The Scandal of the Evangelical College
Why Christian Higher Education Fails the Church
- Discipleship & Christian Education
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
Despite heady claims about Christ-centeredness, Evangelical colleges are scandalously secular institutions, in thrall to the regnant assumptions of the market economy and mainstream higher education. Paradigms intended to "integrate faith and learning" often ironically fracture and distort Christianity. Even the "spiritual" dimensions of the Christian college, presumed to keep it safe from religious declension, are prone to secularizing tendencies because the American Evangelical culture from which the college receives its spiritual cues--and from which it accepts its donors' money--is itself captive to a set of sub-biblical economic, social, and political assumptions. This book argues that the cause of the scandal is the absence of the church in the imagination of the Evangelical college. It therefore proposes that the mission and practice of the Evangelical college should be to summon, equip, and renew the people of God. While this may sound like a return to an obsolete bible school model of Christian education, the ecclesial vision only sounds narrow because we lack a robust understanding of the vocation of the church itself. By simultaneously restricting our vision of the Evangelical college while broadening our understanding of the church, a more fully evangelical educational endeavor might emerge.
Endorsements (4)
“Evangelical colleges and universities have lost touch with the church, and it is indeed a scandal. Administrators and boards of these institutions must come to grips with Martin Spence’s arguments. All those connected to Christian higher education need to read this book.”
“The ‘scandal’ of the evangelical college, according to Martin Spence, lies in its conflation of faith and individual piety. This results in its attempt to bring a Christian ‘worldview’ into a predetermined curriculum. Spence’s compelling alternative lets us see education as an ecclesial vocation that transforms faith into a shared way of life at once social, political, and economic. His analysis opens the imagination to how the Christian college might yet offer a rich alternative to the domesticated faith of late modernity.”
“Although many evangelical colleges trumpet their orthodoxy, Martin Spence rightly points out that there’s more than one way to give in to the secular spirit of the age. Rather than serving the church, the mission of evangelical colleges largely matches their secular counterparts: preparing individuals to serve the market economy. Spence’s compelling critique and vision for moving forward makes this a must-read for this time of great upheaval in Christian higher education.”
“In this book, Martin Spence makes an excellent scholarly contribution that demonstrates the multidimensional and multifaceted nature of secularization in Christian higher education. Spence concludes by offering practical suggestions on how Christian higher education can go beyond being reactionary to the amoral demands of the marketplace by being visionary through the building of alignment between Christian higher education and the church community. Doing so would enable rooting the practice of Christian transformation at the grassroots level, where ordinary lay people could be effectively reached.”
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