Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and many other universities were explicitly established as Protestant Christian institutions, but over time they were left to something else. Thus, in the second half of the 19th century, American evangelical Protestants began again, creating a new generation of universities and seminaries who hoped to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors.
But history appears to be repeating itself, as the current controversy over Wheaton College proves. And the problem reaches far beyond Wheaton.
I was able to witness firsthand how Christian University would dismantle.
For 12 years I was a professor at Seattle Pacific University (SPU). Founded in the 1890s by respectable Free Methodists, the school is another historically evangelical establishment, such as Wheaton. While there, I was able to witness firsthand how Christian University would dismantle.
Certainly, Seattle Pacific still publicly identifies itself as a “Christian University.” “Historically Orthodox” and “Clearly Evangelical.” The school continues to be a member of the Christian College Consortium, along with Wheaton and other self-identified evangelical Christian universities. Future students continue to say, “At SPU, everything we do is rooted in faith… faculty members integrate faith into how they teach and how they live.”
However, graduates may wonder exactly how Faith SPU teachers integrate into their education and life. In 2021, the university made a national headline when it voted that 72% of its faculty members were not confident in the school’s board. why? This is because the Board will not abolish the University’s statement on human sexuality, which declared that “sexual experience is intended between men and women” and that “the full expression of sexuality is blessed with the marriage agreement between men and women.”
If over 70% of faculty members reject basic Bible teachings about marriage, how can you maintain a faithful Christian university? The answer is simple: it cannot.
SPU heterodoxy is not just limited to sex. Lincoln Keller graduated from SPU in 2021 and wrote a book about his disillusionment. According to Keller, his professor taught him that the Bible was flawed, contradictory, effectively wrong and unclear. As a result, “For a particular professor or student, God’s Word was not the highest authority. Instead, modern scholarships, science, or culture had a final say in what professors and students should believe.”
That may seem surprising, but I place very little responsibility for the downfall of the SPU’s theologically liberal faculty. In my view, those faculty are wrong, but they have the courage of their beliefs. No, the real responsibility for what the SPU lied elsewhere is not so obvious.
Wasted legacy
When I was first hired for a tenure track job, the faculty I interviewed said something I would never forget. He warned me that the school has a very theologically conservative council. In fact, I was told in a secret tone that the board recently refused to serve as a religious professor because he thought he had unorthodox beliefs. The teacher told me he was revealing something scandalous.
Christian institutions were called to protect the integrity of their mission.
Little did he know that when I heard his confession, I thought “good for the board.” That’s exactly what I believed was called by the board of Christian institutions to do so. We defend the integrity of that mission.
The SPU was still an evangelical institution when I joined the faculty in the mid-1990s. They were not perfect, and there were already many teachers who were not biblically orthodox. However, they knew there were limits to what was tolerated, so they had to be careful.
The denial of board faculty tenure was perhaps the most powerful message that could be sent to campus communities, citing biblical theology. Many faculty members didn’t like the message, but they understood it. The decisive action of the board has chilled the faculty’s enthusiasm for going further and hiring more unorthodox people. When I came to SPU, the school still had the opportunity to fight to maintain its Christian identity.
Alas, for the 12 years I was there, I saw the SPU legacy was wasted. A new president was hired soon. To please many faculty members, he gradually became convinced that they were too involved with board members. The board was less focused on details, and more and more people were hired, pushing the institution in a new direction.
Instant watershed
Looking back, the moment at the fork in school history took place between 2000 and 2001. It was a grade, and the SPU president drafted a plan to improve the board of directors of all free Methodist universities, effectively eliminating the power of the sect and fulfilling accountability to them.
The president’s plan proposed the creation of a “new council meeting no longer selected by the denomination or its sponsor meeting.” The free Methodist representative will demote the only real authority that the Board confirms the appointment of the University President to its only true authority, the new recommendation, “The Board.”
By the time SPU joined the governance debate, there was a lot of research into the secularization of previous Christian universities in America. When I delved into some of this scholarship, it seemed that SPU had been following the exact same path due to previous failed Christian institutions.
One of the most insightful studies I have come across was James Bertchael’s book The Dying of the Light: The Colleges and Universities from Christian Churches (1998). (Unknown to me at the time, Father Burtchaell was seriously accused of sexual misconduct with a male student at Notre Dame and resigned from his post.)
A key sign along the path of secularization was the end of the church’s domination of college governance.
According to Burtchaell, an important indication along the path of secularization was the end of the rule of the church.
Despite the best intentions, the control of the Ending Church often eliminated important structural protections that helped to maintain the religious integrity of the university, opening the door to secularization of post-change generations. The trustee has a final say beyond budgets, as well as tenure, top management and university programs. A change in the composition of the board will almost certainly have long-term consequences on the nature and mission of the school.
They should have fired the president when SPU board members finally learned the details of their plans to replace them. Instead, they were upset. They did not let the president go out of hospital, but his plans were put on hold.
After the board showed a nerve failure, the president waited for things to go quiet, reorganize and continue his push. By 2005, free Methodist members of the board had been reduced to just one-third of the board and were no longer directly selected by the free Methodist Church. The church has appointed people, but the SPU board’s trustees now had to approve them. The board was castrated.
One of my last experiences at SPU before I decided to leave was to communicate. He tried to defend a teacher who had been denied tenure. He was an outstanding colleague and one of the few theologically and politically conservative faculty hired in the past few years I was there. But in the end, neither the president nor the board were willing to overturn the verdict of increasingly progressive (and intolerant) faculty.
Remember when I arrived, the board rejected the tenure of theological liberals. Now it was ratifying the expulsion of theological conservatives.
Here is the most important point. The surrendered SPU committee was not theologically liberal in itself. It was inhabited by individually devout Christians and theologically conservative Christians, who came from the business world.
Conservative Christians take more responsibility for SPU transformation than liberal faculty members.
In my view, these conservative Christians are more responsible for the transformation of the SPU than liberal teachers. Unlike theological liberals, they had no courage in their beliefs.
By the 2020s, the university was led by a new president and there were enough evangelical board members left to prevent formal changes in the school’s official statement of faith or sexuality statements. However, there were no longer enough biblically solid members to actually implement, such as refusing to serve as unorthodox professors.
Previous committees of conservative Christians owned the seeds, but now the bitter harvest is left to others to be reaped.
After a public outburst on campus over human sexuality, the SPU president resigned, and key board members also resigned. Currently, current board members appear to be oriented to the school towards evangelical identity. How serious they are remains an open question.
Last year, the university allowed gyms to be used at LGBT festivals “full of strange joy and affirmation,” according to the student newspaper. If the new leadership had truly committed to restoring the school’s evangelical identity, shutting down that event would have been an easy decision. More importantly, universities need to recruit new faculty and staff who affirm or change historic Christian teachings.
You may not have much time for your current leadership. Just as SPUs have liberalized over the past decade, student registrations have plummeted. As a result, the school announced plans to cut 40% of its teachers and eliminate 19 majors.
Abraham Lincoln famously spoke about the challenge of perpetuating the institution after its establishment. SPU is a cautionary tale of what happens when Orthodox board members personally don’t take the challenge seriously when it comes to Christian universities.
Originally published by Clear Truth Media. It was reissued with permission.
Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Discovery Institute and author of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity. Why Christian leaders are failing and what we can do about it.
