When I tell people who are unfamiliar with Grove City College that I am required to attend chapel, they almost inevitably respond with confused horror. Their response usually runs along the lines of, “What kind of college forces religion on its students?” And that comes from my nominally Christian co-workers. Truthfully, I should agree with them. I am unrepentantly Catholic, and although the GCC chapel program aims to be “undenominational,” it is essentially a nondenominational worship service. Moreover, chapel services often reference core components of Protestantism — such as the sufficiency of Scripture — which Catholicism finds insufficient. Despite the reasons I could dislike chapel, I am glad Grove City College has its chapel requirement.
I have done my fair share of complaining about chapel to Catholics and Protestant students alike: chapel went too long, the speaker was boring, the talk was heretical, and so on. That said, losing chapel would be a great blow to the college and its students. By maintaining a chapel requirement, Grove City College safeguards its identity. Other colleges that were once seen as strongholds for Christianity – or any type of belief for that matter – are quickly losing their identities. Seven out of the eight schools in the “Ivy League” once had a strong religious commitment. Good luck finding any mention of religion on their websites.
A large number of traditionally Catholic colleges are arguably worse off than other Christian colleges. The respected Catholic colleges such as Notre Dame, Georgetown, and Boston College tenuously maintain their religious identity by requiring two theology classes for all undergraduate students. Georgetown University’s justification for such classes may strike the reader as a weak and tepid defense: “In keeping with the Jesuit tradition, Georgetown believes that students should reflect on their relationship to the world, their fellow humans, and whatever manifestation of God they believe in” (italics added). This hardly sounds like a vigorous defense of Christianity. Universities should not apologize for the very values that form their foundation – and supposedly – their mission.
The less publicly acclaimed Catholic colleges are struggling to maintain their identity even more so. Fordham University is ending its 200-year tradition of having a Catholic priest as president. One reason for this massive change is the shortage of priests that continues to rack the church. Unarguably, however, the upheaval of tradition for any reason wounds the institute that finds its identity in Christianity. Here is another example. In 2019, Wheeling Jesuit University removed theology, philosophy, and history classes of any kind. The Jesuits then severed ties with the college since it no longer had any connection with the Christian faith.
The news is filled with example after example of colleges abandoning their centuries-old religious foundations to better appeal to the students of today. Here is what they forget: by jettisoning their Christianity and traditions they effectively lose their identity. Why would a student — religious or not — want to attend a college that looks exactly like every other college? These colleges forget that although fewer students profess a religion, students who see Christ as more than a “good teacher” still exist. They exist and they want to go to a college that both values academics and belief.
In this regard, Grove City College, and an ever-decreasing number of other colleges, has fought against the fearful trend of throwing off everything that makes it different from any other college. The colleges listed above would never dream of suggesting that students should go to church let alone require a certain number of chapel attendances. The decline of the Christian university has reached the point where Catholic students, such as myself, would rather attend a devout Protestant school rather than risk losing their faith in a nominally Catholic college or fully secular university.
