Assessing the Denominational Identity of American Evangelical Colleges and Universities, Part II: Faculty Perspectives and Practices

Abstract

This article presents results from Phase II of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) Denominational Study, a multi-institutional examination of the state of denominational identity at evangelical Christian colleges, their faculty, and the students they serve. This phase of the study involved the administration of an online survey that was completed by 1,557 full-time faculty serving in 37 denominationally-affiliated evangelical Christian colleges. On the whole, faculty expressed a strong sense of affinity toward the sponsoring denominations of their respective institutions, though less than half attended a local congregation in the same denominational tradition. In addition, personal theological traditions were reported to influence faculty classroom practice on a number of dimensions. Faculty also perceived that college leaders and administrators placed a significant amount of importance on the denominational identities of their respective institutions, reporting that denominational identity was emphasized across many facets of institutional life, including campus ethos, curriculum, corporate worship, institutional governance, and public rhetoric. Finally, though respondents valued denominational identity in the faculty search process, a large majority expressed openness toward hiring colleagues from differing denominational traditions.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities for providing data for this study. This article reflects the views and opinions of the authors and not necessarily the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. The authors also wish to thank James L. Peugh, Ronald P. Mahurin, and James M. Hunter, whose helpful comments greatly contributed to the quality of this manuscript.

Notes

Institutional researchers who did not wish to contact all faculty were given the option of sending the invitation letter to a random sample. However, to our knowledge, none of the participating institutions chose to exercise this option.

An additional 45 eligible respondents were excluded from the sample because they failed to correctly identify the denominational status of their current institution, which prevented them from receiving a significant number of survey questions relating to denominational identity due to skip logics. Moreover, this phenomenon was not limited to faculty at church-related colleges. Among the full sample of participants in the faculty survey (n = 2,255), 5.7% misidentified the denominational status of their current institution. Although beyond the scope of this particular article, the apparent presence of “denominational confusion” among Christian college faculty (i.e., believing that one's employer is denominationally affiliated when it is not, and vice versa) invites further investigation.

According to remarks made in the “other” category, the one major tradition that was excluded from our list was the Church of Christ/Restoration tradition, though less than 1% of respondents noted this omission. The majority of the additional “other” responses were what one might call antitraditional labels or self-descriptors that sought to focus on a key or key Christian essentials: “I serve God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” “Christ follower,” “universal church,” “Biblical,” “Christian,” “Bible-based Christianity,” “I believe in Jesus Christ,” “Follower of Christ's teachings,” “I don't believe in tradition. I believe in God and that Jesus died to save me,” “saved by faith through Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead,” “Mere Christianity,” “Emergent Christian,” etc.

The mode score for the remaining two participating institutions was “neither agree nor disagree.”

The reason(s) for this disconnect is not clear from the data we collected. Faculty simply may not be aware of declines in denominational budget appropriations, or they may view denominational identity as supporting financial health in other ways (e.g., enhancing fundraising efforts, etc.). Further research is needed in order to explain this discrepancy.

Because we find the ordering of a person's identities to be one of the most fundamentally important aspects of personhood (see for example Glanzer & Ream, 2009), we believe future research in this area is warranted. In particular, it would be helpful to know how faculty understand their denominational identity in relationship to their other human (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, class, etc.) and relational (e.g., parent, spouse, friend, etc.) identities.

Another important follow-up question to pursue in future research is whether or not Christian college faculty acceptance of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox colleagues would extend to administrative posts such as department chair, dean, or provost.