From Publishers Weekly
A journalist known for her writing on religion and education in the Wall Street Journal and other top periodicals, Riley presents an engrossing survey of the growing world of religious higher education. To the secularly educated reader, this book is a fascinating anthropological glimpse into unfamiliar pockets of religious America. To the religiously affiliated, it cogently synthesizes issues and goals common to many of these colleges regardless of religion. Riley points out that enrollments are rising at these institutions and that a new educated "missionary generation" is bringing faith into the professional world. She argues that if "religious college leaders can navigate between the dangers of secularization and isolation, these schools can more effectively transmit their ideas to a larger American audience" and help build bridges between "red" and "blue" America. Riley's findings are based on visits to 20 different campuses, and she devotes her first six chapters to schools with various affiliations (Mormon, fundamentalist Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Jewish and Baptist). She spent up to a week on each campus, attended religious services and social events, sat in on classes and conducted interviews. The second half takes on common themes relevant to issues of student life on religious campuses: feminism, race, minority religious groups, lifestyle choices, integration of faith and intellect, and political activism. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
What are young Americans looking for in a college education? In what he considers one of the most surprising developments in higher education, Riley finds that a growing number of students are forsaking postmodern secularism by seeking deeper religious faith. Through extended visits to 20 faith-based schools, Riley has monitored the quickening pulse of religious devotion among college students divided by doctrinal tenets (Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Jews, and Buddhists) but united by a shared desire for an education unifying secular and sacred truths. That quest for educational unity looks different at Notre Dame than it does at Wheaton College, and different still at Brigham Young University than it does at Yeshiva University. But despite the differences, Riley recognizes that faculty, administrators, and students at all these schools face common challenges as they translate faith into this-world decisions about careers and family, sex and politics. And as the metaphysically confident graduates of these schools chart paths that elevate them to prominence in government and business, Riley sees them exerting ever-greater influence on the national culture. Balanced treatment of a socially potent movement in higher education. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Religious colleges and universities in America are growing at a breakneck pace. In this startling new book, journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley explores these schools-interviewing administrators, professors, and students-to produce the first popular, accessible, and comprehensive investigation of this phenomenon

Call them the Missionary Generation. By the tens and hundreds of thousands, some of America's brightest and most dedicated teenagers are opting for a different kind of college education. It promises all the rigor of traditional liberal arts schools, but mixed with religious instruction from the Good Book and a mandate from above.

Far removed from the medieval cloisters outsiders imagine, schools like Wheaton, Thomas Aquinas, and Brigham Young are churning out a new generation of smart, worldly, and ethical young professionals whose influence in business, medicine, law, journalism, academia, and government is only beginning to be felt.

In God On The Quad, Riley takes readers to the halls of Brigham Young, where surprisingly with-it young Mormons compete in a raucous marriage market and prepare for careers in public service. To the infamous Bob Jones, post interracial dating ban, where zealous fundamentalists are studying fine art and great literature to help them assimilate into the nation's cultural centers. To Thomas Aquinas College, where graduates homeschool large families and hope to return the American Catholic Church to its former glory. To Yeshiva, Wheaton, Notre Dame, and more than a dozen other schools, big and small, rich and poor, new and old, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon, and even Buddhist, all training grounds for the new Missionary Generation.

With a critical yet sympathetic eye, Riley, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Weekly Standard, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, studies these campuses and the debates that shape them. In a post-9/11 world where the division between secular and religious has never been sharper, what distinguishes these colleges from their secular counterparts? What does the missionary generation think about political activism, feminism, academic freedom, dating, race relations, homosexuality, and religious tolerance-and what effect will these young men and women have on the United States and the world?



About the Author
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a contributing writer at The American Enterprise and a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and National Review. Her articles have also appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Weekly Standard, the New York Post, the New York Sun, the New Republic, Commentary, Crisis, the Public Interest, the New Atlantis, and First Things. Ms. Riley is also the editor of In Character, a journal of the John Templeton Foundation, and an adjunct fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Since graduating from Harvard magna cum laude in 1998, she has worked as assistant editor of Commentary, as well as an editorial intern at the Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review. She has been the recipient of the Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Journalism Fellowship, the Claremont Institute Publius Fellowship, and the Charles G. Koch Fellowship.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Religious colleges and universities in America are growing at a breakneck pace. In this new book, journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley explores these schools - interviewing administrators, professors, and students - to produce the first popular, accessible, and comprehensive investigation of this phenomenon.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

A journalist known for her writing on religion and education in the Wall Street Journal and other top periodicals, Riley presents an engrossing survey of the growing world of religious higher education. To the secularly educated reader, this book is a fascinating anthropological glimpse into unfamiliar pockets of religious America. To the religiously affiliated, it cogently synthesizes issues and goals common to many of these colleges regardless of religion. Riley points out that enrollments are rising at these institutions and that a new educated "missionary generation" is bringing faith into the professional world. She argues that if "religious college leaders can navigate between the dangers of secularization and isolation, these schools can more effectively transmit their ideas to a larger American audience" and help build bridges between "red" and "blue" America. Riley's findings are based on visits to 20 different campuses, and she devotes her first six chapters to schools with various affiliations (Mormon, fundamentalist Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Jewish and Baptist). She spent up to a week on each campus, attended religious services and social events, sat in on classes and conducted interviews. The second half takes on common themes relevant to issues of student life on religious campuses: feminism, race, minority religious groups, lifestyle choices, integration of faith and intellect, and political activism. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews