Flourishing by being faithful

For those with eyes to see, there is now a clear moment of opportunity for Christian higher education. In the most materially prosperous society that has ever existed, young people are searching for meaning and truth. For Christian colleges and universities that are faithful to their identity and calling, there is the possibility to thrive while serving these students, even in the face of persistent challenges and renewed crisis.

Indeed, it is perhaps not an exaggeration at all to say that higher education is facing an inflection point—if not a crisis. Within two years, schools will begin to encounter the so-called demographic cliff, when steep drops in the population of college-aged students follow from the decreased birth rates arising from the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. Add campus angst about various social justice causes du jour, concerns about free expression and cancel culture, and the enormous increases in costs over the past few decades, and you have a recipe for radical restructuring, layoffs, and closures.

That is precisely what we have seen in recent years, as schools that could once take for granted an enthusiastic class of incoming students eager to pay for the opportunity to attend college face a much more difficult recruitment landscape. Many schools have closed or avoided closure for the time being by making severe budget cuts and curricular changes.

But with all challenges, even such seemingly intractable ones as higher education currently faces, come opportunities for growth, development, and innovation. Some Christian colleges and universities have successfully navigated the chaos of higher education by remaining faithful to their founding identity as Christian institutions, while others have flourished while renewing such commitments after a season of secularization.

A recent report from Inside Higher Ed takes a look at this trend, noting that Roman Catholic institutions like Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, Benedictine College in Kansas, Christendom College in Virginia, and Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina are all enjoying increases in applications and enrollment even as these schools manifest a significant and explicit commitment to the integration of faith and learning on campus. And the same is true for Protestant colleges and universities that are either rediscovering or continuing to faithfully embrace their founding identities. David Hoag, the president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, says in the piece that “schools that are really doubling down on their Christian mission are doing well.”

The temptations of worldliness are perennial, not only for the individual Christian but for Christian institutions, as well. And Christian schools are called to be faithful no matter the cost. In some cases, when cultural, economic, and social pressures are particularly strong, this might mean that they are numerically smaller. We find many instances of the faithful in Scripture being few in number but strong in faithfulness to the Lord. During some of the darkest spiritual times in the kingdom of Israel, we find God claiming a faithful remnant that had not defiled themselves with idol worship (1 Kings 19:18).

Faithfulness does not in itself guarantee success, at least in earthly terms. But there are also times when the Lord responds to the efforts of His people with blessings. And so it is possible to do well by doing good, and when this happens, we see how the world ought to work and God’s graciousness, even in the face of sin and brokenness.

Christian colleges and universities ought to vigorously embrace and live out their particular callings and find sustenance in the traditions on which they were founded. For some, this will mean the rediscovery of their Baptist or Methodist roots. For others, this will mean continuing to live out the convictions of Roman Catholic, evangelical, or Pentecostal traditions. And for others, it will require the hard work of renewing lapsed commitments to the Reformed, Presbyterian, or Lutheran confessions.

As Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Reformed politician, theologian, and founder of the Free University of Amsterdam once put it, these characteristics are nonnegotiables for Christian institutions: “Always and everywhere the university is to be bound to God and to God alone, whenever and wherever God reveals His wisdom, His will, and His ordinances, or makes these knowable through investigation.”

Each tradition has some distinctives that it will bring to bear in these investigations and characteristic features that ought to manifest in its particular setting. But all of them share the mandate to be faithful to God and their founding as distinctively Christian institutions. And we can celebrate the good news when faithfulness in that mission is manifest in broader flourishing, not only for the institutions themselves but for all of society.