How Christian Colleges Might Pick Their Battles More Wisely

The status of academic freedom at religious colleges is under new scrutiny as a result of efforts by Wheaton College of Illinois to fire Larycia A. Hawkins, a tenured associate professor of political science who said on Facebook that Christians and Muslims worship the same god.  William C. Ringenberg, a professor of history at Taylor University, an evangelical Christian college in Upland, Ind., discussed the struggles of religious colleges to balance academic freedom and religious concerns at length in a book released this month, The Christian College and the Meaning of Academic Freedom: Truth-Seeking in Community. Following is an edited and condensed version of that conversation with Ringenberg.