To Be a Christian College

Alan Jacobs in First Things

On the contrary, there are good reasons that some colleges and universities might choose, in the interests of intellectual coherence and the promotion of fruitful conversation, or in the interests of, say, service to the Church, or out of a love for Truth itself, to confine their constituency to those who share a set of core beliefs. The wide-open doors of the modern university--even supposing that they really exist--are a good thing but not the only good thing. Certain valuable and productive conversations happen in classrooms at Wheaton [College] or Thomas Aquinas [College] that simply cannot happen in the classrooms of secular universities.