Religion Is a Fourth `R' at Grove City College

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 5, 2001 | by Stephen Goode

So our campus has a Christian environment that's all-encompassing. You've got the administration, the faculty, students and staff that buy into it and are committed to it. Which, by the way, makes Grove City College a very easy institution to run because everybody knows from the start what it is that we're trying to do.

Insight: You have a degree in chemical engineering. You've served as a deputy director at the National Science Foundation and you're also a man of faith. How serious is the contradiction between religion and science that we often hear about?

JHM: I certainly don't see any contradiction and there are many scientists who say the same thing. I don't want to minimize the problem because there still are many scientists who are very profound atheists. Steven Weinberg, for instance, who is a Nobel laureate in physics, doesn't make any bones about it. He's an atheist -- first, last and always.

But you can look at science as a way of revealing God's creation and discovering a part of God's troth, and I think many scientists actually think that way. They may not be a majority, though.

It is interesting that there was a poll of biologists taken about 1915, asking them the extent to which they believed in a Creator God. At that time, I think, the result was 40 percent said that they did. That poll was repeated within the last 10 years. The same question was asked and the number was the same despite everything that's happened in between involving the secularization of society. There still were about 40 percent of biologists who believe in God, and biology's the field most affected by Darwinism.

Insight: Grove City now is constructing some new buildings on campus. Is the school expanding?

JHM: We are replacing our main classroom building for arts and letters with another. That's project No. 1. There are three other projects. One of them is a student-activities center; another is a fine-arts center that's needed because of the growth in the music program; and then there's the renovation of Carnegie Hall, the oldest building on our campus.

Insight: Will you be increasing enrollment?

JHM: We do not plan to increase enrollment. We plan to stay right where we are, at 2,300. We like that size. It's big enough so we can do things like engineering, but it's small enough to maintain a really good sense of community. If you picked a number out of the air, I don't know if you'd come up with 2,300, but it works just fine for us.

Insight: Anyone familiar with the history of Grove City College will know about its successful effort to lift the quality of intellectual life on its campus.

JHM: Yes. I think this has been going on for at least a quarter-century. I can't give you an exact number, but if we went back 25 years I think the percentage of the faculty with doctoral degrees would be 40 to 50 percent. Now I think we're right around 75 percent. SAT scores here now average about 1250, and nearly all of our kids come with a commitment to Christianity and to learning, which helps them as students. And most of the students come here because they're interested in learning something for its own sake. It makes for a happy place for teachers, even if they can't get tenure.