I hear conservative evangelicals complain that Ivies are too liberal.
I also notice that these schools tend to be about 50% white, and that within that group, there are a very high number of Jewish students, quite a few Catholics, and atheists/agnostics are also strongly represented. The group that seems to me to be very underrepresented relative to the general population are conservative white evangelicals.
Is it accurate that conservative evangelicals are significantly underrepresented in the Ivy League? If so, why is that?
Conversely, my guess is a lot of the population at Ivies would find schools such as Liberty, Bob Jones, or BYU too conservative, and the proportion of evangelical christians at those schools is over representative of the country as a whole.
And yet, plenty of them still attend IME. They just complain about it being “too liberal” endlessly to everyone within earshot…including yours truly as some happen to be relatives or friends of extended family.
I’m an evangelical, though not a conservative. (Yes, we do exist. Really!) Most evangelicals think that pretty much every college is too left-wing. It’s not just the Ivies. The fundamentalists I know (not all evangelicals are fundamentalists. as in young earth creationist, etc.) usually send their kids to bible colleges or very conservative Christian schools, such as Wheaton or Calvin. The non-fundamentalists are more willing to let their kids go off to secular schools.
Conservatives believe that are under-represented at most colleges.
M2L: to your second question, its probably has a lot to do with geography. Most kids go to college a few hours’ drive from home. And Evangelicals tend to live in the South and mid-South, with <10% penetration in NE states and I’d guess that they just don’t apply en masse to NE colleges. Sure, the Ivies have a national following, but they still are very highly represented with Yankees. Other top privates are similar in that regard: Stanford is nearly 50% Californians, for example. Rice has a lot of Texans. WashU and Northwestern are comprised of many mid-westerners…
Especially in Orange County and the interior areas of California away from the coast.
And a fair number in Washington State. One good friend ended up marrying one who is a native of one of the Seattle suburbs despite being a liberal Catholic himself. Ended up causing some tensions…especially before the wedding due to religious conflict issues and later on during/after the recent election.
@bluebayou points out an often overlooked fact: there really is no such thing as a “national” university. Even the top schools, the ones people are more likely to know about, draw a sizable percentage of their students from the regions in which they are located. So it makes sense that most evangelicals would go to schools in the region where they live, since most people go to schools in the region where they live.
My evangelical Christian relatives think K-12 schools are too liberal; they home schooled their children. The ones who have attended college have gone to small Christian schools in Iowa that most people probably haven’t heard of.
I am not sure what an evangelical even is? This is especially true since politically many of them support people whose morals are difficult to judge at best. I don’t want to turn this into a political discussion but I think it would be helpful if someone can give us the bright line test for being an evangelical
^^ That’s the problem, the definition of evangelical. Strict definition is ‘one who spreads the good word’ so any one of any religion could be spreading the good word of that religion. Most use the word to describe conservative christians from the protestant sects.
The OP asked about conservative evangelicals, so of course using the ‘conservative’ restriction on ‘evangelicals’, of course the answer is going to be that liberal colleges aren’t conservative enough.
I’m no expert at all but I do know the use of the word “evangelical” covers a wide umbrella of beliefs. Evangelical Lutherans can actually be fairly progressive on social issues, for example. I wouldn’t call them conservatives.
Ah @collegedad13, that is the question, isn’t it? In general, evangelicals believe that accepting Jesus Christ as one’s savior is the only only way to heaven and that we are commissioned by Christ himself to help others see this as well. But after that, everything is up for grabs. Sadly, many churches have turned this into an us vs them thing, as in, you’re a member of the Jesus club or you aren’t (my daughter, who is every bit as sincere a Christian as I am, has had people question whether she’s really one of “us” simply because she is a Roman Catholic!). If you’re in the “club,” you’re good, no matter how awful a person you might actually be. It is this belief that is contributing to our current rancorous political climate.
In this country, evangelicalism is tied to the conservative Republican platform, but this is not the case in other countries. If you look at evangelicals in England, France, and parts of Africa, you’d call them liberals. I don’t think God cares one way or another what your political views are. What he cares about his what you believe about Jesus Christ, and how you serve your fellow human beings, even the (gasp!) non-Christian ones.
Fortunately, some churches are trying to refocus the message on God’s love for all of humanity, serving people no matter who they are and trying to bring healing and mercy everywhere they go, while still believing in the need for salvation through Christ.
This is a lot more complicated a question than I can answer here, and I’m pretty sure the mods don’t want this to turn into a religious or political debate.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Please, no more definitions of “evangelical.” People can google the term if they’d like. It’s getting into religious discussion which is not allowed (I deleted one post).
Although many students value diversity in a college, many also want to go to school in a place where there are a substantial number of people with backgrounds much like their own. It makes dating easier, for one thing, and it provides a sense of community at a time when young people – many of whom are away from home for the first time – are likely to need it.
So you get clusters of students from particular backgrounds at particular colleges. For example, there are colleges that are well known for having thriving Jewish communities and attracting many Jewish applicants even though the surrounding community isn’t heavily Jewish. An example here is my son’s alma mater, the University of Maryland, which has a much higher percentage of Jewish students than the state it serves.
I don’t think that any of the Ivy League colleges has attracted a sufficient number of evangelical students to create the kind of community that would attract more of them. And until one does, I suspect that evangelicals will be few and far between at those schools.
IME, most Ivy League colleges have a group of the kind that used to be called Campus Crusade for Christ and now is generally called “Cru”.https://www.cru.org/communities/campus.html See eg
