Citizenship education

Writing for the Christian Scholar's Review blog, Perry L. Glanzer, professor of Educational Foundations at Baylor University and a Resident Scholar with the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, has posted something of relevance to my forthcoming book: Christian Universities Do Little to Help Students Contemplate Excellent Christian Citizenship: Here’s the Evidence. An excerpt:

Since it is an election year, I wondered if I could find evidence that Christian universities help their students contemplate excellent Christian citizenship. As mentioned in an earlier post, my research team examined the general education requirements at 231 Protestant colleges requiring at least one Bible or theology course. We chose these institutions because they showed evidence of operationalizing the Christian identity in their general education.

We then examined the general education course descriptions for signs of Christian language or framing. In the process, we discovered that most Protestant universities give little evidence that they use the curriculum to form Christian citizens. . . .

In our study, we found most institutions do not require a political science course in general education, and even when they do, they take the batch of knowledge approach. For instance, although my institution requires a political science course on constitutional law, it simply expects students to learn a batch of knowledge about the Constitution. It does not aim to form excellent Christian citizens. 

I definitely agree with Glanzer that this is a problem in need of a solution. If Christian universities do not make an effort to form their students into, among other things, good citizens, they implicitly communicate to them that citizenship lies outside the path of obedient living or is irrelevant to it. Fortunately, I believe that my Citizenship Without Illusions will help to fill the need for a text serviceable to shaping young people into good citizens of their respective polities. I want to urge especially the member institutions of the CCCU to establish a required course on Christian citizenship for all students rather than leaving them without guidance as they confront their responsibilities as citizens.