Most of our founders said in one way or another that morality is essential to democracy, and that religion is essential to morality. America is fast becoming a test of that proposition. Just look at some of the nations around the world today that are trying to establish democracy on moral quicksand, to see how right our founding fathers were. Without a moral foundation even a democracy inevitably succumbs to corruption, greed, and evil.
A poll in the November 22, 1999, issue of U.S. News & World Report revealed that 84 percent of current college students believe they need to cheat to get ahead in the world today. Another article in the same issue reported on a serious outbreak of insider trading among young brokers on Wall Street. Can America flourish if its leaders are uniformly dishonest? Can democracy succeed without a strong moral foundation?
When the Ivan Boesky and Michael Milliken scandals erupted some years ago, Harvard was aghast to find many of the people involved were its graduates. It sent the administration scurrying to create some new courses in ethics in an effort to stem the tide of corruption. But can a secular college actually develop character in its students? It is doubtful that courses in ethics will make much difference, because the problem isn’t that people don’t “know” what’s right. The problem is that they prefer not to “do” what’s right. The problem isn’t an information problem; it’s a character problem.
Where then can America get a supply of honest leaders with character? Our best hope seems to be from Christian colleges. If they are faithful to their mission, these colleges can help young leaders internalize their faith and develop the inner values that will cause them to “do” the right things when they are faced with choices.
Yet there are pressures from all sides for Christian colleges to forfeit their religious values and become little more than secular institutions.
Note the following items regarding some Christian colleges and universities:
•The Baptists of Virginia recently cut all ties with the University of Richmond, a university they founded in 1830. They said that the increased secularization of the university, which recently gave domestic partner benefits to gays and has coed residence halls, caused them to break the final ties.
•A continuing controversy over crucifixes in the classrooms at Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Catholic university in America, flared up again and led a faculty member to muse that the latest flap was “just another bump on the road to Georgetown becoming as secular as Stanford or Yale.”
•A young woman sued Thomas Aquinas College, a Catholic college in California, after she was expelled for adultery. She claimed her “rights” had been violated. Fortunately her suit failed, but the use of the courts to force Christian colleges to grant secular rights is just beginning.
•Trinity Western University, a Christian university in Canada, was refused educational program accreditation because it teaches that homosexuality is a sin. (See the article “Heading Toward Thought Control” of the May/June 2001 issue of Liberty.) The secular accreditation agency said the university was thereby violating the rights of gays. The case is going to the Canadian Supreme Court.
•The Catholic Bishops of America voted 223-31 to tighten control over the 230 Catholic colleges in America. The reason for their action was deep concern over the secularization of these colleges and their drift away from religious beliefs.
•Grove City College, a Christian college in Pennsylvania, had its federal funds withdrawn because it refused to accept the government’s feminist position that men and women be treated the same in all respects, and refused to equalize schools intercollegiate athletic programs as required by Title IX of the Federal Higher Education Act.
The pressure on Christian colleges to compromise their principles, just when those principles are most needed in society, is coming from several directions. Above all is the constant need for more money. Federal government funding is often tied to the acceptance of secular values. An increasing divergence between Christian values and those in our secular society is creating extreme pressure to bear on religious education. Increasingly students and faculty are coming to Christian colleges with secular values and are pressuring the college to adopt things such as drinking on campus and coed residence halls—both contrary to the creation of a Christian college environment. Liberal faculty members often push for an “academic freedom,” which allows for attacks on basic Christian beliefs under the guise that such beliefs are dogmatic. There is a push to adopt secular sexual mores, which increasingly accept adultery, premarital sex, homosexuality, and bisexuality as social norms.
The Trinity Western case in Canada is probably a foretaste of what is coming here. California has already added sexual orientation to its state civil rights law, making any discrimination against gays illegal. What are California Christian colleges to do in response? If they stand by their values, they may lose all public funds, as did the Salvation Army in San Francisco when it failed to cave in to city pressure to accept pro-gay laws.
What is the answer? Churches and colleges must decide whether they are willing to pay the price for standing up for their beliefs, even if it means giving up federal funding and facing lawsuits. Government agencies, through their funding power, should not force values on colleges that are contrary to their religious beliefs. The freedom of religion guaranteed to all in the First Amendment must be claimed by Christian colleges and, if necessary, defended in court against our own government. We could hope for a judiciary that believes in interpreting the Constitution, rather than legislating through court actions.
In some ways Christian colleges must work to save our government from itself. If government “moral” regulations kill off Christian colleges or, even worse, turn them into lukewarm secular copies of public institutions, it will be eliminating one of the best sources of honest leaders for the future. And without such leaders no country can thrive and survive. Corruption in government, on Wall Street, and in American life in general, will grow until we find ourselves in serious collapse, as did many great societies before us.
To a large degree, the churches of America and the colleges they founded hold the future of our society. And that future is in the balance. If we don’t support Christian colleges as we should, we will lose an important force for stabilizing and “saving” America. The past several years have been a time of unparalleled prosperity. Surely now we can summon the discipline and funds to respond adequately. After all, we may not have any other option.
James Harvey, Ph.D., has been a college professor, dean, vice president, and president. He also served for many years as a partner in a Washington, D.C. based management consulting firm retained by colleges and universities, federal agencies, associations and corporations in the United States and overseas. He is currently working on a fourth book entitled Letters From Perverse University, a satirical treatment of social conditions in the U.S.
|
TOP LEVEL
Past Issues
Printer-friendly page
Send this page to a friend