Making Higher Education Christian: The History and Mission of Evangelical Colleges in America

This book takes stock of an important but often hidden aspect of American Protestant evangelicalism: its efforts in higher education. The many liberal arts colleges graduate theological seminaries and Bible colleges nationwide that serve evangelical traditions and movements have remained nearly invisible to the academic establishment until recently. The essays presented here reflect a maturing community of scholarship focused on the unfinished business of developing a thoroughly Christian approach to contemporary higher education. They offer new theoretical perspectives on the aims and bases of educating candid assessments of shortcomings in evangelical scholarship and concrete suggestion for effective approaches to contemporary problems. Joel A. Carpenter is professor of history and director of the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin College. Among his publications are Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (1997); The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa the West and the World coedited with Lamin Sanneh (2005); and Walking Together: Christian Thinking and Pubic Affairs in South Africa (2012). Kenneth W. Shipps is former provost of Phillips University Enid Oklahoma and is now provost and dean of faculty at Whitworth College Spokane Washington. With Joel Carpenter he is coeditor of Making Higher Education Christian (1987).