How Religious Schools Strengthen Our Republic
The narrowing of intellectual life on campus is no passing trend; it has become a defining feature of American higher education. Viewpoint diversity among professors and students alike is growing scarce, leaving prevailing ideas uncontested and unrefined. Yet religious colleges and universities offer an unlikely model for renewal. Though rooted in faith traditions, they often preserve the very conditions for open, rigorous inquiry that many secular institutions now struggle to sustain. That the most intellectually diverse campuses may be those grounded in a single faith seems paradoxical—but it is precisely their moral coherence that makes pluralism possible.
Consider the College of the Holy Cross, a small Jesuit school in Worcester, Massachusetts. Each fall, freshmen pledge themselves to the Jesuit principle of Magis—the call to strive for excellence in all learning. The ritual is more than symbolic; it establishes a shared moral vocabulary that guides the community. Holy Cross reinforces those principles not through slogans but through structure: small classes that reward dialogue, a common core curriculum that demands breadth, and even a single dining hall that draws the entire campus into conversation. The result is an intellectual culture animated by trust and curiosity. Its alumni—ranging from Justice Clarence Thomas to Dr. Anthony Fauci—reflect not uniformity but academic seriousness. In an age defined by stagnation and opposition, Holy Cross quietly demonstrates how conviction and pluralism can coexist.
That paradox holds across faith-based campuses nationwide. From Baylor to Brigham Young University, from Yeshiva University to Wheaton College, religious institutions thrive by marrying moral clarity to intellectual openness. They know what they stand for, and that clarity frees students to question rather than conform. Where secular universities increasingly police speech and sentiment, faith-rooted schools model institutional confidence. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, roughly four in ten students nationwide regularly self-censor for fear of social or administrative reprisal. That number should alarm anyone who believes education requires freedom. Religious colleges provide a striking counterexample: when purpose is clear and belonging is secure, disagreement becomes safe again, and students are more willing to test arguments in good faith.
Sociologist Émile Durkheim would have recognized what such institutions achieve. He called it “collective consciousness”—the web of norms and meanings that makes genuine freedom possible. Religious colleges build that architecture deliberately. They integrate faith, service, and scholarship so that knowledge serves not just private ambition but civic life. As the Sutherland Institute’s Religion and the American Experiment report notes, religious schooling consistently correlates with higher levels of civic trust, charitable giving, and political tolerance than secular institutions. Their graduates tend to vote more, volunteer more, and participate more actively in their communities. The pattern is clear: when moral formation accompanies academic instruction, democracy benefits.
The reason is not theological indoctrination but anthropological realism. Faith-based education assumes that humans are moral creatures before they are political ones—and that character cannot be outsourced to policy. It teaches responsibility alongside rights. Students at Notre Dame, BYU, or Yeshiva are reminded that knowledge is ordered toward service, that liberty demands discipline, and that truth-seeking requires humility. In this respect, religious colleges preserve something secular institutions have lost: the link between intellect and virtue. Their pedagogy insists that how one learns matters as much as what one learns.
And that link is not confined to religion’s adherents. Many non-believing students choose faith-based schools precisely because they crave a moral community within which to think freely. They may not pray, but they respect purpose. In an age of ironic detachment and social atomization, the rituals of shared meals, chapel services, and civic engagement build habits of gratitude and empathy. Those habits are the seedbed of citizenship. When graduates leave such institutions, they are more inclined to see politics not as performance but as service.
This is also where ideological diversity enters. A Pew Research Center study finds that religious adherence correlates with higher rates of conservatism—the overwhelming minority position in today’s academy. That demographic reality matters. Religious schools draw applicants who bring ideological heterogeneity that is increasingly absent at secular universities. This does not create unanimity; it creates the conditions for real debate. When students realize they are not alone, confidence grows. Silence gives way to speech. And speech—sometimes halting, sometimes contentious—is the prerequisite for building independent thinkers capable of engaging across difference.
But demographic variety alone is insufficient. Without structure, ideological diversity easily fractures into siloed groups, mutual suspicion, or status anxiety. Religious colleges counter that risk because creed, mission, and shared purpose construct a framework strong enough to hold disagreement. Their clarity creates the container in which heterogeneity can be generative rather than corrosive.
The lesson for secular universities, then, is not that they must become religious, but that they must again become serious. Mission clarity is not indoctrination; it is honesty. Every institution embodies values, but few are transparent about them. A college that preaches neutrality while enforcing unspoken orthodoxies about identity and power is far less open than one that declares a creed and invites students to challenge, discuss, and dissent from it. Through commitment—real, articulated, lived commitment—religious schools set an example: better to admit what you believe than to hide belief behind bureaucratic platitudes.
Pluralism, properly understood, depends on institutions of conviction. A free society requires spaces where ideas can be contested without fear, but also where meaning can be pursued without cynicism. Religious colleges prove that these goals are compatible. They stand as quiet guardians of civic life, reminding us that liberty without moral order devolves into license, and community without conscience curdles into conformity.
Holy Cross embodies that balance. Its Jesuit ethos—anchored in purpose, disciplined by reason, and animated by faith—produces graduates who can disagree without disdain and serve without cynicism. In an age when universities often confuse activism for intellect, Holy Cross and schools like it remind us what higher education can still be: a place where belief strengthens inquiry and community sustains freedom. That is not merely good pedagogy. It is the foundation of a republic.
