Evangelical Scholarship and Elite Schools

Some time back Anthony Bradley asked the question of whether any doctoral graduates of evangelical institutions (e.g. Fuller, Southern, TEDS, Westminster, Wheaton) taught at Ivy League schools. Bradley’s question was rhetorical – of course they don’t, because those degrees aren’t worth as much. I decided to look into this and found that Bradley’s assumption is largely correct.

I looked at the divinity schools, seminaries, and department of religions for all of the Ivy League schools, plus American schools that typically rank in the top ~50 universities globally for religion and the humanities. Some, like Cal Tech, Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., and the University of Michigan didn’t have relevant faculty or departments. Others, like Columbia and Princeton, used neighboring seminaries (Union and Princeton, respectively). There was a lot of cross-pollination (inbreeding?) between the top schools, among the Ivy League especially. The more elite the school, the more uniform was its faculty. The more explicitly theological the school (e.g. Duke, Princeton) the more institutional diversity was present among its faculty.

There was a single faculty member of these schools with a doctorate from an evangelical institution (at Duke, from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary – a professor of Baptist studies). Below I outline a couple of overlapping theories of why. I also list out the schools and faculty with any master’s degree from evangelical institutions…