LAT: Evangelical Colleges Make Marks in a Secular World

[DeepModem Mom]

In California and nationally, evangelical colleges and universities are gaining broader acceptance and moving closer to the academic mainstream.

Enrollments are surging, especially in Southern California, home to two of the largest schools. The percentage of students heading to graduate school is rising and some of the institutions have edged up in college rankings. Evangelical scholars, meanwhile, are having a bigger effect in academic circles, occasionally attracting job offers from Ivy League schools.


But many academics remain concerned that the schools bend their instruction to conform with religious doctrine, stifling intellectual inquiry. They note that the colleges commonly require faculty members to make faith pledges attesting to their Christian religious beliefs and refuse to hire homosexuals.


The schools for years have been closer to mainstream academia than fundamentalist schools such as Bob Jones University or Christian Bible colleges. The better evangelical schools typically provide far broader curriculums, with offerings in the humanities as well as in the natural sciences. Yet they are more restrictive in faculty hiring and other campus policies than the nation's leading Catholic or mainline Protestant universities.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-evangel30nov30,1,4264492.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[xchrom]

1. the virtuous populous

controlled by the un-believing elite. machiavelli.
the virtuous populace questions less and causes fewer problems for the elite since they don't question the motives the elite might have in what they do. a devils contract has been drawn up in this country between the religous right and corporate facists like wolfowitz or rumsfeld against social liberals. evangelicals want a government that is ''faith-based'' -- corporate facists want to stay behind the scenes and allowed to privatise as many social services as they can to provide more power and money to those at the top. so the two groups use each other to get at the third.