"Christian" Colleges

There's an interesting discussion of Christian colleges going on over at the Zeitgeist blog of World Magazine.

Jack Crabtree has a long post on the phenomenon of many "Christian" young people losing their faith at college. Money quote: "Christian parents are being naïve and ignorant if they send their children to Christian colleges under the belief that there—at a Christian college—their children’s faith will be preserved." He also has a plug for Gutenberg College, a Christian school with a Great Books emphasis in Oregon. Gutenberg has an all-Christian faculty, but, interestingly, they don't require students to be Christians, they allow "complete freedom of thought and faith," and they have "few behavioral standards." This is pretty interesting, having graduated from Christian college where these are decidedly not the case. Without knowing anything more about the school, it seems on the whole to be a healthier way of constructing a Christian institution--though many in the culture out of which my alma mater arose would dismiss it as being too liberal, perhaps not really Christian at all.

There is a tremendous difference, as Crabtree points out, between faith in Christ and membership in a Christian sub-culture. A school where students are assumed to be Christians, where they are told what wonderful Christian young people they are, and where they are expected to live according to that sub-culture's idea of what the Christian life looks like is not necessarily the same thing as one that actually encourages students in their sanctification and pursuit of godliness. A college that zealously (some might say frighteningly) stresses conformity to The Christian Worldview is not necessarily the same thing as a college that encourages students to work through and work out their faith in the intellectual realm, helping them become men and women who can think critically to the glory of God.

PHC students and alumni: how do you think PHC fares in these areas? Is attending there actually a good thing for your faith? If not, why not? If so, is it simply because you developed good relationships or because the school played an active role in making the experience a good one?