Staying and straying : social reproduction and resistance to secularization

This thesis explores how church-founded liberal arts colleges--specifically fundamental/evangelical liberal arts colleges--stayed the drift toward secularization. It uses comparative case studies to examine the structures and beliefs which enabled staying schools to resist secularization. Social reproduction theories are used to explain both the reproduction of the dominant culture (secularization) and the reproduction of a subculture (fundamentalism/evangelicalism). Secularizing institutions conform to state incentives and so reproduce what the state sees as necessary for societal survival. Resisting institutions isolate themselves from the dominant culture by establishing boundaries which let in only what accords with the church and so reproduce a culture the church sees as necessary for the survival of evangelicalism/fundamentalism