Should My Child Go to a Christian or Secular College?

By Dr. Roger C. S. Erdvig 

Parents frequently ask me for my opinion about whether their children should go to a Christian or secular university. While there are many reasons why parents ask this question, the issue behind the question is often related to their child’s faith. This is an understandable concern, as parents watch the news about what’s going on in today’s universities and hear a steady stream of stories about young adults who have walked away from or “deconstructed” their childhood faith.

Parents are wise to consider how college will influence their kids’ faith. A well-chosen Christian college will do much to support faith and worldview formation. But preserving and strengthening our kids’ faith is only one reason to seriously consider a Christian university. There’s another important reason. But let’s explore this issue of faith first.

We’ve all heard the bad news about how virtually all secular universities have become antagonistic toward the Christian faith. Simply stated, a high school graduate heading to the local state university or a prestigious Ivy League school will be pressured to reject faith in Christ. In the classroom, Marxist or postmodern professors will scoff at Christianity as a crutch for weaklings, a socially constructed story, or a tool to oppress others. In the dorms, sexual immorality and debauchery of all sorts will be normalized and celebrated. Christian young people will be told their faith is unreasonable and that maintaining it puts them on the wrong side of history.

This pressure begins on the first day a student steps on campus. I’ve had a firsthand look at what freshmen orientation is like in a local state university. A former student of mine captured multiple screenshots of the orientation process, which is sort of like a journey through what the university deems a new student needs to know to succeed in college. Right alongside tips for how to manage their meal plan and access online databases for research, freshmen are given instructions on how to be a ferocious ally for oppressed groups on campus, how to identify one’s privilege or points of intersectionality (or lack thereof), and how to have “safe” homosexual sex in their dorm room, complete with diagrams and video links for more detailed instructions.

Recent research suggests that as many as two-thirds of Christian young people walk away from church between the ages of 18 and 20.1 That’s a staggering statistic and a big reason for parents to think carefully about where to send their kids to college. Just imagine investing tens of thousands of dollars in your child’s education, only to receive a return on that investment no Christian parent would want—rejection of Christ and His church. Unfortunately, we all know families who don’t have to imagine this; they’ve experienced it.

One of the most troubling things I hear from parents about the option of attending a secular university is the “but I turned out fine” argument. This argument bases the college decision on the reality that mom or dad went to a secular university and maintained his or her faith. However, this does not take into consideration the rapidly evolving and militaristic opposition to Christianity that has all but taken over the American university in the last 20 years. It also doesn’t consider their child’s unique needs, as if their child is identical to them in terms of their faith and their strengths and weaknesses. Saying “I turned out fine” is like me saying that my infant grandchild shouldn’t have to be in a car seat because I survived infancy riding in the car on my mother’s lap.

If a family prayerfully discerns that a secular university is the best choice for their child, he or she can maintain faith. Most often, this happens when mom and dad have equipped him or her long before high school graduation to navigate the tsunami of bad ideas and harmful lifestyle options that will confront and entice him or her. In order to thrive, Christian students in a secular school will also need to know that there’s a loving, prayerful family back home and a youth pastor or mentor from their home church who will maintain a strong relationship throughout their undergraduate years. In addition, they will need to connect with a local church and one of the many campus ministries such as InterVarsity, The Navigators, Baptist Student Ministry, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Maintaining a strong Christian witness and withstanding the crush of ungodly cultural values will be hard but not impossible—with the proper support network.

On the other hand, attending a Christian university does not guarantee that a student will maintain his or her faith. Not all Christian colleges provide a distinctively Christian environment in the classroom and dorms, and even those that do cannot provide one hundred percent confidence for families that their kids will stay true to Christ. Families must look carefully at a university’s statement of faith, code of conduct, and other documents to understand the school’s culture. Better yet, they should visit campus and talk with random students about what being a part of that community is like. They should visit the dean of the department their child is interested in. Parents can ask hard questions about student life, biblical fidelity, and cultural hot buttons. Finally, parents should commit to praying regularly for the friends their child will connect with at college. The impact of friends will be one of the key influences on their children’s faith.

As you can likely detect, my strong inclination is to commend Christian universities as a great way to encourage and support high school graduates to grow their faith as they prepare for their vocation. But I have another—perhaps less obvious—reason why Christian higher education is to be favored over a secular school, and this other reason is directly related to their vocation.

Students in a secular school will not be taught that the specific career for which they are preparing is deeply connected to God’s redemptive work. Getting this right is just about as important as maintaining faith in Christ. Conversely, not getting this right can set a person up for a lifetime of struggle trying to reconcile one’s job with one’s faith. I know many Christian adults who live with a pervasive, nagging sense of guilt from not “doing more for God,” which often arises from a view of reality that classifies their Christian life and their work life as separate.

In his book Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, Tim Keller unpacks a vision for work that every Christian needs to truly flourish in a career. He says, “[God] invites us to continue His work of developing creation, to develop all the capacities of human and physical nature to build a civilization that glorifies Him. Through our work, we bring order out of chaos, create new entities, exploit the patterns of creation, and interweave the human community. So whether splicing a gene, doing brain surgery, collecting the rubbish, or painting a picture, our work further develops, maintains, or repairs the fabric of the world. In this way, we connect our work to God’s work.”2

I’m not saying that attending a Christian university is the only way to gain such a vision for work. Nor am I saying that every Christian college teaches toward this end. Sadly, I know from experience that this is not true. However, no secular university will promote this vision of work and equip an engineer, nurse, teacher, or businessperson to live out that kind of God-saturated life. The best Christian colleges will, as they immerse every subject area and every course in a biblical worldview of reality and vocation.

College is not merely about gaining knowledge, skills, and connections for gainful employment. More importantly, the undergraduate years will dramatically shape the worldview of students. For Christian students, college should prepare them for their unique calling in a campus and classroom culture that is distinctively Christian so that when they graduate, they will be eager to engage their career with a biblical vision of vocation.

If your kids will attend a secular university, keep your eyes wide open. Be realistic about the challenges to their faith, morality, identity, and purpose that will bombard them. And, acknowledge that you will need to arrange for other resources and mentoring to help your child gain a biblical understanding of their calling and how God desires to use them in their career to “develop, maintain, and repair the fabric of the world.”

Dr. Roger C. S. Erdvig is the Director of the Center for Biblical Worldview Formation at Summit Ministries. He and his wife, Lori, live in the small corner of Pennsylvania that touches Maryland and Delaware, where you can find some of the most beautiful and unspoiled farmland in the northeast. Connect with Roger at roger.erdvig@summit.org.

ENDNOTES

1. research.lifeway.com/2019/01/15/most-teenagers-drop-out-of-church-as-young-adults.

2. T. Keller,  Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2012) 61.

© 2024 by Roger C. S. Erdvig