North Carolina, which cited the Bible as its justification for maintaining a racially discriminatory admissions policy.

In both instances, the court said, the Internal Revenue Service was right in revoking the schools’ tax-exempt status because the institutions were subject to basic civil-rights laws prohibiting any form of discrimination on the basis of race, color or creed.

Other Confrontations

Beyond such well-publicized cases have been numerous other legal confrontations that have pitted fundamentalists’ practices against secular laws. All totaled, about 72% of the members of the Christian College Coalition participating in a survey have been “the objects of a wide range of direct legal challenges and threats,” according to W. Richard Stephens, a member of the coalition’s board of directors and president of Greenville College, a small Free Methodist campus in Illinois.

The suits and the threats of legal action have come from students, administrators, parents, local zoning officials, state and federal governments, special-interest groups and campus neighbors, Stephens found.

Although some college officials have spoken out harshly against what they see as obtrusive governmental and legal interference in their operations, most college officials have been reluctant to discuss their legal difficulties.

Discrimination Charge

This spring, for example, when a black professor brought charges of race discrimination against Azusa Pacific University, a small, interdenominational college 25 miles east of Los Angeles, a college official politely but firmly asked a reporter to leave the campus, saying that people on campus would be wary of talking to outsiders under such circumstances. Students and personnel said they had been asked by the administration not to talk--a policy most of them respectfully followed.

“You know there are many other evangelical colleges in the area,” Jill Aldridge, Azusa’s director of public information, told the reporter. “Perhaps it would be better if you just talked to them about what they are doing.”

Such strict control and clear respect for authority have long been characteristic of fundamentalist education.

At the very heart of a fundamentalist education is a clear commitment to the authority of the church, explained Jim L. Bond, president of Loma Nazarene College, a 1,500-student campus in San Diego.

Writing in Direction 85, a Christian student magazine, Bond said: “The difference between Christian and secular institutions rests in the fundamental commitment at the very heart of things. For the Christian liberal arts college there is an unquestionable, unapologetic, and all-consuming commitment to Jesus Christ, who is acknowledged as Lord over the total life of the institution. . . . On a Christ-centered campus we do not lock Jesus outside the lab. He is as vital to the classroom and the curriculum as He is to the Chapel.”

Practically speaking, what that means for most fundamentalist colleges is that upon applying for admission or a position on the staff, prospective students and employees must secure recommendations, not only from former teachers and employers, but also from ministers. And before becoming part of the college community, they are required to sign statements professing their unquestioning commitment to Christ.

Even those students enrolled in such programs as journalism or business may be routinely asked to consider the religious dimensions of their disciplines. Depending on the college, students also may be required to take as many as 30 units of Bible study, which can translate into something on the order of a quarter of an undergraduate’s entire curriculum.

Impact on Courses

“What difference does it make that you are teaching or learning at this kind of college?” asked John R. Dellenback, a former Republican congressmen from Oregon who is now president of of the Christian College Coalition. “It depends on the subject. In a subject like history or English, it can make a great deal of difference. It does not make a difference in the atomic table in physics. Yet it makes some difference in all disciplines.”

“Take my own discipline of psychology,” said S. Bruce Narramore, dean of the Rosemead School of Psychology at Biola University.

An important issue in psychology, he said, is how the therapist should deal with guilt.

“If someone comes into counseling who is part of the Christian faith and has feelings of guilt, how should he be dealt with by the trained therapist?” Narramore asked.

“A therapist who is himself not a part of the faith would view guilt purely in psychological terms . . . (as compared to) a minister who would consider only the spiritual, theological ramifications. Both extremes can be dangerous. If the patient believes in God and what he stands for, maybe he should be feeling guilty. On the other hand, it is important to help the patient deal with that guilt and his behavior in a constructive way. Trying to walk that middle line--which is what the Christian therapist does--can be tricky business.”

Walking a Fine Line

Although it is certainly not true of all evangelical programs, so far Narramore’s school, which was a separate institution before it was acquired by Biola University, seems to have negotiated that fine line with a remarkable degree of success. Besides the regular four-year complement of psychology classes and clinical internships, students are required to take another full year of theology classes. The school has won full accreditation by the American Psychological Assn. and trains about 180 doctoral candidates a year, making it one of the dozen or so largest programs in the country--larger than USC, UCLA or UC Berkeley.

In an effort to integrate regular academic subjects with religion, the Christian College Coalition has begun, with the help of foundation grants and private gifts, an eight-volume “supplemental” text book series.

Those who are working on the project say that the texts will not shy away from controversial subjects, such as creationism. (According to the American Scientific Affiliation, a group of 2,300 scientists “affiliated” with the Christian faith, at least 18 varieties of creationist theories are now being debated, each one trying to reconcile Genesis with science in some particular way).

Nor will the texts be limited to those subjects that are most closely tied to religion. History, economics, business, the arts--all are subjects that will be covered.

The history of religion in this country helps to explain both the earlier distrust of religious education and its new popular emphasis on “worldly concerns,” said Narramore.

Severing Church Ties

Although many of the nation’s most famous universities, including Harvard, Yale and USC, were started as religious institutions, most had severed their church ties by the turn of the century. Between 1900 and 1920, the chasm between fundamentalist values and liberal thinking had grown large. By the 1930s and continuing into the 1960s, evangelists in a sense had to choose between religion and education, between devotion and rational thought.

“The history of Biola reflects that movement,” noted Clyde Cook, Biola president. “Started 75 years ago as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, it first trained only ministers and missionaries. Then it broadened its curriculum and became a Bible college. Today, it is a full-fledged university.”

‘Not a Perfect Place’

Explained Carol Hulgus, the recent Biola graduate who hopes to take her religion into the tough world of labor-management negotiations: “It is not a perfect place. . . . There are things about (a fundamentalist college) I didn’t like.

“I planned to come for a year and I stayed for five. The reason, I guess, is that I learned some things about myself I don’t think I would have learned anywhere else. . . . Here I did both--I asked some questions about God . . . (and) got some answers about the world.”