What does it take for a college president to get a hug from John McCain?  The good fortune of having our college located in an early caucus state such as Iowa is certainly part of it. At last count, I had conversed personally with at least 11 people running for president of the United States this year. Yet not everyone in Iowa had my good fortune of getting a hug from a United States Senator on only the second occasion that you meet.

The reason for this exuberant greeting from McCain should be credited to Dustin, a senior at Dordt College who had started a “Non Partisan Politics Club” on campus to sponsor appearances at our college for any or all presidential candidates who wanted to engage our students, faculty and staff. That’s what brought people like Senator McCain to campus, made him listen to our students and staff while there and want to return – and even hug the college president.

This election year has brought the issue of civic engagement for Christian colleges to the forefront of my mind. From my point of view, it only makes sense to move civic engagement (at least close) to the top of our agenda. Even more, it seems to me that it’s a significant part of our Christ-centered mission of equipping students to make a difference for Jesus Christ throughout their lives in whatever social or civic setting they find themselves.

It also occurred to me that if one our college’s alumni had not been the Iowa coordinator for Senator McCain, he might never have engaged us in the first place. If we don’t graduate alumni who fan out across our nation(s) into positions of leadership and influence we’ll never get the ball rolling either – and it’s not likely our colleges and universities will have much impact in prodding our society into more Christ-like ways of justice.

Even secular associations like Campus Compact can be great opportunities for Christian colleges to engage our society in keeping with whatever our own particular mission and focus as a college may be. During my time as chair of the Iowa Campus Compact, I’ve sometimes felt that much of what we were doing was trying to get our secular colleague institutions to commit to what our Christian colleague institutions seem to do naturally. Concepts such as service learning—to which the Campus Compact movement has dedicated itself— really come out of the soul of the gospel, even if the organization itself is neutral on the matter of faith. Nonetheless, such organizations have great programs and strategies for involving our campuses in civic engagement projects, and they often find funding from government and private sources to facilitate that engagement.

Let me be clear: I’m not advocating selling out our distinctive missions for civic engagement. At least from our limited experience, civic engagement certainly doesn’t need to compromise our missions. A few years back when Dordt College received a $200,000 grant from the United States Department of Justice under the Violence Against Women Act, we were able to hire our faith-based staff to accomplish our own Safe Campus programs in line with our own faith commitments. The auditor sent out to examine our program even happened to share our Christ-centered faith commitments. So even in an area that is fraught with politically correct opinions that are sometimes at odds with our mission, we were able to move boldly into a civic engagement in cooperation also with some of our local civic organizations – with the federal government funding the effort.

Christ-centered institutions have a mission-focused imperative to provide Christian witness in every corner of human culture and society. To fulfill that mission without engaging the structures and spirits of society seems pretty difficult. In fact, I would argue that engaging the “principalities and powers” of our present age is at the core of what Christ-centered postsecondary institutions need to be providing our students, staff and alumni opportunities to do. Christian colleges express their missions with a variety of accents.  Yet it appears that almost all of us relate our missions to some dimension of our faith commitment that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. It’s not likely that we’ll do very well at enabling our graduates to live that confession in engagement with a world that denies the rule of Christ unless we as a college are demonstrating how to do so during their time as part of our educational communities.

There’s another reason why civic engagement is really important for Christian colleges. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that if we don’t get involved in the political and policy arena where decisions are being made regarding the freedoms and opportunities for Christian higher education, we may soon find ourselves marginalized out of the higher education community at best, or even stripped of our right to grant recognized degrees and to gain federally or state assisted for our students in the process.

Perhaps that sounds alarmist. Yet from my seat on both the CCCU and NAICU boards, it’s a very valid concern. The current national debate over Higher Ed Reauthorization has not been conducive toward enhancing maximum freedom for American institutions of higher education. Even simple language such as merely requiring that accreditors “respect the religious mission” of colleges such as ours barely made it through the process. We need to realize how close we have come, in many areas, to having the government restrict our religious liberties to hire whom we wish and teach what we desire. Without vigorous engagement it’s not likely that the next effort at educational policy making will be any friendlier than was the last.

Admittedly, when I moved to the higher education community a dozen years ago, civic engagement was hardly on my top five list of priorities as a college president. Today, it’s in the top two. I don’t know whether the world has changed or whether I’ve just become more aware. But today it seems to me there’s hardly any area of presidential leadership more significant than leading our institutions into the kind of civic engagement that will protect our liberties, expand our witness, and equip our graduates for a lifetime of faithful service in whatever civic community they find themselves.

Besides, when you do so, you just might get the chance to be hugged by a future president of the United States – and to hug him back with the love of the Christ we serve.  

For media inquiries, contact:
Mike Plunkett
Media Relations & Publications Manager
mplunkett@cccu.org
voice: 202.546.8713 ext. 326

Nate Mouttet
VP for Communications
nmouttet@cccu.org
voice: 202.546.8713 ext. 329