I started this as a comment to yesterday’s entry at the Chutry
Experiment. Then what before was dormant became a Creeping
Thing. So I’ll link
and deposit it here at EWM, where I feel less duty-bound to apologize for
leaping about without explaining all of the connections, evidence and so on.
I’m glad you didn’t delete this entry, Chuck. I read it with interest,
partly because I live smack-dab in the Heartland (with a Baptist church
adjoining our back yard, a Greek Orthodox church two lots to the north, and the
largest Catholic Diocese in Missouri less than a stone’s pitch past that–not
that anyone’s casting stones). Your point about “how politically and
socially homogeneous many of these campuses are” is incredibly important to
this discussion because that is what leads to “the stereotypes of
evangelical colleges as weak academically and ultraconservative
socially.” While academic credibility varies significantly among
evangelical institutions, their projection of social ultraconservativism is
hearty and regular, here in the Midwest. William Jewell College, an
institution reputed for academic rigor, was in the local paper today for its
student-body vote on adding “sexual orientation” to the institution’s
anti-discrimination code (link
| subscription
link | link).
The measure didn’t pass; “sexual orientation” is not a part of
William Jewell’s anti-discrimination policy. So you’re right that anecdotal
evidence can be misapplied to the whole range of institutions, but still there’s
enough anecdotal evidence to correlate evangelical institutions and patterns of
social homogeneity.
I’m watching these issues especially as they pertain to international
student-athletes (mainly because it’s one of my current jobs). The National
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) serves as the governing
organization for the athletic programs at many evangelical institutions, William
Jewell and Azusa Pacific included. In recent years, there’s been an
astounding call (among the member institutions–some 300+ schools) for
restrictions on the number of international student-athletes who would be
allowed to participate in intercollegiate athletics in the NAIA. The tenor
of these proposals (usually as by-law amendments to
set limitations on age or to impose quotas) is alarming. I
might even characterize it as a new spirit of Ashcroftian xenophobia–the subtle
rumblings that international student-athletes have a competitive advantage, that
they don’t belong in the same sporting arena as domestic
student-athletes. A quick look will confirm who has more lucrative
resources–new uniforms, equipment, irrigated fields, paid coaches, sponsors,
etc.–through well-funded development programs. And so we’ve forgotten Perry
Wallace; and it’s usual to hear raging clusters of fans (sometimes, but not
always, from evangelical institutions) chant “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.”
when an international student-athlete takes the field or when a domestic
counterpart makes a fine play. Probably should make this a series since there’s
much, much more to say.
Dream-thought
seen but have often imagined. When I get there, following the map faithfully, the place is not the place of my imagination. Maps, growing ever more real, are much less true. And now, swarming over the earth with our tiny insect bodies and building houses, it seems that all the journeys are done. Not so. Fold up the maps and put away the globe. If someone else had charted it, let them. Start another drawing with whales at the bottom and cormorants at the top, and in between identify, if you can, the places you have not found yet on those other maps, the connections obvious only to you. Round and flat, only very little has been discovered” (88).