From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Seal of Disapproval
Are evangelical views singled out for discrimination?
Schools shudder at the thought of not being accredited--not receiving the seal of approval from a reviewing board or agency. Accreditation tells the world--tuition-paying parents and employers perusing résumés--that a school is teaching the right things in the right way.
In recent years, the most prestigious accrediting agencies have come under attack in certain quarters for lax standards and left-wing biases that harm the approval chances of conservative schools. Thus was born the American Academy of Liberal Education (AALE), a more rigorously traditional accrediting group.
So you can imagine the distress Michael Farris, the president of Patrick Henry College, felt last week when the AALE denied accreditation to his conservative, religiously based school, which first opened its doors in Purcellville, Va., in 2000 to a class of 75. His public statement said in part: "We simply cannot understand why the AALE has singled out our evangelical Christian viewpoint for particularized discrimination."
But this is not quite right. Since it was founded in 1992, the AALE has granted accreditation to many schools with strong religious identities, including evangelical ones. The AALE did not name Patrick Henry's religious identity as the reason for its decision. Rather, Patrick Henry had not complied with two essential criteria. By insisting that its faculty teach only a strict creationist doctrine and by requiring that students and teachers sign a profession of faith, the school had failed to ensure that "liberty of thought and freedom of speech are supported and protected." Relatedly, the school was not providing a "basic knowledge" of the biological sciences.
Religiously based colleges can produce well-rounded students whose education is grounded as much in the great texts of Western civilization as in revealed religion. Southern Virginia University, for instance, which serves the Mormon community, has just received the AALE's blessing. No one at SVU is required to sign a profession of faith, though most of its faculty and 98% of its students are Mormon. Rather, SVU looks for faculty and students who can support its mission, which includes studying the liberal arts to "enrich the spiritual lives of its students."
Mormons consider the Old Testament to be God-given and true, but as I discovered on a visit to SVU, many students and professors there view the pursuit of scientific knowledge as a way of using the brain God gave us to explore the world he created. Others see scientific understanding as itself a form of revelation. One student explained to his Sunday-school audience that, in the 19th century, when God spoke to Joseph Smith, "the light of God was restored to the human race," leading to "great advances in medicine and modern technology."
The differences between SVU and Patrick Henry are striking, but not based on doctrinal distinctions between Mormons and evangelicals. Jeremy Weatherford, a pre-med student at Wheaton College in Illinois, an evangelical school, observes: "Christians have even more of a reason to study science because they should be studying God's creations and nature." And Niva Tro, a chemistry professor at the evangelical Westmont College in California argues: "You should follow truth wherever it leads because in the end, if the Christian faith is correct, then each truth should lead you back to the Christian faith."
Of the five evangelical colleges I have visited in the past year, four teach evolution along with creationism and "intelligent design," encouraging their students to think critically about each theory. But Patrick Henry is clearly not prepared to have students take this risky approach--in any discipline.
In each of the (nonscience) classes I attended there, the professors resembled drill instructors: Information was presented along with what the students were obliged to think about it. A class on state and local government culminated in a professorial diatribe against governmental regulation. Not that I disagreed! But there was something so heavy-handed and anti-intellectual about the whole approach that it was easy to understand why the AALE arrived at its decision.
Mr. Farris says Patrick Henry's mission "is to train those who will lead our nation and shape our culture." An admirable goal. Basic science would help, along with liberty of thought and freedom of speech.
Ms. Schaefer is writing a book on religious colleges.
