Religion and the American University . By James W. Fraser

Few interstices in American life have been more contested than the relationship between religion and higher education. Religion figured into the formation of all Ivy League schools with the exception of Cornell University, for example, although faith was pushed to the periphery early on. (I used to tell my students at Columbia University that King's College remained Anglican for about twenty minutes before it began secularizing.) The apparent marginalization of religion in higher education was a relief to some and a source of lamentation for others, notably so in George Marsden's Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (1994).James W. Fraser's Religion and the American University carries none of the ideological baggage that motivated Marsden's study. Instead, Fraser offers a survey of religion in higher education since the turn of the 19th century and finds that “religion has been alive and well in American higher education, sometimes at the center and sometimes on the distant margins” (ix). Courses in moral philosophy defined the curricula in many Protestant schools during the antebellum period, but the ascendance of the research university after 1870, together with higher criticism and publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, challenged Protestant confidence in the unity of all truth. The YMCA and YWCA emerged as influential campus organizations, although their lack of denominational affiliations prompted various groups to provide their own chaplains and support what Fraser calls “Bible chairs,” religiously supported clergy who were permitted to teach regular university classes, even at public schools. College chaplains, Fraser argues, allowed administrators to focus on matters other than faith, while still assuring alumni and funders that religion remained a central component of their institutions.The academic study of religion, meanwhile, emerged early in the 20th century, typically with a “Chinese wall” separating the study of religion from the practice of religion. “Since at least the 1930s,” Fraser writes, “religious studies academics had drawn a clear line between the study of religion and the practice of it, and while they left the practice of religion to the chaplains, the religious studies faculty were confident that they alone were the masters of the study of religion” (197). Both the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan established schools of religion. Other public universities, such as the University of Virginia and the University of California, Santa Barbara, developed robust departments of religion.One of the sub-themes in Fraser's impressive narrative is that religion crops up on campuses in unexpected ways. And it does not always respond to heavy-handed attempts to engender faith. In 1952 the National Council of Churches, with funding from the Hazen Foundation and the Danforth Foundation, sponsored something called the Faculty Christian Fellowship, with national conferences and a journal, The Christian Scholar. That effort petered out amid the campus upheavals of the 1960s. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru), however, established a foothold, along with other evangelical organizations such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.The activism of William Sloane Coffin, Yale University chaplain throughout the long sixties, redefined that role. Although he had many imitators, he was arguably the first and last of his kind. Campuses moved toward multiculturalism. The first Muslim Student Association was organized at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in 1963. Hillel Centers and Newman Centers were already fixtures at many campuses, but religious diversity expanded even more in the years ahead, prompting the author to observe that “religious expression may best be found on the margins, but those margins are very lively and in many different places” (231).Fraser echoes the findings of David Hollinger in noting that student religious organizations “simply disappeared as many of the students had migrated into larger political movements and left the religious organizations behind” (212). That trend no doubt accelerated as mainline denominations, facing financial stringency, cut funding to college chaplaincies. The author enlivens his very impressive narrative by presenting a variety of case studies to illustrate his point. These are not the so-called usual suspects. Instead, he offers a glimpse into schools as diverse as Santa Clara University and the College of Wooster, the University of Nevada, Reno, and Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, Idaho—along with many others. These historical sketches add immeasurably to the texture of his argument and analysis.Religion and the American University concludes with a look at Baylor University, which attained “research one” status in 2021. Although the author does not explicitly juxtapose Baylor with the University of Chicago, another school founded by Baptists, the distinction is hard to miss. Whereas Chicago long ago succumbed to the tides of secularism, Baylor, in the words of its president, ascended while “maintaining our foundational Christian mission” (306). While Marsden would celebrate Baylor's fidelity, Fraser adopts a different view. “Baylor may thrive in its sphere,” he writes. “But for higher education as a whole, the new answers must serve Buddhists and Baha'is as well as Baptists. They must also serve Jews and Muslims, the spiritual-but-not-religious and the nones, as well as taking seriously the beliefs of the evangelicals and the atheists” (313). For anyone who wants to translate this discussion into the realm of the visionary and the aspirational, Fraser's study suggests that perhaps higher education can teach us how to accommodate a religiously diverse society.