This book examines how World War II affected denominational colleges who faced a national crisis in relationship to their Christian tenets and particular religious communities and student bodies. With denominational positions ranging from justifying the war in light of the existential threat that the United States faced to maintaining long-held beliefs of nonviolence, the multitude of institutional positions taken during World War II speaks to the scope of religious diversity within Christian higher education and the central issues of faith and service to God and country. Ultimately, Laukitis provides a particular lens to analyze the history of higher education during World War II through an examination of denominational institutions. The relationship between higher education, faith, and war offers depth to understanding the role of denominational colleges in articulating theological interpretations of war and their sense of responsibility as Christian liberal arts institutions in the United States.

In this follow up to Laukaitis' Denominational Higher Education During World War II (Palgrave 2018), this collection investigates connections between religion, student activism, and higher education to reveal the complexity of public reactions to the controversies around the Vietnam War. Historical treatments of how the Vietnam War generated tensions on campuses across the country remain centered on public universities such as University of California-Berkeley, Kent State, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Missing from the historical analysis is how the Vietnam War affected the campuses of Christian liberal arts colleges. This work centers on how Christian liberal arts colleges across the landscape of the United States encountered the national crisis in relationship to their Christian tenets and how particular religious communities and student bodies responded to the war.

Wars are fought on the home front as well as the battlefront. Spouses, family, friends, and communities are called upon to sacrifice and persevere in the face of a changed reality. Hoosiers on the Home Front explores the lives and experiences of ordinary Hoosiers from around Indiana who were left to fight at home during wartimes. Drawn from the rich holdings of the Indiana Magazine of History, a journal of state and midwestern history published since 1905, this collection includes original diaries, letters and memoirs, and research essays—all focused on Hoosiers on the home front of the Civil War through the Vietnam War. Readers will meet, among others, Joshua Jones of the 19th Indiana Volunteer Regiment and his wife, Celia; Attia Porter, a young resident of Corydon, Indiana, writing to her cousin about Morgan's Raid; Civil War and World War I veterans who came into conflict over the Indianapolis 500 and Memorial Day observances; Virginia Mayberry, a wife and mother on the World War II home front; and university students and professors—including antiwar activist Howard Zinn and conservative writer R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.—clashing over the Vietnam War. Hoosiers on the Home Front offers a compelling glimpse of how war impacts everyone, even those who never saw the front line.

Originally published in 1996 Religious Higher Education in the United States looks at the issue of higher education and a lack of a clearly articulated purpose, an issue particularly challenging to religiously-affiliated institutions. This volume attempts to address the problems currently facing denomination-affiliated institutions of higher education, beginning with an introduction to government aid and the regulation of religious colleges and universities in the US. The greater part of the volume consists of 24 chapters, each of which begins with a historical essay followed by annotated bibliographical entries covering primary and secondary sources dating back to 1986 on various denomination-connected institutions.

Change and Continuity in American Colleges and Universities explores major ideas which have shaped the history and development of higher education in North America and considers how these inform contemporary innovations in the sector. Chapters address intellectual, organizational, social, and political movements which occurred across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and have impacted the policies, scholarship, and practices enacted at a variety of public and private institutions throughout the United States. Topics addressed include the politics of racial segregation, the place of religion in Higher Education, and models of leadership. Through rigorous historical analyses of education reform cases, this text puts forward useful lessons on how colleges and universities have navigated change in the past, and may do so in the future. This text will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of Higher Education, administration and leadership, as well as the history of education and educational reform.

College in the United States changed dramatically during the twentieth century, ushering in what we know today as the American university in all its diversity. Religion departments made their way into institutions in the 1930s to the 1960s, while significant shifts from college to university occurred. The college ideal was primarily shaping the few to enter the Protestant management class through the inculcation of values associated with a Western civilization that relied upon this training done residentially, primarily for young men. Protestant Christian leaders created religion departments as the college model was shifting to the university ideal, where a more democratized population, including women and non-Protestants, studied under professors trained in specialized disciplines to achieve professional careers in a more internationally connected and post-industrial class. Religion departments at mid-century were addressing the lack of an agreed-upon curricular center in the wake of changes such as the elective system, Carnegie credit-hour formulation, and numerous other shifts in disciplines spelling the end of the college ideal, though certainly continuing many of its traditions and structures. Religion departments were an attempt to provide a cultural and religious center that might hold, enhance existential and moral meaning for students, and strengthen an argument against the German research university ideals of naturalistic science whose so-called objectivity proved, at best, problematic and, at worst, inept given the political crisis in Europe. Colleges found they were losing sight of the college ideal and hoped religion as a taught subject could bring back much of what college had meant, from moral formation and curricular focus to personal piety and national unity. That hope was never realized, and what remained in its wake helped fuel the university model with its specialized religion departments seeking entirely different ends. In the shift from college to university, religion professors attempted to become creators of a legitimate academic subject quite apart from the chapel programs, attempts at moralizing, and centrality in the curriculum of Western Christian thought and history championed in the college model.

History recounts that the least memorable period for Christian higher education had been from 1920 to 1960 when numerous church-affiliated institutions followed the state universities and elite private institutions in the movement toward secularization. Research indicates that significant numbers of colleges begin with a Christ-centered mission but change their original intent to quasi-secularization or secularization. This book examines the mission of Christian colleges in an effort to understand the shift from Christian to secularized foundation by exploring participants from the founding membership colleges of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and ten other colleges or universities that were once Christ-centered and are now secularized. The author used a qualitative research approach to examine the mission statements of Christian colleges by exploring participants from the founding membership colleges of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and ten other colleges and universities that have shifted to secularization. The objective was to discover why Christian colleges changed their Christian mission to secularization and determine the necessary components for Christian colleges to remain true to the original intent of their establishment. This is a fundamentally sound, reliable, historical resource.

A mix of thematic essays, reference entries, and primary source documents covering the role of religion in American history and life from the colonial era to the present. Often controversial, religion has been an important force in shaping American culture. Religious convictions strongly influenced colonial and state governments as well as the United States as a new republic. Religious teachings, values, and practices deeply affected political structures and policies, economic ideology and practice, educational institutions and instruction, social norms and customs, marriage, and family life. By analyzing religion's interaction with American culture and prominent religious leaders and ideologies, this reference helps readers to better understand many fascinating, often controversial, religious leaders, ideas, events, and topics. The work is organized in three volumes devoted to particular periods. Volume one includes a chronology highlighting key events related to religion in American history and an introduction that overviews religion in America during the period covered by the volume, and roughly 10 essays that explore significant themes. These essays are followed by approximately 120 alphabetically arranged reference entries providing objective, fundamental information about topics related to religion in America. Each volume presents nearly 50 primary source documents, each introduced by a contextualizing headnote. A selected, general bibliography closes volume three.

This book tells the compelling saga of American higher education from the founding of Harvard College in 1636 to the outbreak of World War II. The author traces how colleges and universities were shaped by the shifting influences of culture, the emergence of new career opportunities, and the unrelenting advancement of knowledge. He describes how colonial colleges developed a unified yet diverse educational tradition capable of weathering the social upheaval of the Revolution as well as the evangelical fervor of the Second Great Awakening. He shows how the character of college education in different regions diverged significantly in the years leading up to the Civil War - for example, the state universities of the antebellum South were dominated by the sons of planters and their culture - and how higher education was later revolutionized by the land-grant movement, the growth of academic professionalism, and the transformation of campus life by students. By the beginning of the Second World War, the standard American university had taken shape, setting the stage for the postwar education boom. The author moves through each era, exploring the growth of higher education.

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. This timely look at the state of Christian higher education in America contains descriptive, historical narratives that explore how fourteen Christian colleges and universities are successfully integrating faith and learning on their campuses despite the challenges posed by the increasingly pluralistic nature of modern culture. Written by respected representatives from seven major faith traditions -- Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Mennonite, Evangelical, Wesleyan/Holiness, and Baptist/Restorationist -- these narratives are also preceded by introductory essays that define the worldview and theological heritage of each given tradition and ask what that tradition can contribute to the task of higher education.