It would seem to me that many colleges & universities started by churches have, over time, parted from their Christian roots and eventually divorced themselves from the church all together.
Forbes says: "In the beginning, most universities in the U.S. were established as institutions of faith: the colonial colleges – such as Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth (Puritan), College of William and Mary (Church of England), Princeton (Presbyterian) and Rutgers University (Dutch Reformed Church) – were Christian schools in mission or affiliation. For almost all of these and similar elite schools, the answer to grow with the times and the country was to leave their religious legacy in the microfiche files." (emphasis mine) (Read the whole article here.)
I'd like to propose a few ways to change a Christian school into a secular school (and there is a difference between the two). I make these proposals not because I actually recommend them, but as a warning to those that may be tempted to follow the path...
1) If you have chapel services five days a week; change it to three. If you have it three days a week; change it to one. Too much "church" is a turn-off to unbelievers (not to mention the fact that it could hurt enrollment/finances to require chapel). Finally make chapel optional before being a good steward of the school's finances and doing away with chapel all together. (Remember, do it slowly in a long process so that no zealous Christians will cause a fuss.)
2) Strive for intellectual and academic excellence to the neglect of the spiritual state of the campus. Certainly you could probably focus on someone's spiritual health and academic performance, but their spiritual state is just another thing to be juggling and the 'academy' has a different function than the church. You are, after all, a college/university!
3) When you advertise on TV, billboards, or secular periodicals make sure you do not mention your Christian foundation. It is a turn-off and you will lose many prospective students that way. (They might find out if they come to your school anyway, so why mention it?). Even if they don't ever realize they attended a Christian school, you've just done a great job of helping them be Christians even though they may not realize it!
4) Lower the standards for your sports teams. If it makes you feel better, you can convince yourself that having a winning basketball team will make a better name for Jesus than a mediocre basketball team that lives a holy life.
5) Hire faculty, staff, & administrators that are not Christians. As long as they do their jobs well, who really cares? And what about ideological diversity? What about academic freedom?
6) Create a false dichotomy by mischaracterizing Bible believing, faithful Christians who desire for their children to be given an education from a Christian world view and pitting them against sincere ideologues who are simply trying to "minister in an ever changing world." Consistently claim that both conservative bible believing Christians and leftists are complaining. This gives you credibility when it comes to claiming you are a "middle way" or "different way" or abstract way. We know that you are following the historic shift from Christian to secular, but let's continue to live in denial.
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7) Do away with any kind of rules or standards you might have on your campus. Those include curfew, expectations for dress, required chapel attendance, alcohol prohibition, and any other rules students often complain about. You certainly do not want to be viewed as legalistic. If you have any rules and, for denominational reasons, are not able to do away with them, just leave them in print but ignore them in practice.
8) This one might happen out of necessity, but shift focus from the founding mission (or any mission at all) to budgetary stability in the name of fiscal security. People will allow you to push an agenda that leads away from your Christian heritage in the face of a "looming monetary crisis." (Do not humor the discussion that maybe financial constraints are a result of mission drift.)
9) Blunt any spiritual emphasis that includes religious imagery or mission statements that would not be able to be comfortably shared with humanists. Put up peace signs, lots of posters on what we can do to help the environment, BLM, and other left leaning political rally points. Remember the goal is that secular humanists would find your school enticing. Have a type of generic morality that excludes Biblical morality that does not overlap cultural trends.
10) Replace some of the religious requirements (required Bible & theology courses) with community service or social causes veiled in Christian virtue. It will fool the Christians into believing you are still a part of the Christian church as long as it is a good deed and convince the rest of the world you want to make a difference without "pushing your beliefs" on anyone else.
11) In your Bible, Theology, or religion department hire professors who are most adept at promoting cultural ideology rather than biblical truth. Have them promote critical race theory, philosophy, universalism, process theology, Marxism, and other culturally informed ideas that never make the pages of the New Testament, but are popular cultural ideas. Bonus: you can probably receive grants from secular organizations that want to influence your students with their causes like integrating "climate science" into the theological education. You can justify this to your faithful constituents by explaining that you want to be inclusive of all viewpoints for the academic benefit of your students. (Just do not actually include anyone more theologically conservative.)
12) Remember that most academic institutions that drift from mission do not survive. History is full of closed schools that failed to continue to fulfill the purpose for which God raised them up. There are a few however that were able to build up their endowment, trusts, and cultural appeal enough to survive the complete transition. In order to survive transition you must learn doublespeak. This is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words in order to mislead or manipulate. Learn how to say things in a vague way to keep Christians appeased and leftists hopeful.
Extra note: If part of a denomination, you may want to continue to tap into the enormous amount of financial resources available from the many lay people who have no earthly idea what is really going on at your school. To do so, talk a lot about what God is doing at your school (even if you have to exaggerate or even make things up). All some lay people care about is whether or not the young people are serving the Lord and living for Him (how short-sighted they must be)!
What might you add?
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