<p>You’re going to find that there are going to be active Protestant communities at just about any college. There will be pervasive religious communities at some, but they often come at the expense of the student diversity that is essential for facilitating a 21st-century understanding of the larger world.</p>
<p>There are active Christian groups at even the most secular colleges. Large public U’s will have enough students to reflect all sorts of approaches to religion. Is your question really about a school DOMINATED by a particular approach to religion, and a particular branch of Christainity specifically? Baptists and Lutherans have different ideas, for example. Bible, faith, good works approaches… There are active minorities at many schools which provide the social group in many different Christian denominations. If your goal is to find like minded people you can search for the campus group which meets your criteria and contact them for what their members do. It only takes under a hundred people to form friendships and have enough people to participate in activities. Consider the demographics of the region- for secular schools the at home church habits/ideas of the area students will influence the overall culture.</p>
<p>I don’t know how strong or active the groups are, but Stanford boasts a long and varied list of Protestant organizations. It seemed to me when D ('14) read me the descriptions of these groups that a wide range of Protestant subsets was represented. It makes sense, since many exciting new evangelical groups started in CA, like Calvary Chapel and Vineyard.</p>
<p>I am sure you could find many people with the same religious beliefs at almost any college. I find threads like this very insulting and I am a Christian (Catholic). </p>
<p>I just can’t imagine that this information can’t be found in the privacy of ones home without coming on forums and portraying oneself as exclusionary.</p>
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I was originally planning on asking “Top schools with a active Christian (Methodist) community”. Good thing I didn’t, otherwise I would have been blasted not only by the Catholics, but also the Baptists, Presbyterians, Fundamentalist Christians, Congregationalists, and the dozens of other Protestant denominations… LOL</p>
<p>I’m sorry if I offended anyone, but honestly, when I ask people what their religious background is, 8 times of of 10 those with a Catholic background will respond by saying “Catholic” …not ‘Christian’ (Look at the “religious views” spot of some Christian (Catholic) 
people’s Facebook pages if you don’t believe me; a majority express themselves as “Roman Catholic” or “Catholic”, as opposed to Christian-Catholic)</p>
<p>Y’all need to take a chill pill!!</p>
<p>exegesis…It is not just your post that offends me. I find any post that asks about any religion on a college campus offensive. I sent my kids to college to receive an education and part of that education is to get to know others from different religions. Their faith is their faith and no one can take that away from them. I just don’t get why so many people have a need to only be around their own kind…it seems kind of narrow sighted to me.</p>
<p>^^Oh I don’t think it’s offensive. People “identify” by all sorts of criteria when looking for colleges. Look at all the threads about hipsters, preps, big sports, environmentalists, strong Hillel, LGBT and on and on. I thought it was a legitiimate question although the OP could have been a touch more specific (Methodist) which might have yielded a quicker answer to the question.</p>
<p>Many years ago my sister attended Westminister College in western PA. She loved it and it was a very good liberal arts school.</p>
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<p>I totally disagree. That is your conception of an education. Mine could, for example, be growing in my Muslim faith, which I could feel is best carried out at a school that has a Muslim affiliation. I could not care about diversity at all and be attending a commuter school in order to learn practical skills for my job (note that religious seminaries are in a sense “technical” schools). </p>
<p>Your idea of education doesn’t apply to everyone.</p>
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As I asked on a similar thread, would you be offended if a student asked if there were enough computer gamers on campus to have LAN parties? This thread is about somebody wanting to find a college where they will have enough people who share a particular interest for them to pursue it. There’s nothing offensive about that.</p>
<p>And while I’m preaching, I’ll just note that there is a recurring issue on these boards when somebody uses the word “Christian” as a modifier for “college” or “group.” Typically, the person is referring to more-or-less evangelical Protestant Christianity when they say this. They don’t mean that Catholics aren’t Christians–they’re just using a shorthand term that a lot of people understand. Notre Dame is a Catholic College, and Liberty University is a “Christian” college. Using those terms doesn’t mean that anybody thinks that Catholics aren’t Christians. (And I will just note, for Cardinal Fang, that I have a friend who is Greek Orthodox who insists that the Catholics split off from the Orthodox, who were the original Christians. So everybody gets bent out of shape about all this terminology.)</p>
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<p>and a lot of people hate. Some evangelicals explicitly state that they are Christians and other people aren’t. I don’t have to accept their attempt to steal the term.</p>
<p>There are lots of threads here asking about religion on campus, and I, too, believe that they are appropriate. There is no “majority” religion anymore – everyone feels like a minority in his religious practice or non-practice – and the same words can mean different things in different places. Even with a category as seemingly clear as “Catholic colleges”, there are huge differences in the role of religion on campus, differences that will be relevant (in different ways) to Catholics and non-Catholics, people who consider themselves religious and atheists. Those kinds of things are rarely addressed in colleges’ viewbooks or websites, and its great if you can get a nuanced discussion going here.</p>
<p>I don’t mind, either, if Catholics want to take offense at people using “Christian” in a way that excludes them. Kids ought to learn that they will get that reaction using the term in a way that may be common in their community, but not in the larger world. In this particular case, though, I thought it was gratuitous since the issue had been thoroughly discussed (and a thread thoroughly sidetracked) in another thread involving the same poster on the same day, and as far as I could tell there was no evidence that the OP’s use of the term was anything other than an innocent mistake not intended to stake out a theological position.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I note that the OP has surprised me once again. Methodist? The OP is looking for an active Methodist community? As in, NON-evangelical, NON-charismatic, old-fashioned, mainstream, socially conscious Protestantism? Or does “Methodist” mean something else in other parts of the country? In any event, I am not certain we have given the OP adequate advice on this.</p>
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<p>The “lot of people” are only other Evangelical Protestants. So using that term on a public message board–OR when you interact with other Christians who are NOT Evangelical Protestants but who consider themselves Christian ----is thoroughly obnoxious. Telling people to “chill” when they have made it clear that they feel insulted and you are being obnoxious just pours salt on the wound.</p>
<p>Not necessarily - I’m a liberal bordering on agnostic Jew, and to me “Christian” is indeed a shorthand for evangelical Protestant Christianity. Not mainstream Protestant denominations such as Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and not Catholic. I understand that they are all Christian, but I think Christian has been co-opted by the religious right, sorry to say.</p>
<p>Since Glenn Beck made “social justice” a target, that’s one way to check out the flavor of a Christian community on campus. Ones that are involved with poverty, GLBT issues, immigration and such are likely to be more like mainline liberal Protestantism. Check out the religious life pages at the websites of schools of interest, there are likely to be a range of groups even at smaller schools.</p>
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So do some Catholics. I would suggest that it’s best to complain about the people who explicitly make such claims and resist being offended by people asking innocent questions.</p>
<p>How about St. Olaf? It’s Lutheran, not Methodist, but it’s a great little liberal arts school for mainline Protestants. A little conservative, with many religious students.</p>
<p>Wow. This post got pretty polemical quickly.</p>
<p>I advise students and parents like Exigesis on how to find the right college. Why they may prefer one sort of community (religious or no) is immaterial to me. </p>
<p>However, I think it is incumbent upon Exigesis to explain carefully what is sought here. Protestants (as has been observed in this Forum) come in all types. Faith is an intensely personal affair, and needs to be fully explained and put into a solid context that someone like me can understand before I start recommending everything from Messiah or Wheaton to Harvard or Reed. </p>
<p>I do admit, however, I love discussions about religion: it was my college major!</p>
<p>In support of CF: I think it’s important to retain Christian to mean evangelical protestant, rich Episcopalians, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox.</p>
<p>My evangelical students have been honestly shocked to learn that these other groups are rightly called Christian because the narrower meaning is the only one familiar to them.</p>
<p>To me, there is a political bias here already.</p>
<p>I understand that this might not be the thread to do this, but I don’t think it’s a minor point. And by the way, I am also an agnostic, secular person of Jewish descent.</p>
<p>In a post this morning, Exegesis gave another clue to what he seeks:</p>
<p>I was originally planning on asking “Top schools with a active Christian (Methodist) community”</p>
<p>There you have it. </p>
<p>I’ll start.</p>
<p>Exegesis, I had a fascinating experience as adjunct faculty at Spring Arbor College in Michigan. It’s a Free Methodist institution with an attractive campus. In addition to my oncampus work, I was able to teach college courses inside America’s largest maximum security prison. </p>
<p>You will not find Spring Arbor College on a “Top l0 college” list, but it certainly had a near l00percent "Active Christian (Methodist) student body.</p>
<p>I realize that Free Methodist is an evangelical offshoot of the Methodist church, so I don’t know if that will help you, but it is as good as I can deliver from my personal experience with colleges.</p>
<p>By the way, have you noticed College Confidential’s section called “Christian Colleges”? You might find some help there as well.</p>