By way of informing further discussion, here is TRACS’ list of member institutions. I am by no means an expert on American tertiary education, but at least a few of them seem vaguely familiar, from contexts that I don’t think were to their credit. Could somebody with better expertise in the area elucidate whether the majority of these institutions are a blessing or a blight on tertiary education, particularly in the field of science?
I am not familiar with most of them, but for those I have heard about, I’ve heard nothing good.
Hi Joshua, is your compromise related to your book’s hypothesis of a genealogical Adam and Eve directly created in the Neolithic period? That could reconcile the scientific evidence for an old earth with the YEC Adam and Eve theology, which is the most important implication of a young earth.
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No, this is a separate issue.
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Hold up. I think I misunderstood something. I thought these colleges were teaching exclusively creationist material. I lightly read the OP, so I didn’t get a good grasp of what was being discussed. So the answer to your question is, of course not.
Oh, would love to read that article.
College of the Ozarks is a sister institution to my university. It is also accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) which has pretty high standards and is well respected as an accrediting agency. Not sure why College of the Ozarks has both.
In some cases, that might be true. All I am saying is that we judge the science classes as science classes. If a Bio 101 course at a religious school covers the same material as courses at secular universities then students should at least be able to transfer those credits to a secular university. If that same Bio 101 course also contains creationism I really don’t have a good reason to prevent transfer of that credit, although I certainly have philosophical objections.
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Are you perhaps confusing College of the Ozarks (Point Lookout, MO) with University of the Ozarks (Clarksville, AK)? They are much further apart ideologically than geographically…
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No, I’m not confusing them. College of the Ozarks appears on both lists.
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I can’t give a direct answer with any confidence, but I will offer some general thoughts, from my 36 years of experience as a faculty member in a science-related field at a Christian University (Messiah University, in PA). Just for background: My university teaches students evolution, not YEC views, though YEC views are presented (along with other religious perspectives on origins) in one Biology class, the Senior Science Capstone class (which I often teach), and 2 or 3 historically-based courses about science (all of which I teach). For example, in my course on “Darwin, Evolution, and God,” students read (and are examined on) about 200 pp. from various works of Darwin; they also read this book: Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design. That general education class, which biology majors typically don’t take, is also presently the only course at my university in which students are assigned to read Darwin first hand, as vs learning about his theories in a biology textbook. (I imagine that most college biology students nationally do not have to read Darwin either, but that’s another conversation that I’m not trying to initiate.)
Here’s my observations about this list of TRACS members.
(1) I have actually heard of (as in I recognize the name, even if I don’t know anything else about the institution) fewer than 10 of those schools. I’m very surprised by that. One could perhaps say that I know less than I thought about Christian higher education–even though I might know as much about it as anyone here. After all, every one of us is ignorant of many things. Or, one could say that these places really are just irrelevant to higher education, even Christian higher education, if collectively they are not even diffuse blips on my radar screen. I will let others answer this one for themselves.
(2) I am equally surprised by the absence of some other institutions I do know about, where faculty members are required to accept YEC views. For example, two big ones would be Liberty University and Cedarville University. I won’t speculate on why they are missing, but they are surely relevant players in higher education today, especially Liberty, which boasts of having a total enrollment (much of it online-only) in excess of 100,000, making it larger than Penn State or Arizona State, which are usually said to be among the largest universities in America.
(3) This list is absolutely NOT to be confused with this list: List of CCCU Institutions | CCCU, a larger organization whose members include Messiah, Wheaton, Calvin, Westmont, Baylor, Pepperdine, Gordon, Houghton, and many dozen other institutions that are almost all much better known individually than all but 2 or 3 places on the TRACS list. (There are very good reasons for that, including the fact that lots of excellent STEM people got their undergraduate degrees from those schools.) There might be a few institutions that are found on both lists, but (to borrow words from physics texts) I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
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It’s been mentioned here (accurately) that Bob Jones once had a strict policy of racial separation that forbade (among other things) inter-racial dating and marriages, and that they ultimately abandoned it following the removal of their eligibility for certain federal programs.
Just wanted to point out that at least one school on the TRACS list is a seminary related to an historically black denomination: Jackson Theological Seminary (https://www.jtseminary.org/). Now, no one has really implied that TRACS or YECism promotes segregationist views, but I wanted to preclude that possible implication by pointing out this fact. It goes without saying that one can easily find connections with racism in the history of both evolution and various forms of creationism, just as there are also examples of anti-racism in that same historical record.
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I totally agree with you here. Its sad that some top medical schools in the States offer courses in homeopathy, acupuncture and the likes, but it would be unfair of me to trash the hardwork of the students because of that since they are equally taught proper science as well.
A number of Tracs member institutions are also certified as “Creation Colleges” by AiG.
Creation Colleges and Universities Names I picked out as common include:
Bob Jones University
Patrick Henry College
Pensacola Christian College
Shasta Bible College and Graduate School
Boston Baptist College
Crown College of the Bible
International Baptist College and Seminary
New Saint Andrews College
Virginia Bible College
Word of Life Bible Institute
AiG requires total commitment to the Tenets of Creation. These tenets are written so there is zero wiggle room from strict YEC. Even the classic Scofield Reference Bible and Charles Spurgeon would not have passed. Assent is required from the key institutional figures.
we have provided an opportunity for each institution’s Academic Dean, Bible Department Chair, and/or Science Department Chair (or equivalent) to affirm their commitment to these foundational truths of God’s Word. Creation Colleges
There is not the slightest pretense of academic freedom here, this is the very antithesis of academic freedom. Even in the evangelical context, the Tenets of Creation are extraordinarily narrow. You have an organization which runs a Noah’s Ark attraction, explicitly dictating history, archaeology, and science, to institutions which are members of an accreditation agency which is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. It is one thing to recognize the right to associate with others of like minded worldview. It is quite another to sanction the transfer of credit to the wider academic community. It seems to me that the sweeping scope of the AiG Tenets is problematic, and it may be questioned if institutions can enjoy both status both as a “creation college” and broader recognition as an accredited academy of higher learning in the sciences.
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I feel quite informed about Christian higher education and I could only recognize 15 from the list (several only because the two colleges I’ve taught at have played sports against some of these). It is crazy what’s out there!
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@TedDavis, the reasoning here doesn’t make sense to me. Bob Jones University (and the segregationists) never opposed the idea of black seminaries. They opposed the idea of integrated (mixed-race) seminaries (and specifically they opposed “miscegation”).
I have no axe to grind. I would like to tell you something. We had planned to build a school, just like Bob Jones University, here in the South for colored people. We wanted to build it. But we have run into this agitation now that makes it difficult, and the years are piling up. I do not suppose I will ever be able to build it. We wanted to build a great school where colored people could come and get all the culture that we offer here at Bob Jones University. We would not have face the problems that are faced where there is integration. We wanted to build a place where Christian colored people could get their education in an atmosphere where their talents in music and speech and art and all could be preserved and handed down. We wanted to build that kind of a school. We had that in mind until all this agitation started. Now we have a mess on our hands, and it is spreading out over this country.
So it seems that the fact that Tracs includes a historically black seminary is not at all indication that they did not support segregation.
Can you please clarify your point @TedDavis ?
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I would like a comprehensive list of these please.
There are some “interesting” discussions about DO’s here in the States, but that is probably best left for a different topic.
Just double checked the Tracs and AiG lists again. No guarantees, but I think I got them all in my post above.
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Well, TRACS was founded in 1979, many years after the Bob Jones court decision. So, I don’t think segregation is relevant to the organization now, nor at any point in the past, in a manner suggested by your point. I assume that Jackson Seminary may have non-black students today; they have on their home page the standard boilerplate about non-discrimination. I can’t find information about their history on their website, so I don’t know when they were founded.
In the not-too-distant past, as I stated, everyone knows that BJU was in fact a pro-segregation institution. That ended before TRACS got started.