The 4 Models of Christian College Education

What is a Christian institution, and why attend one?

Recently, George Fox University President Robin Baker discussed the different approaches to education that schools take and the various philosophies around what it means to be a “Christian college.”

Some schools simply value a moral commitment to ethical values. Others are dualistic in their approach – not encouraging a Christian commitment in the classroom but offering outside opportunities to grow your faith. Still others are integrative, welcoming Christ into every aspect of an education.

Watch (or read the transcript) to learn more about why a Christian education is formational, how different schools approach that formation, and why “integrative” schools like George Fox are committed to a welcoming environment for all students, regardless of their personal beliefs.

Video Transcript

Welcome. My name is Robin Baker. I serve as president of George Fox University here in Newberg, Oregon, in the northwest corner of the state – a beautiful area. If you're watching this, I’m sure you’re thinking about should my son or daughter come to a Christian college, and what would that be like? Well, first we’re just excited that you would consider sending your child or at least encouraging them to be a part of a Christian university, especially George Fox. But let me talk to you a little about what it means to be at a Christian college, or to engage in a Christian college experience.

So what makes a university Christian? You might think that’s a funny question, but there are a lot of different perspectives and a lot of universities that operate in different ways that think of themselves as Christian places.

Four Models of a ‘Christian’ College

So, in my mind there are four ways, or four models, that universities approach what it means to be a Christian institution and how they think about engaging students in what it really means to be a Christian. I’m going to talk with you about four models of engagement.

Model 1: A Moral Commitment

So, one might term this first model “moral commitment.” If you think in those terms, there’s a lot of universities that really are trying to produce people of character – that have ethical commitments, that are oriented toward values. And so that might mean that they have a commitment to character-based building on classical Western values. But in that context, there’s no real emphasis on spiritual formation or on Christian truth.

Now, when I talk about these various institutions, I never mean to make negative or disparaging comments about the way they approach things. I’m just trying to suggest these are different ways they think about it.

So, institutions that are committed to developing moral character in their students are institutions like Pacific Lutheran University, which was rooted in Christianity. But more recently, their commitment is really just to the values of Western society and Western culture. There’s no real emphasis on spiritual formation or Christian truth, and I think they would think about it that way if you ask them as well.

Model 2: Dualistic

Another interesting way, and one that’s pretty common, that universities think about the engagement of Christianity we might term “dualistic.” Well, what does that mean? Well, there’s a couple of different ways to think about it. So, for example, there are a lot of parents who think you could be at a state university and still get Christian exposure, or you could be encouraged in your faith. And that’s certainly true.

So, Oregon State University is the institution I know best here around us. At OSU, they have places like the Logos House, where you’re surrounded by Christians who have a similar commitment to you. You have a person that runs the house that’s deeply committed to Christ and to your spiritual formation. So you can attend a place like Oregon State and still be encouraged in your faith and still move forward in that sense of biblical knowledge and engagement. But where it falls apart is the university itself is separate from Christianity by definition, and in fact in many cases hostile.

So you’ll never really see Christian faith encouraged in the classroom, in that sense of thinking about, “How does my walk with Christ affect the way I see history, or science, or sociology – whatever the academic discipline might be?” You’re not going to get exposure to that at a place like a state university, even though you can still grow in your faith.

‘Dualistic' Christian Colleges

There are Christian colleges, too, who you might think take more of a dualistic approach. In fact, my own experience at a place called Grand Canyon University was more like that in many ways, and it’s certainly true today.

So what would that mean at a Christian college? Well, for a lot of people, Christianity is expressed in Bible studies, in chapel, in prayer meetings, even in mission trips – all really powerful things and experiences that directly affect your walk with Christ. Absolutely true. So for those institutions, biblical and spiritual engagements are what I would call an “add-on.” It’s an add-on to the classroom itself. It’s things that I learn co-curricularly outside the classroom.

So the curricular experience at those institutions is isolated from the pursuit of biblical truth. It’s just different. They may have Christians in the classroom, they may have Christians who are part of the campus, but they don't always think about, “How does my faith influence the way I see the world?”

So again, whether you're at a state university or at some Christian colleges like Grand Canyon, faculty at Grand Canyon may or may not be Christians. And for them, the pursuit of truth in the classroom is not necessarily a Christian pursuit. I don't mean to suggest it’s a wrong thing, it’s just simply a different thing. So dualistic, whether at a state university or at a Christian college, is about adding the experience of Christ outside the classroom.

So when you begin to think about what it means to be a Christian institution, it can mean, as I’ve suggested, a variety of things.

Model 3: Closed Integrative Communities

The last group I’m going to deal with is formed in two capacities. This group I’m going to refer to as an “integrative community,” and it really develops in two different ways. Integration within a closed community is the first one I want to mention. What does that mean? Well, there are a couple of colleges nationally – many colleges nationally, actually – and one locally that might provide good examples of what that might mean.

So, Wheaton College and Corban University really take similar approaches in this way to forming a Christian community. Well, what do I mean by that? All students sign a statement of faith, and only Christians are part of the community, so for those institutions, spiritual formation and the pursuit of truth occurs within what we have termed a “closed community.”

Their Christian community is structured in such a way to say that only people who have signed a particular statement of faith can be a part of the community as a whole. So their Christian community is narrower than the last category I’m going to talk about. So if you go to Wheaton or you go to Corban, their emphasis is on preparing leaders for the church exclusively because you have to be a person of faith to be a part, whether a professor or a student. So in that context, it can be a really powerful mission and it’s integrative, but it’s different.

Model 4: Open Integrative Communities

The last category is the one that really represents George Fox University. It’s the one I’m deeply committed to and it’s integrative in a really powerful way, just like Wheaton and Corban, but not in the sense of the community itself.

At a place like George Fox, everyone is invited into the community from a student’s perspective. So if you are a person of faith, certainly we want you to be part of the institution. And we have a statement of faith and a statement of commitment or lifestyle that everyone has to understand, but you don’t have to believe in order to be a part.

The only people that have to believe to be a part are the staff and the faculty. So from our perspective, the formation and the integration are going to occur by the way in which we approach things – the way we work with students or “what we do,” we might say.

So to use C.S. Lewis’s famous quote – this comes from an essay he wrote called Theology as Poetry – “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” For Lewis, integration was penultimate, meaning everything existed within an approach. Once I become a Christian, it affects the way I view history, it affects the way I write, it affects the way I do science, so that a Christian institution that’s going to be truly integrative is going to help its faculty and staff understand that the way in which we perceive Christ – the way in which we invite Christ – not only changes our heart, but it changes our minds, and it affects the way we actually engage each of the subjects.

So in that kind of context, that’s how the classroom at a place like George Fox is going to be different. We’re defined not by the nature of the community we serve – not by who we admit – but we’re defined by the Christian staff and faculty who thoroughly integrate the Christian pursuit of truth and the spiritual formation of each person in the community into our lives.

So in that context, in all of the various institutions I’ve served, I’ve found George Fox to be one of the most vibrant places – as a place that not only develops the spirit in the heart, but also is deeply committed to developing the mind.

The George Fox Mission & Vision

So our mission: “George Fox University is a Christ-centered community that prepares students spiritually, academically and professionally to think with clarity, to act with integrity, and to serve with passion.”

Our vision is to be the Christian university of choice that’s known for empowering students to achieve exceptional life outcomes. And our purpose is to educate and inspire students to pursue God's calling.

‘Decidedly Christian’ from the Beginning

So one of the things I like to emphasize is that George Fox’s purpose has been the same since our beginning, that our founders really thought about what it meant to be Christian and how they were going to work with students in that kind of context.

So, for example, if we go back to the 1891 catalog, which is the very first year at George Fox, we read the following: “Pacific College seeks to be definitely and positively Christian.” But notice how they define it … 

“It seeks to bring its students to an acceptance of Jesus Christ as personal Savior and Lord. It seeks to help its students to a definite dedication of life to the service of Christ and to that incoming of the divine Spirit without whose help the fullest service to God and to humanity is impossible. It seeks to assist its students to find their work in life, and at least to begin their definition, their definite preparation for it. It emphasizes constantly the ideal of service rather than selfishness, and of character as well as scholarship.”

A couple things I want you to remember from that statement: If you’re an open community, it’s really important that you bring your students to an acceptance of Christ, and that’s part of our goal. If you’re a closed community it doesn’t matter, since everybody is already a Christian. So from our beginning we actually invited everyone to be a part of George Fox, and it was part of our purpose to tell them who Jesus was so that they might come to a saving knowledge of his faith. So that was an essential part of who we are.

The second part of that that you’re going to find that’s later in this conversation is that we help students find their work in life and their vocational calling in Christ – a dynamic part of the mission.

Then just a little bit later, in 1896 …

“The purpose of the college is to offer to young men and young women the benefits of a liberal Christian education. Its courses of study are arranged to give that broad culture, which should be the possession of every intelligent man and woman.”

The founders recognized the great importance of religious training and the work of the classroom is not merely consistent with Christianity, but decidedly Christian in its tendencies. So, notice from the very beginning, they were committed to the fact that this was going to be an integrated place, that in the academic community, in the classroom, it was going to be decidedly Christian. We were going to see Christ in the way he was manifested in the academic discipline itself. 

It’s the fond hope of the management – that’s me – that Pacific College, now George Fox, shall send forth many Christian teachers, ministers, and missionaries, and that it shall be a strong support not only to the church that founded George Fox, the Friends, but to Christianity wherever its influence may reach – and that’s the broad vocations.

Seeing All Vocations as a Calling

At George Fox, we have lots of programs – more than 60 undergraduate programs and eight pre-professional programs. Our largest programs are nursing, engineering, business, kinesiology and biology.

Now, important in our conversation is that George Fox basically says to our students and to our community, “God calls people into all of life, not just to be ministers, not just to be music people in a church, but he calls us to use our vocation to bring about his kingdom as he seeks to bring his kingdom here.”

And so our programs are drawing Christians – faculty who want to develop nurses and engineers and business people and doctors and lawyers and others – who will be agents of salt for God's kingdom in their communities. So you’ll not only see undergraduate programs at George Fox, you’ll also see graduate programs in behavioral health, in business, in healthcare, and in the seminary. Our adult degree programs, we have seven accelerated fully online programs that serve the needs of people of all ages.

So in the fall of 2023, we enrolled over 4,000 students, almost 2,300 on the undergraduate side and 1,800 in grad and adult degree programs. We're recognized in all kinds of national journals, The Wall Street Journal (Oregon's No. 1 private college), and, of course, U.S. News and World Report. So we think that George Fox is the premier Christian university in the Pacific Northwest because of what we do with students, not simply because of what people think about us.

So thank you for thinking about George Fox University and the type of education that we offer here in a truly integrative capacity to meet the needs of students for the future. 

Producing Students Who “Stand Fast”

One of my favorite authors, as I close, is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. You probably know him, but if you don’t, Bonhoeffer was one of the most famous ministers of the Second World War. He was a German and in his own development he came to the point where he could no longer encourage support of the system that emerged in Germany that we often refer to now as the Nazi culture.

And so Bonhoeffer led the opposition to Adolf Hitler and his system, and one of his key complaints was there weren’t enough Germans who stood up to the political system of the Nazis. And so he asked the question, “Why not?” And he wrote this book, called After 10 Years, in which he reflected to his family on why one of the most developed cultures in the Western world had not only led to the recognition of the Nazi system and that Nazi system controlling it, but most people accepted it.

And for Bonhoeffer, that was an unacceptable choice. So he asked this question, “Who stands fast?” In other words, who keeps their commitments in the face of tremendous opposition, of the emergence of people who don’t share your values and, to the extent in Nazi Germany, of who actually work in opposition to your values? So who can stand in the face of that type of pressure? And Bonhoeffer answered the question this way …

“Only the person whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but the individual who’s ready to sacrifice everything when he or she is called to obedient and responsible action and faith and an exclusive allegiance to God – the responsible person who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.”

And he finishes by asking this question: “Where are these responsible people?”

Now we’re not in World War II, but the challenges remain the same. So I would argue to you that George Fox University is the kind of place that produces people who stand fast, who understand that the bottom line is their life is to be lived as an answer to the question and call of God, and that occurs at a community like this. Thank you for considering us.