God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation are Changing America [Paperback]

Naomi Schaefer Riley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2006

Religious colleges and universities in the United States are growing at a breakneck pace. By the tens and hundreds of thousands, some of America's brightest and most dedicated teenagers are choosing a different kind of college education, one that promises all the rigor of traditional liberal arts schools but also includes religious instruction from the Good Book and a mandate from above. In this eye-opening report, Naomi Schaefer Riley investigates these schools, interviewing administrators, professors, and students to produce the first comprehensive account of this important trend. With a critical but sympathetic eye, she takes the reader inside the halls of more than a dozen schools that are training grounds for the new missionary generation—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon, and even Buddhist. What distinguishes these colleges from their secular counterparts? What do its students think about political activism, feminism, academic freedom, dating, race relations, homosexuality, and religious tolerance? The surprising answers in God on the Quad are a key to understanding the forces at work in post-9/11 America.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

What are young Americans looking for in a college education? In what he considers one of the most surprising developments in higher education, Riley finds that a growing number of students are forsaking postmodern secularism by seeking deeper religious faith. Through extended visits to 20 faith-based schools, Riley has monitored the quickening pulse of religious devotion among college students divided by doctrinal tenets (Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Jews, and Buddhists) but united by a shared desire for an education unifying secular and sacred truths. That quest for educational unity looks different at Notre Dame than it does at Wheaton College, and different still at Brigham Young University than it does at Yeshiva University. But despite the differences, Riley recognizes that faculty, administrators, and students at all these schools face common challenges as they translate faith into this-world decisions about careers and family, sex and politics. And as the metaphysically confident graduates of these schools chart paths that elevate them to prominence in government and business, Riley sees them exerting ever-greater influence on the national culture. Balanced treatment of a socially potent movement in higher education. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (March 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566636981
• ISBN-13: 978-1566636988
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #864,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting (and somewhat biased) look into religious colleges, July 5, 2006

By 

J. Stoner "Plants and Books" (Parkville, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America (Hardcover)

Prior to starting this book I did not think that I would like it at all; however, I was mistaken. I highly recommend this book for members of the higher education community and those of particular faiths that may be attending college.

"God on the Quad" starts with a rather strange introduction which speaks of "red states" and "blue states" and makes a large number of generalizations about liberals and conservatives that may anger some people. After reading the entire book I could not really determine how the introduction frames (or even relates to) the rest of the book. If you, as a reader, feel that you get offended by political commentary then I recommend you skip the introduction. Starting at chapter 1 the book is worthwhile.

The book starts with a few case studies from various religious colleges: Brigham Young University, Bob Jones University, Notre Dame, St. Thomas Aquinas, Baylor, and a few others. Obviously the faiths of the schools and degree of fundamentalism range from each institution to the next. After the case studies, Riley follows a few themes such as "sex, drugs, and rock and roll," minorities and diversity, and political activism at religious institutions.

The problem I have is that Riley does not hide her biases towards various schools. For example, she writes with a negative voice when writing about Bob Jones University. I truly felt like there was nothing good about Bob Jones University, according to Riley. One reason for this may be because of the way she was treated on the different campuses. I do believe that her research would have been presented better if the biased voice had been removed and equal comparisons had been made.

Another big problem I had with the writing is that Riley makes the assumption that "secular" means "anti-religious" and makes it a strong reoccuring theme throughout the book that secular institutions foster hostile climates for students of faith. While I think she has some merit here, I would've liked to have seen more investigation into this percieved phenomenon. For example, do religious students feel uncomfortable at secular institutions because everyone in their dorm drinks? Or are they uncomfortable because everyone makes fun of them for not drinking? There is a huge difference that would be worth further exploration before actually accusing secular institutions of fostering hostile enviornments when, for the most part, they are trying their hardest to accomodate every single diverse individual.

Finally, this book does provide a lot of insight on why students choose to attend religious colleges and also how religious colleges are expanding and filling a niche in the overall spectrum of higher education.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and enlightening, June 21, 2005

By 

Christopher Barat (Owings Mills, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America (Hardcover)

A well-written, fair-minded survey of various religious colleges and universities (including my alma mater, "Old" Notre Dame) and how they are grappling with issues of race, gender, political correctness, and other battlefronts in the cultural wars raging in the country. The major focus is on half a dozen schools, including ND, Brigham Young, Thomas Aquinas College (an orthodox Catholic "Great Books" college), Yeshiva, and the "notorious" Bob Jones University, but other institutions are covered as well. Any simple-minded hypothesis you may have formed regarding the "inferior" quality of education at schools with an explicit religious emphasis is sure to be overturned here. (For example, did you know that the hyper-fundamentalist Bob Jones University has a well-regarded art collection? I certainly didn't.) Far from being backwaters laden with hicks and idol-worshippers, these colleges and universities provide some real intellectual "diversity" amidst a sea of sameness, have preserved an air of academic seriousness in an era of increasingly trivialized scholarship, and possess the inestimable advantage of a framework of "shared values" within which to examine the surrounding culture - and change it in meaningful ways.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slim Pickings or the Start of a Trend?, March 4, 2005

By 

B Collins - See all my reviews

This review is from: God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America (Hardcover)

This book contains essential information for parents and for students who are preparing for college and contemplating the scant options out there for a wholesome -- some might say a sane -- environment in which to live and study. I found myself wishing Mrs. Riley had covered several other colleges I've heard about; Grove City College in particular comes to mind. And I'd have appreciated an entire chapter on Wheaton. But with regard to the colleges and universities she does home in on, I learned much that I had wondered about. For example, Mrs. Riley examines the dating scene (or courtship scene, or hooking up scene, as the case may be) in detail and captures the ethos on each campus much more thoroughly than does that other indispensable guide for conservative students, ISI's Choosing the Right College. Although her writing is workmanlike, with occasional small lapses in grammar or diction, Mrs. Riley deserves high praise for the earnestness with which she pursues her subject, for her sense of the interesting questions, and -- with one possible exception, to which I'll return -- for the evenhandedness with which she treats schools of various faiths.

Among the schools she analyzes, Baylor seems to come off best. Interestingly, Baylor is the only subject school in which the administration is attempting a return to religious values that were compromised during the sixties and ensuing decades. The other schools discussed in the book are either still loosening up or have stood firm. Perhaps as a consequence, there is more of a discernible struggle at Baylor to make a place for cultural renewal; yet the code of conduct there appears to be advisory rather than compulsory, and I gather that Mrs. Riley approves. She seems to think that the most successful religious schools need to accommodate the culture to about the extent that Baylor does in order to analyze it or challenge it fruitfully.

Not surprisingly, accommodations in the form of clubs or forums dealing with homosexuality are among the most controversial at religious schools, and Baylor`s position on homosexuality, as cited with approval by Mrs. Riley, is instructive. Although Baylor's president reacted forcefully when the student newspaper advocated same-sex marriage, others in the administration have pointed to a need for greater opportunities for students to examine and discuss homosexuality from various perspectives. I question that. Once "love the sinner, hate the sin" becomes merely one point of view among many, it is a short step to the current Harvard controversy, wherein actress Jada Pinkett Smith has been criticized by the the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance because her remarks -- describing her own experiences with marriage, children, and career -- were too "heteronormative." In the end, I prefer the honest response of Thomas Aquinas College to a hypothetical homosexual student: "Then, you have a cross to bear of a more than usually difficult life of chastity." But Mrs. Riley's predilections are subtle. For the most part, she reports -- and reports well -- and we are left to decide.

Mrs. Riley may have given one school short shrift, though. It seems that after she had written a somewhat critical newspaper article about Patrick Henry College, the administrators took offense, warned another college against her, and curtailed her visits. I of course don't know who is right about what -- in a letter to the WSJ, PHC says she visited only two classes and drew unwarranted conclusions; she gives a different account -- but what interests me is that Mrs. Riley concludes on the basis of little or no evidence that the school is anti-Catholic. What actually happened, according to the book, was that a PHC administrator mistakenly assumed on the basis of the biographical information she had provided that Mrs. Riley herself was Catholic, and then suggested that her religion may have led her to an overly critical view of the school. It seems to me that the worst the administrator can be accused of is a lack of tact, or perhaps naivete. I'm left wondering whether Mrs. Riley's pique may have interfered with her analysis in this one instance.

But it's a very good book. There isn't another out there quite like it, to my knowledge.