That’s funny, because when I just looked at every single Ivy League school logo, there was not a single crucifix. Interesting. And no, the US is not over 90% Christian. Please, look up census demographics before posting. You’re just embarrassing yourself.</p>
<p>
1.) Mission statements are no substitute for action.</p>
<p>2.) Please, read the following.</p>
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</p>
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</p>
<p>Now will you please stop complaining about the mission statements?</p>
<p>
Yes, silly me, relying on “words” and “facts” when I should just blindly accept your statements, despite your complete lack of experience as either a teacher, student, or administrator at these universities.</p>
<p>Also, it hardly seems respectful to refer to the Lord as “JC,” but whatever. The fact of the matter is, He spoke of tolerance and love, so if that less than 10% non-Christian population really bothers you, then please, by all means, go busy yourself with less accepting institutions.</p>
<p>
Science and religion can and should go hand in hand. As Albert Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” They both reveal truth. The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go. Science tells us about God’s Creation, but not the underlying truth. We need both.</p>
<p>Catholicism is more liberal than Evangelicalism, yet the former is growing in number in the US (partially thanks to a higher conversion rate, partially thanks to Hispanic immigrants), while the latter is shrinking. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses are growing at a higher percentage rate than either, interestingly enough. I suppose their whole model is based upon conversion.</p>
<p>
Have you attended either of these universities? What do you know about the religious life there? Many students are devout. There are those who are not, but that does not take away from the religious nature of the school.</p>
<p>
You literally have no statistics about the sexual orientation of Catholic priests. However, it does not matter. At all. Priests are called to take vows of celibacy. The Catholic Church doesn’t care about a priest’s sexual orientation, because the priest is giving up sex. They’re all abstaining from sex anyway, so there is no difference. Priests occasionally break their vows, but there is no meaningful statistic or study as to if rates differ depending on sexual orientation. </p>
<p>And, wouldn’t you believe it, Catholics don’t hate homosexuals! What a refreshing change from the men on TV who preach hate in the “megachurches” that make them millions of dollars a year. They all seem to be gay, too, interestingly enough.</p>
<p>
This generally comes from two things. First, some people in non-Jesuit parishes think that the Jesuits are too liberal (theologically, that is; they still keep with Catholic doctrine). However, this view is rarely found and present almost only in older generations. Plus, so many parishes are Jesuit, people are used to it.</p>
<p>Second, and the main reason, is what I said earlier. The percentage of Catholic students varies between these two schools. Georgetown, with its big city location and East Coast prestige, attracts a lot of non-Catholic students. 50-60% of Georgetown students are Catholic, and most of the rest are Christian. However, Notre Dame, more secluded and containing more legacy students (some with families dating back to the all-Catholic founding), has maintained 85% Catholic students, as it draws a very Catholic (and thus smaller) applicant pool. For the occaisonal people who think the Jesuits are too liberal, Notre Dame is not run by the Society of Jesus, but by the Congregation of the Holy Cross. Their campus life is perceived as more strict, as each dorm building is single-sex, though both universities ban sexual activity on campus and refuse to sell birth control or condoms.</p>
<p>Also, the Catholic identity of Notre Dame has been “tested” a little more, so to speak. Maryland was founded as a haven for oppressed Catholics (Lord Baltimore was an English Catholic, falsely implicated with Guy Fawkes, oppressed English Catholic who plotted to blow up the King and House of Lords). Thus, the DC area (Georgetown was in Maryland right before it became DC) has generally been more tolerant of Catholics. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Notre Dame students are called “The Fighting Irish” because of a series of 19th century battles with the KKK, who have Catholics on their list of people to hate and wanted to destroy Notre Dame. When the students successfully and repeatedly defeated the KKK in battle outside of Notre Dame, newspapers called them “The Fighting Irish.” Notre Dame has been more discriminated against for being Catholic, and thus has turned inward more.</p>
<p>Hope that series of history lessons and demographic reports helps, haha.</p>
<p>
What is “American” is not always what is right. As a Christian, you should know that. Slavery was American, genocide was American, giving the vote only to rich white men was American. But none of that was right by human rights or by God. Hell, abortion is currently American. I’ll be un-American for that.</p>
<p>
I damn well hope the head of the second largest democracy on Earth and the most powerful one at that would be against colonialism and imperialism. Otherwise, what is it all for?</p>
<p>But thank you for bringing politics into this.</p>
<p>Now, to lend some insight to a more “intellectual” academic insight, here’s today’s lead article in the"Chronical of Higher Education." Lends some perspective to this issue and the rather disparate viewpoints.</p>
<p>P.S. btw, Billy, the problem and issue are not that the alleged leader of the largest, most powerful democracy in the world is against colonialism and imperialism. Rather it’s the warped view that the USA has been or is either, and thus needs to be re-directed … or “changed.” Ah, dreams of my drunken daddy …</p>
<p>Re: “Leaders” of ND and Gt. Sadly, the by-laws of both neither mentiion nor require Christianity as a function of leadership for governing bodies. ND does have 7 of 60 of its governors or are men of the cloth tho.</p>
<p>In all of this, I’m confident each will make up her own mind. And where we stand will determine how we see it … and perhaps rationalize the culture’s redefining the Cross, compartmentalizing it from “serious” campuses. My guess is Christ prefers “serious” Christians. ;)</p>
<p>And how very “Christian” of you to make the comment “dreams of my drunken daddy.” You do know Obama only met his father a handful of times? </p>
<p>There’s a reason Catholic / Jesuit education such as that provided by Gtown is well thought of, and the evangelical Christian colleges (with the possible exception of Wheaton) aren’t. It has to do with the nature of intellectual inquiry versus drinking Kool-aid.</p>
First, please find me these bylaws you are quoting. Second, has there ever been a non-Christian president of either university? No? Okay, then.</p>
<p>
And you continue your assertion that either Catholics, or Catholic priests, or students interested in academic learning are somehow not Christian enough. I would like to point out that Catholic universities have been educating people on Christianity since far before Luther left the Church or Henry VIII decided to found a church based on his divorce. Given the fact that Protestantism sprung from Catholicism, you really should stop claiming that Catholics aren’t Christians. Last time you did that, I proved you wrong. Then you said most Christians were not Catholic, but I proved you wrong again, just so you would stop generalizing about what “most” Christians believe. I bet not even most Protestants would agree with you. Most all I know are very reasonable and accepting people. Funny, I only find people like you on the internet, and you are few and far between. I know most everyone else here is reasonable enough not to put down the religions of others. I have no problem with Protestants; indeed, Christians as a whole have FAR more in common than different. Why is it that you have a problem with Catholics?</p>
<p>But it’s nice to see you evade or completely drop 90% of my points. I’ll just assume that silence is compliance.</p>
<p>There are narrow minded people in every faith and non-faith out there. It’s not good to judge based on one person’s internet postings IMO. I know of several Christian colleges that are well-respected, both Protestant and Catholic. Yes, there are some that I wouldn’t send my offspring to, but there are some secular schools that are too far overboard for my personal likes too, though generally in the opposite direction. I just don’t care for narrow minded on either extreme.</p>
<p>Are there any top non-catholic christian universities that are ranked in the top 25 by US News (national universities/LACs, not regional)? I can’t think of many. It seems that most of the top christian universities in this country are catholic.</p>
<p>Yep, there’s a reason for that. Intellectual inquiry and rational thought. It isn’t the Catholics rallying behind the new trend of creationism and pretending the earth is only a few thousand years old, that’s for sure!</p>
<p>Ah, yes. Part of the cultural religion is reading the bible of rankings … USNWR, Kip’s, Washington Post, etc. etc. </p>
<p>They do sell pubs and services, confident there are trout willing to bite always. Lemming unable to make their own discernments, in dire need of someone else telling them what they need to know. These are just like the oscar awards. Self infatuation and flatulation. Note who selects. Not the ones paying the ticket price. Same w/ these U’s. </p>
<p>As acknowledged, no one’s mind will be changed in this discussion. But those who know, know. And their knowledge is not dependent upon magazines portending “research.” But that notion plays well to their audience, somehow making it all seem “true.”</p>
<p>College rankings attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, and thus all fail to some degree. Personally, I don’t think colleges can or should be ranked. It’s just enriching someone in a foul capitalistic way.</p>
<p>Whistle Pig, you may be interested in a line from a letter that Notre Dame sent me today. Speaking of the College of Arts & Letters, it says, “You can pursue theology not as the disinterested science of religious phenomena but as faith seeking understanding.”</p>
<p>
Unless you are referring to those who blindly follow what they are told, or those making money off of religion, then no. Certainly not “religion altogether.” If you expect others to be reasonable/respectful, please act that way, too.</p>
<p>And who would care if they were? It can still be part of intellectual inquiry and rational thought. It’s only non-intellectual and non-rational if one believes what one believes (either way) on hearsay alone - without examining the evidence or arguments for and against it. I know both educated and uneducated people who believe both ways on this issue. The educated ones can talk intelligently about it and are often fun to talk with. The rabid ones (either side) I tune out - as do the vast majority of people I know. I think they only “preach” to their respective choirs.</p>
<p>I know a current PhD prof in a secular college who believes in YE - and their education came solely from secular schools. I know a Harvard undergrad (graduate) who believes the same. I know Christian college undergrad (graduates) who are OE. I know one who has a PhD who is OE. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with where one goes to college. It has only to do with what one believes about the evidence out there.</p>
<p>As for me? (since most want to know if they bring it up) I firmly believe God created. If He simply created (YE) and evolutionary change in speciation is the “whole” of evolution from there, that’s fine. It is what the evidence we have (and see, etc) today seems to show. If He created via evolution, that’s fine. It can be what more geological stuff seems to show. DNA evidence seems to split and/or can support either view pending which part of the DNA one considers.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter to me at all what one believes personally (though I would possibly take exception to those who supposedly claim dinosaurs never existed - I haven’t actually met anyone who believes that). I guess I put it in the same category as those who believe (or not) in the moon landing, theories of Atlantis, or how the Nazca lines came into being. It’s all an interesting topic to ponder, but not one worthy of being a litmus test to intelligence. I’ve met intelligent people on both sides. There are more important things to daily life.</p>
<p>As an employer, I don’t care how someone believes. I do care that they aren’t a “my way or everyone else is an idiot” type of person. The latter prove to be more trouble with personnel issues (whether religion, politics, or anything else). Tolerance is a beautiful thing in the workplace. Narrowmindedness is not - regardless of YE/OE, religion in general, politics or food choices.</p>
<p>I suppose that’s why I want my offsprings’ colleges to be more neutral - whether Christian or secular. I’m very pleased with the education (in the classroom and outside of it) that my oldest is getting at his Christian college. We’ll be vetting the secular choices of middle son carefully. Youngest is undecided at this point. We’ll at least let him finish 9th grade before grilling him on it!</p>
<p>Good post Creekland. This thread is interesting and validates Saul’s problem. And that his transformation to Paul had nothing to do w/ how smart he considered himself. Absent the shed scales, his brain power was all for naught.</p>
True, it was a Catholic priest who discovered the Big Bang and the Catholic Church soon embraced it as the moment of Creation. However, the idea that the Earth was created a little before 9am on Sunday, October 23rd, 4004 BC is hardly a “new trend.” I do believe it out-dates the modern scientific discoveries of geology and astronomy. Now, the age of one theory, or the number of people following, doesn’t say anything about the innate truth of the theory; I just wanted to clear that up, from a historical perspective.</p>
<p>Indeed, a great school. Among the elite of the elite. imo, a far superior place to many of the NE elites. </p>
<p>And it once was a Presbyterian college like few others. But that too is mostly antiquated history, to be redundant. It no more belongs being discussed as a Christian college than … Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Yale, and on and on. </p>
<p>Still, there is that legacy and the nice emotional notion of some who would and do lend lip-service to the idea of it being a bastion of Christianity. It’s not. And anyone spending any time there … I have … will realize, lots of scholarship, little or no corporate culture of Christianity. </p>
<p>Like most places, and especially in the South where God, country, apple pie, and NASCAR, which is based w/in spitting distance (if one is a good spitter) of Davidson, are nice ideas that sadly do not pervade the professoriate anymore than standing when Dixie is played. And do not be deluded …it is the profs, not some hopeful trustees who set the tone, determine who gets hired, tenured, promoted. So a fine,scholarly, gorgeous place … where spiritual development is not correlated with becoming a devout student of Scripture and follower of Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>Still, here and there, one can really grasp the Gospel’s insight to the pharisees.</p>
<p>btw, in posing the notion of Davidson as a Christian college, beyond the obvious Ivies who’ve not wandered but sprinted away from preaching and teaching the Gospel, there are dozens and dozens like them …Grinnell, Oberlin, Denison, Allegheny, Centre, Rhodes, Kenyon, Mt. Union, Ohio Weslyan, Millsaps, Hendrix, Albion, Eckerd, Rollins, Oglethorpe, Emory, Wake Forest, Elon, Wofford, Washington & Jefferson, blah blah blah …</p>
<p>Literally dozens if not hundreds. Time to separate the wheat from the chaffe sp? The luke-warm from the red-hot. Scripture is clear … the way is very narrow, true and exclusive (only one, believe it or not); and dooms non-Believers to a far different eternity than His true-blue Believers. (So many choose to treat the truth and reality that Christianity is available to all, but exclusive in who gets a ticket on the train. And the culture is quick to portray speaking this as … being mean, or hateful, or less than inclusive because of specific “phobias.” In fact it is none of these. Rather it is the heart-breaking truth. But the only thing making it at all attractive? The complementary truth that we have been granted along with this opportunity for life, freedom to go in another direction. And one of those directions, as we see vividly illustrated here and elsewhere is man-made manufacturing of new “truths” that accommodate our own self-perceived intellect. </p>
<p>And it’s that intellect that both illumines and blinds those who worship the intellectual in lieu of He who created that brain.</p>
<p>btw, re: your question Billy about the by-laws, they’re on their websites. Read 'em and weep. But please discern … having Christians, even many of them, does not constitute a Christian college …anymore than having 90% Christians as citizenry constitutes a Christian nation.</p>
<p>90% of your points, while very interesting, have nothing to do with the issue. And it’s that one issue that you fail to address or even acknowledge in your intellectualizing about something that has lots of information to support it. Faith has nothing to do with any of your points.</p>
What, then, is required? Being officially Christian? Check. Teaching Christianity? Check. Being run by Christian priests? Check. Seems to check out. Please, if there is some thing that it lacks, speak up about it, rather than continuing to assert that Notre Dame and Georgetown are not Christian schools, despite being presented with all evidence to the contrary.</p>
<p>Or is it that you still have ideas that Catholicism is not Christianity? Your points speak such ignorance of the atmospheres, educations, and missions of these schools that I would not be surprised.</p>
<p>I’d hope that we might agree on one fundamental issue relative to the purpose of literally every college and university … regardless of the labels you or I might approve of or reject. </p>
<p>All universities and colleges seek to know and convey … the truth. Make that THE truth.</p>
<p>For as we all know, regardless of the current culture’s yearning to want many, even personal truths, truth is only true … if it is true for all. We confuse opinions with truth. Each is entitled to our own opinion, but we should not confuse that with either facts or the truth.</p>
<p>But in any case, Christ said it simply … “I am the truth.” </p>
<p>The question: IF that is, dare I say, true … then how does a college purporting to be Christian committed to convey that?</p>
<p>And thus it is this simple notion that must separate Christian colleges and universities from their secular and non-Christian institutions. And like the freedom Christ has given to us in his new covenants and we’ve been given to accept or reject His truth, many institutions have wandered and even “run” away from this. It’s a function of several dynamics … the erroneous idea that science is about facts and Christianity is about mythological moral stories and philosophies, the buy-in/sell-out to Darwinism, the growing requirement of the professoriate to be both “progressive/liberal” for entry and being on the team, the simple idea that Thomas Sowell illustrates about professors/academics that even while most are not …they must portray themselves as being intellectual and intellects who are supposed to be coming up with new notions and rejecting what cannot be proven (faith is about embracing that which cannot be proven, seen), and more.</p>
<p>And what this leads to, especially in institutions of higher education in today’s creeping culture, is manifestation of “original sin,” i.e. wanting to redesign that which has been deemed perfect. The implication is that man, specifically professors, can improve, enlighten, redefine it all. It rejects the Bible as being THE Word, in exchange for being nice words. It embraces the premise that all ideas are equally valid, rejecting the notion of not so, there is only ONE VALID exclusive way. Jesus Christ. Try that on at Gt or ND, or more specifically try purporting Creationism and rejecting Darwin and evolution in the bio programs @ either. You’d be laughed out of the department, de facto.</p>
<p>And there is tremendous institutional pressure to abandon and make up our own “religion” like Harvard, Princeton, Oberlin, Grinnell, Allegheny, Denison and on and on and on have chosen to do, abandoning the commitment to educating students about Christ and for Christ.</p>
<p>So you can call me theologically ignorant. I can label you intellectually arrogant. We’d both be right. But you know the Good News for me? Christ did not make this complex. While Ph.Ds are fine and serve purposes, not at all necessary to figure this out. </p>
<p>And to recognize those college campuses working to become MORE Christ-like in the manner and content of their academics vs. those drifting, drifting, drifting. </p>
<p>And in a more worldwide, if not “worldly” perspective, there is even better news. The numbers of those choosing to follow Christ are growing. In fact, Christianity is the fastest growing movement in the world. But … NOT among the Western intelligentia. Why? I believe I’ve offered my analysis. They are way too smart. Or perceive themselves as such.</p>