In The New York Times today there is an article that highlights the trend of increased evangelical enrollment at Ivy League universities. There is a folk-anthropological feel to the whole piece, and I found it interesting that the author states that Calvin College is “an evangelical institution.” Specifically, Calvin is an institution that derives from the Reformed tradition of Protestant Christianity (as the name Calvin should emphasize). This subtly is irrelevant to most readers of The New York Times, but of more interest to the general audience is the fact that 1/3 of Calvin College professors recently signed a letter saying that disagree with the President’s policies prior to his arrival to make a commencement speech. My point is that terms like “evangelicals” are used very sloppily by most in the establishment media because of their unfamiliarity (and disinterest) in the nuances that a wide swath of America takes very seriously. The term “evangelical” as understood by many right-thinking liberals connotes a generally “backward” and conservative worldview, so a story that chronicles the emergence of an evangelical upper middle class and its entrance into the Ivy League has a “ain’t that somethin'” feel. These articles add little to the readership’s base of knowledge, and don’t disrupt the standard model of the target audience by injecting surprises, such as the fact that the rise of evangelicalism in academia in places like Harvard is strongly correlated with the prominence of Asian-American Christians, or that perhaps evangelicals who attend and graduate from Ivy League schools might not be your run-of-the-mill believer. Remember, Princeton was founded in part as a low church proto-evangelical Presbyterian alternative to Harvard and the other New England Ivies, who had abandoned orthodox Christianity (many had Congregationalist or Baptist origins) by the late 18th century, but in its turn it became absorbed into the elite milieu and shed its own sectarian past.
Posted by razib at 04:35 PM