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In the 1990s, Christian colleges and universities experienced a record boom in students and employees. However, less than twenty years later Christian institutions experienced new challenges spurred on by four major changes: first, the'Great Recession'of 2008 and widespread debt; second, declining birthrates in certain regions of the United States; third, the passing of the Affordable Care Act, which raised the question of whether Christian institutions were required to cover contraceptives; and fourth, the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, which brought issues of employment to the forefront at certain Evangelical institutions. Yet despite mounting challenges, most Christian colleges and universities are still stronger now than at any point in their respective histories by almost any measure.With The Anxious Middle, Todd C. Ream and Jerry Pattengale engage the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a model for navigating our tumultuous times. The authors argue that if the present age is defined by what Bonhoeffer calls in Creation and Fall the'anxious middle'--somewhere between Eden and the Apocalypse--the challenges faced by Christian higher education must be recognized as both existential and practical. To confront them while still embracing any opportunities afforded by occasional cross breezes, Christian colleges and universities would be wise to employ a fourfold approach to planning informed by Bonhoeffer's work as well as historic and contemporary examples: institutions should be articulate about their missions, imaginative in advancing them, collaborative in deploying them, and strategic in sharing them. Trustees, administrators, faculty members, and others concerned with the future of Christian colleges and universities will find in The Anxious Middle a planning process applicable to organizational levels ranging from the campus-wide to the departmental or the programmatic. The result is an understanding of Christian higher education not merely focused on surviving but thriving between Eden and the Apocalypse.

This volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the life and legacy of Father Theodore Hesburgh (1917–2015), an educator, priest, public servant, and long-serving President of the University of Notre Dame. Despite being a transformative figure in Catholic higher education who led the University of Notre Dame for 35 years and wielded influence with US presidents on civil rights and other charged issues of his era, secular accounts of history often neglect to assess the efforts of religious figures such as Hesburgh. In this volume, the editors and their authors turn a fair-minded but critical eye to the priest's record to evaluate where he fits into the long development of Catholic higher education and Catholics'role in American public life.

Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year Award of Merit - Politics/Public Life Has the American university gained the whole world but lost its soul?In terms of money, prestige, power, and freedom, American universities appear to have gained the academic world. But at what cost? We live in the age of the fragmented multiversity that has no unifying soul or mission. The multiversity in a post-Christian culture is characterized instead by curricular division, the professionalization of the disciplines, the expansion of administration, the loss of community, and the idolization of athletics. The situation is not hopeless. According to Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, and Todd C. Ream, Christian universities can recover their soul—but to do so will require reimagining excellence in a time of exile, placing the liberating arts before the liberal arts, and focusing on the worship, love, and knowledge of God as central to the university. Restoring the Soul of the University is a pioneering work that charts the history of the university and casts an inspiring vision for the future of higher education.

Having served as chancellor of the State University of New York, the United States commissioner of education, and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Ernest L. Boyer (1928–1995) was one of the most prominent leaders in the history of American higher education. Arguably more aware of the challenges facing colleges and universities than any of his peers, the administrative decisions and the writings he left behind provide a wealth of possibilities for subsequent generations of administrators and faculty members. In this book noted higher education scholars examine some of the most pressing crises in higher education today, pairing their thoughts with relevant selections from Boyer's important writings—some published here for the first time. The volume provides answers to questions perceived to be plaguing academe, while reintroducing readers to the optimistic and insightful wisdom of Ernest L. Boyer.

Over the last generation the phrase'integration of faith and learning'has come to describe how many Christian colleges and universities understand the way all forms of learning fall under the lordship of Jesus Christ. With its origins in the philosophical and theological insights of the Reformed tradition, this phrase has expanded its influence to institutions nurtured by numerous Christian traditions. This volume draws tgether prominent voices who are beginning to reflect upon Christian higher education as it may exist beyond the influence of the integration model. The book is organized by areas historically considered to make up the core of an undergraduate general education curriculum--the natural sciences, the social sciences, the behavorial sciences, and the liberal arts. Cntributors include scholars who have emerged as seminal voices in their fields and have wrestled with some of the larger questions facing the Christian academy.

Every year, tens of thousands of parents send their children off to Christian colleges and universities, investing in the professional and spiritual growth that such institutions offer. But what happens next? A PARENT'S GUIDE TO THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE gives answers to parents who want to know just where they're sending their children and their money. Other guides for parents of college students give information on the secular college experience, but this book provides important insight into the more comprehensive world of Christian education. Challenging parents to reconsider their understandings of what it means to be a more fully developed person in light of Christian faith, this book takes a theological approach that celebrates the presence of parents in the lives of their daughters and sons while exploring what that presence should look like during the transition to adulthood. Parents and students alike will benefit from A PARENT'S GUIDE TO THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, which is designed to help parents more effectively support their children and understand the Christian college's unique role in nurturing holistic and transformational education.