NPR Interviews Gutsy Writer about Rise Of Religious Education and the New "Missionary Generation"

Tal Barak / Teresa Neumann Reporting : May 17, 2005
NPR

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a journalist and adjunct fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and has written for the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, The New York Times and many other publications. In her new book God on the Quad, she explores the rise of religious colleges in America. In an effort to understand the evident growing evangelicalism in America, NPR has undertaken the task of researching a variety of topics they see the American religious community as being deeply concerned with. Because of her extensive research into her book God on the Quad, in which she explores the rise of religious colleges in America, NPR's Tal Barak interviewed Naomi Riley to determine why Americans are turning more and more to religious education.

Riley is refreshingly outspoken and brilliant in her observations, recounting how she first became aware of the shift of education when she noted that very bright students were turning down good, sometimes Ivy League schools, to attend religious colleges instead. She calls these new, Christian trained upper graduates, the "missionary generation," and notes that they are highly motivated, study hard, vote, don't experiment with drugs or sex, marry early and plan ahead for family life. They are also becoming lawyers, doctors, college professors, businessmen, psychologists, philanthropists . . . and many join the Army.

When asked if she thought this "missionary generation" would change American society, Riley said she believed they would. "They are determined to have careers in the highest echelons of our elite institutions, and they also are moving increasingly to the cultural and political centers of the country," she said.

Barak asked Riley what she thought was driving the growth of the missionary generation. "I don't think you can discount the fact that strongly religious students are often not treated very well at secular universities," responded Riley. "Secular campus life is often not conducive to leading a religious life. And then there are the professors who regularly mock religious views in the classroom."

"Our culture enforces the idea that college is a time for rebellion, and that students are supposed to spend their time protesting or experimenting in behaviors their parents wouldn't approve of," Riley said, when asked what the difference was between a secular education and a religious one. "At religious colleges, students by and large seem to think their parents brought them up pretty well, and they're in college because God wants them to develop their intellect."

Riley, who is Jewish, was surprised that with the exception of the dean of Bob Jones University, no one overtly tried to convert her. "I think my impression that explicit proselytization was the common mode of dealing with nonbelievers was certainly challenged," she admitted.

And as far as criticism of a lack of diversity at religious schools, Riley soundly objected. "Most of these schools seem to be pursuing racial diversity as much if not more so than secular schools. In part, they think it is part of their religious mission to reflect 'the Kingdom of God.'"