ABSTRACT
In Chapter 5 we use our findings to construct a model of the conservative Protestant college or university. These institutions face pressure from a conservative religious community to espouse conservative religious, and likely conservative political views. But they also have pressure to maintain their legitimacy in the larger academic community. Thus conservative Protestant colleges and universities have developed certain features. These features include: religious exclusivity, non-radical but progressive viewpoint, low pressure toward political conformity, and social conservatism. These are elements that shape a model of conservative Protestant educational institutions. This model shows how conservative Protestant institutions of higher education are able to placate a religiously, and often politically, conservative constituency but also to retain some degree of legitimacy within the larger academic sphere. Thus we argue for a theory of relative ideological diversity on Christian college campuses, where political tolerance is an important tool that conservative Protestant institutions of higher education use to deal with the pressures they experience from their larger religious subculture and the academic community.
