ABSTRACT
The oldest independent Christian college, Taylor University, was founded by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1847. Independent evangelical and fundamentalist colleges are, indeed, quite different. The cooperative impulse seemed to be particularly strong among the independent Christian colleges, unencumbered as they were by denominational ties. When, in March of 1971, the presidents of ten evangelical institutions met to create the Christian College Consortium, four independent colleges were included: Gordon, Taylor, Westmont, and Wheaton. Both Taylor and Asbury were among the very “few colleges representing the sizable holiness branch of Methodism,” with its emphasis on the complete sanctification of the believer. In 1860, local Congregationalists rechartered the school as Wheaton College, placed it on sound financial footing, and established abolitionist Jonathan Blanchard as president. In 1940, Westmont College was founded in Los Angeles, with great hopes of becoming the “Wheaton of the West.”.
