Wheaton fires a professor of medieval philosophy because he became Catholic. Catholics are trying to hire more Catholic professors. Is this a renewal of hostilities that have thawed over the past 20 years, or just intitutions being loyal to their religious roots? I'm thinking the latter, and I tend to like it. Excerpts from Wall Street Journal article:
Historically, religious colleges mainly picked faculty of their own faith. In the last third of the 20th century, however, as enrollments soared and higher education boomed, many Catholic colleges enhanced their prestige by broadening their hiring, choosing professors on the basis of teaching and research. As animosities between Catholics and Protestants thawed, some evangelical Protestant colleges began hiring faculty from other Christian faiths.
But now a conservative reaction is setting in, part of a broader push against the secularization of American society. Fearful of forsaking their spiritual and educational moorings, colleges are increasingly "hiring for mission," as the catch phrase goes, even at the cost of eliminating more academically qualified candidates.
Addressing faculty at the University of Notre Dame, the school's new president, the Rev. John Jenkins, recently expressed concern that the percentage of faculty who were Catholic had fallen to 53%, compared with 85% in the 1970s. Today's level is barely above a line set in 1990 by the late Pope John Paul II, who decreed that non-Catholics shouldn't be a majority of the faculty at a Catholic university.
Notre Dame is compiling a database of candidates who can contribute to the university's religious mission. Administrators say that instead of reducing quality, Notre Dame's religious identity has lured some premier faculty, such as associate professor Brad Gregory, who left a tenured job at Stanford in 2003 for an equivalent, higher-paying position. "Notre Dame's Catholic character wasn't only a factor, it was the factor," says Mr. Gregory, a Catholic, who specializes in the history of Christianity. "By any ordinary measure, you'd be crazy to leave Stanford for Notre Dame." . . .
About 400 U.S. colleges cite religion as an element in their hiring policies. And many of these colleges, such as Brigham Young, an almost entirely Mormon university, are growing fast. At the 102 evangelical Protestant schools belonging to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, full-time faculty rose 36.2% from 1991 to 2003, the latest available data. These schools hire only Christians, mostly Protestants.
Defining evangelical schools isn't easy to do, but in general they are populated by people of various Protestant faiths who share a common religious vision. That includes a commitment to spreading the word of God and a literal interpretation of the Bible.
Many, like Wheaton, bar Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faculty. "We've got a marvelous Greek Orthodox person we'd kill to hire and we can't," says Wheaton sociologist James Mathisen. Mr. Mathisen says he has mixed feelings about the Protestants-only policy. He understands the religious rationale but also feels it deprives Wheaton of quality faculty.
Thanks, E-Pression.
