The question is not whether a college or university should be civilizational, but rather which sort of civilization it ought to cultivate and how that project can be pursued most effectively. Although the cultural fragmentation of our age has rendered these questions highly contested within the secular academy, the answers are far more straightforward in the Christian college context. In fact, the Christian intellectual tradition provides a storehouse of resources for defining the true, the good, and the beautiful in clear and compelling ways, and then applying those judgments to the pressing issues of our day. This requires, however, that Christian colleges be staffed with faculty who are confident enough in the Christian vision to make those applications amidst a hostile culture.

Can a college be both confessionally Christian and civilizational in its emphasis? This question lies at the heart of a recent essay by Jay Green, Professor of History at Covenant College, which caused a stir among pastors serving in the college’s sponsoring denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Green warns of the rise of “civilizational” colleges “lurking in the background” of the sacred/secular divide, places that use Christian faith to attract Christian families but don’t actually embody a Christian identity. The singular example he cites is Hillsdale College, where “faith is ‘honored’ rather than necessarily believed” and where “less time and attention are given to using Christian insights to critique things like Western Civilization and the American Founding.” In Green’s telling, Hillsdale essentially uses Christianity as both an enrollment marketing tool and a curricular garnish to achieve its real mission—advancing a decidedly conservative political agenda.

Now, it is true that Hillsdale does not fit the traditional definition of an evangelical Christian college. That descriptor has been historically reserved for colleges and universities like Green’s employer, Covenant College, that hire only professing Christians as full-time faculty members and senior administrators. This hiring policy is a baseline requirement for membership in the two national associations that serve Christian postsecondary institutions, the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) and the International Alliance for Christian Education (IACE).

Yet it is impossible to ignore the dramatic reassertion of faith that has occurred at Hillsdale over the last decade, a renaissance made all the more remarkable when placed against the backdrop of secularization that has afflicted most American colleges originally founded by Protestant denominations. In recent years, as many Christian colleges softened the edges of their identities in an attempt to appeal to a broader pool of prospective students, Hillsdale took the opposite approach by more emphatically embracing its institutional mission as a “nonsectarian Christian institution” that “maintains ‘by precept and example’ the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith.” The most striking example of this reassertion was the 2019 opening of Christ Chapel, which was placed in the heart of Hillsdale’s campus as a visible—and costly—marker of the college’s identity. The last decade has also witnessed the expansion of the college’s free online course catalogue, the topics of which—Genesis, Exodus, King David, Ancient Christianity, the Western Theological Tradition, and C. S. Lewis, among others—also testify to the institution’s renewed emphasis on its Christian identity.

On their own, an aesthetically impressive chapel and faith-based public curriculum do not a Christian college make. They do, however, represent the sorts of investments one would expect from an institution serious about its faith-based mission, particularly because both require significant resources and swimming against the cultural tide. Their existence also suggests an educational environment where Christian students and faculty can thrive. To his credit, Green acknowledged this reality in a follow-up piece that walked back some of his most egregious assertions while simultaneously doubling down on his original “distinction between ‘confessional’ and ‘civilizational’ ideas of a Christian college.” 

Green’s distinction fundamentally misunderstands both the societal function of higher education and the unique mission of the Christian college.

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