Higher Education

Abstract As the fundamentalist movement emerged in the United States in the 1920s, one of the primary concerns of its founders was the state of Christian higher education. In that decade, fundamentalist activists created a network of institutions dedicated to teaching a specifically fundamentalist vision of liberal arts. Over the course of the twentieth century, this network grew and changed in significant ways. The network maintained its desire for a theologically and culturally pure faculty, but in many ways fundamentalist colleges, Bible institutes, and universities took part in broader patterns of change in higher education. This chapter focuses on one element that was unique to fundamentalist higher education: a focus on keeping students safe from changes in mainstream academic and cultural life.