When I was an undergraduate at an evangelical college in the Pacific Northwest, I encountered a unique imperative, “Down with the Pinecone Curtail!” For my classmates who resonated with this battle cry, the towering evergreens on campus were a metaphor for the college’s cultural isolation. While the Pinecone Curtail wasn’t exactly the Berlin Wall, my classmates’ discontent was real nonetheless. They were dissatisfied with the school’s evangelical identity, if not with evangelicalism itself.
In my experience, evangelical schools are particularly deft at self-loathing. I say this as someone who has been in the academy for twenty years, as an undergraduate, graduate, and faculty member. In that time, I have learned or taught at an evangelical college, state university, and two Catholic universities (a Holy Cross institution and a Jesuit one). In two decades and four schools—ranging from conservative to liberal, private to public, pious to secular—I have never encountered the sheer volume of self-loathing that I experienced as a student (and professor) at an evangelical college. While my experience is anecdotal, I doubt if it’s unique. Why do so many students at evangelical colleges look with disdain upon their own institution—and, in a sense, upon themselves?
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