God on the Quad
How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Religious colleges and universities in America are growing at a breakneck pace. In this startling new book, journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley explores these schools-interviewing administrators, professors, and students-to produce the first popular, accessible, and comprehensive investigation of this phenomenon.
Call them the Missionary Generation. By the tens and hundreds of thousands, some of America's brightest and most dedicated teenagers are opting for a different kind of college education. It promises all the rigor of traditional liberal arts schools, but mixed with religious instruction from the Good Book and a mandate from above.
Far removed from the medieval cloisters outsiders imagine, schools like Wheaton, Thomas Aquinas, and Brigham Young are churning out a new generation of smart, worldly, and ethical young professionals whose influence in business, medicine, law, journalism, academia, and government is only beginning to be felt.
In God On The Quad, Riley takes readers to the halls of Brigham Young, where surprisingly with-it young Mormons compete in a raucous marriage market and prepare for careers in public service. To the infamous Bob Jones, post interracial dating ban, where zealous Christian fundamentalists are studying fine art and great literature to help them assimilate into the nation's cultural centers. To Thomas Aquinas College, where graduates homeschool large families and hope to return the American Catholic Church to its former glory. To Yeshiva, Wheaton, Notre Dame, and more than a dozen other schools, big and small, rich and poor, new and old, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon, and even Buddhist, all training grounds for the new Missionary Generation.
With a critical yet sympathetic eye, Riley, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Weekly Standard, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, studies these campuses and the debates that shape them. In a post-9/11 world where the division between secular and religious has never been sharper, what distinguishes these colleges from their secular counterparts? What does the missionary generation think about political activism, feminism, academic freedom, dating, race relations, homosexuality, and religious tolerance-and what effect will these young men and women have on the United States and the world?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A journalist known for her writing on religion and education in the Wall Street Journal and other top periodicals, Riley presents an engrossing survey of the growing world of religious higher education. To the secularly educated reader, this book is a fascinating anthropological glimpse into unfamiliar pockets of religious America. To the religiously affiliated, it cogently synthesizes issues and goals common to many of these colleges regardless of religion. Riley points out that enrollments are rising at these institutions and that a new educated "missionary generation" is bringing faith into the professional world. She argues that if "religious college leaders can navigate between the dangers of secularization and isolation, these schools can more effectively transmit their ideas to a larger American audience" and help build bridges between "red" and "blue" America. Riley's findings are based on visits to 20 different campuses, and she devotes her first six chapters to schools with various affiliations (Mormon, fundamentalist Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Jewish and Baptist). She spent up to a week on each campus, attended religious services and social events, sat in on classes and conducted interviews. The second half takes on common themes relevant to issues of student life on religious campuses: feminism, race, minority religious groups, lifestyle choices, integration of faith and intellect, and political activism.
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