About Religious Colleges

My 1st year of graduate school, I gave the worst advice simple to a peer looking for a helper professor job at a college founded by my religious denomination, the Mennonites. Although my colleague knew nothing about the Mennonites, nor believed himself religious at all, he thought he could convince the institution hiring committee that he was the best candidate for that position.

"No problem," From the telling him as they contemplated the short essay he required to write. "Just inform them you honor the Mennonite worth of peace and justice. Explain which you grew up inside a Christian home. Mention something concerning your continued appreciation if you're religious, if you live agnostic."

I may as well have told him to cultivate a beard and learn some Pennsylvania Dutch, for all your good my suggestions would've done him. I honestly don remember whether he eventually took my advice or requested the positioning. Only could recall his name, I might probably contact him to apologize profusely about raising his hopes with shoddy advice for income that %u2014 given his profile %u2014 he would have never been offered anyway.

Now a decade and more into life as a faculty member at a Quaker institution, I have a clearer sense of what it means to apply for a job such as mine. Being raised in a religious home does not automatically qualify someone for employment at a college similar to my own, nor does merely "honoring" or "appreciating" the values upon which the religious institution was founded.

Instead, job applicants to religious institutions — especially those who continue to believe religious faith an integral part of their curriculum — need to show they not only understand the university’s mission, but are truly willing to affirm its doctrines and have those doctrines inform their faculty work. Judging from conversations I’ve had at academic conferences and on higher education online discussion forums, I imagine some folks are already calling foul. An institution’s decision to hire only those who affirm its doctrinal statements seems downright discriminatory to some; to others, a university curriculum shaped by religious doctrine appears contrary to the educational enterprise, and to the fundamental nature of academic freedom.

But institutions do indeed have this right legally, and academic freedom has its limitations in every institution, not just those founded on religious principles. Thus, job hopefuls who might argue they would "never apply to a college requiring me to sign a faith statement" — an assertion I’ve heard often — need not read further, because (of course!) you are free to make that choice, just as institutions are free to disregard those candidates who chafe against their doctrinal statements.