Where the Secular and the Sacred Meet: The Changing Relationship Between Religion and Higher Education

A Long and Intertwined History of Faith and Higher Education

The history of religion and higher education have been intertwined in the United States since long before the country’s founding. In fact, many elite institutions trace their origins to religious groups, including Puritans (Harvard), Congregationalists (Yale), and Baptists (Brown), and there are hundreds more institutions that either have a mission that is informed by a religious doctrine or have an historical relationship with a faith tradition.[1] Given this long and rich history, an understanding of contemporary higher education would be difficult without a grasp of the cultural and legal issues that bind these two institutions—religion and higher education—to one another. 

The relationship between higher education and religion continues to evolve even today, and two dimensions continue to be important. The first dimension encompasses the long-standing legal debates about religious practice on college campuses, and the intersection with religion and other constitutionally-protected rights. Rather than an area of settled law, there has been a series of significant decisions that expands the area of remit for religious institutions and for the free exercise of religion on all campuses, public or private. A second dimension is the expanding engagement of the federal government and non-profit sector with faith-informed initiatives. The discussion below illustrates well how these two dimensions (and others) constitute a broad trend that will affect private institutions—whether religious or not—and the publics, as well. Numerous legal and political signs point to more engagement between faith-informed institutions and government, and there will be more public and private resources invested in faith-based schools and initiatives. Today’s leaders in higher education will either engage with these issues or be engaged by them.

Legal Debates and the Free Exercise of Religion on College Campuses

Religion has always occupied a Janus-faced position in higher education, in part because of the diverse missions of colleges and universities in the United States. Public institutions are more constrained by some legal strictures of the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment, that prohibits state-sponsored religious activity while simultaneously protecting the free exercise of religion. These schools must grapple with the tension inherent in the familiar section that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor of the “wall of separation between church and state” is often cited as the framer’s goal for the First Amendment, and as any basic civics lesson explains, the tension between these two codicils is meant to guarantee religious freedom for all. 

Education has always been at the center of this debate and remains the focal point of several contemporary legal debates. Historically, one-third of the Supreme Court cases involving religious freedom have involved issues in education.[2]  For nearly one-half century, jurists adjudicated whether government engagement with religious institutions was consistent with federal law by using the three-part test established by Lemon v. Kurtzman.  The Supreme Court formally abandoned the long-maligned Lemon Test in 2022, after two decades of repeated challenges steadily weakened it. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District established a new standard  that centers on permissible and impermissible displays of religion based on history and on the intentions of the founding fathers.  Kennedy establishes a more amorphous legal standard that significantly strengthens the “free exercise” part of the First Amendment vis-à-vis the “establishment clause at public institutions.”

Private institutions have long been given greater leeway by the courts to engage in a more prescriptive exercise of religious beliefs, but Kennedy indicates that the free exercise of religion is being expanded at public colleges and universities. There are some concerns that private schools might face additional restrictions on their religious practice, perhaps as an unintended consequence of the Trump Administration’s efforts to eliminate what it defines as illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.[3] The experience of Georgetown is instructive. The Executive Order issued on the first day of President Trump’s presidency mandated the elimination of these programs, and on February 17 Georgetown University Law School received a letter from Interim US Attorney Ed Martin directing them to remove elements of DEI from their coursework and programming.  

In response, the Dean of Georgetown School of Law, William Treanor, wrote that Martin’s letter requested that they desist in activities that are a “moral and ethical imperative” for Catholics. According to Dean Treanor, the so-called DEI activities detailed by Martin are protected under the First Amendment’s free exercise clause, protections that were expanded by the Supreme Court under Kennedy. This raises the specter of an interesting legal debate in higher education: can schools use religious liberty under the free exercise clause to resist the elimination of DEI programs?  

Time will tell. There is an obvious paradox in which the expansion of free exercise protections for religion at public institutions is proceeding at the same time that some advocates might invoke those same legal principles to defend value-based DEI initiatives. If nothing else, the ongoing debates over the religious underpinnings of DEI, the implications of Kennedy, and other emerging legal questions will continue to ensure the job security of attorneys working in higher education and that institutional leaders develop at least a working fluency with these issues.

The Expansion of Faith-Informed Initiatives in Higher Education[4]

Besides changes in the legal grounding of these institutions, there has been in recent years a slowly expanding engagement of the federal government with faith-informed schools and initiatives. The Trump Administration established the White House Faith Office (WHFO) in February of 2025, along with another Executive Order that seeks to eradicate “anti-Christian bias” in the federal workplace. On May 1, the Trump Administration established the Religious Liberty Commission that would advise the White House Faith office on the policies and programs that would help preserve religious liberty in the United States.

Perhaps because the notice of the White House Faith Office was followed so closely by other Christian-focused announcements, many analysts failed to note that President Trump’s WHFO is the latest iteration of similar offices established by previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic. Similar offices were part of the administrative structures for President Biden (White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships), Trump I (White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative), Obama (White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships), and George W. Bush (Office of Faith Based and Community Partnerships).  The areas of emphasis have varied, to be sure, but there has been a clear secular trend of engagement by the Executive Branch with faith-informed interests.[5]

The Role of Nonprofits and Religious Associations

That trend has extended to non-profit groups in higher education, where there are a number of associations who advocate for faith-based schools, such as the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), and the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU) that serves Lutheran institutions. These associations have long served to encourage collaboration among member institutions, and in many cases they advocate on behalf of the collective interests of their member institutions to the federal government. The groups enumerated here are representative of a much larger group of religious associations in higher education serving a similar function for specific denominational groups.

Interfaith Collaboration as a Strategic Imperative

Besides efforts to organize colleges from a specific faith tradition, there have been other efforts to support debate about the place of religious activity in higher education. One noteworthy example is The ACE Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities,  established in 2024 by the American Council on Education (ACE). The Commission’s goal is to both enhance the visibility of faith-based institutions and to catalyze collaboration between those institutions and schools that have no religious affiliation. The stated vision of this inter-faith effort is to facilitate inter-faith collaboration among leaders of these institutions and to share their collective experiences with the higher education community.  The president of ACE, Ted Mitchell, noted that faith-based institutions create a sense of belonging on their campuses, which is a goal of every school seeking to retain and graduate their students.

Now What?

What does the future hold for higher education and faith traditions?  A nomothetic explanation of what might happen next is tempting, especially for a recovering political scientist. However, that will be difficult given the ongoing stream of legal rulings, political developments, and cultural trends that taken alone don’t have a clear predictive value. For instance, the Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy advocates using “history and tradition” as a guide for future cases and for legislation, which will inevitably lead to an extended conversation about history and how it should inform today’s higher education landscape.

As suggested in the introduction, there are some certainties in the relationship between religion and higher education. One is that the conversation will continue and another will be that institutional leaders will be engaging in these issues, either through acts of volition or not. For their part, religious institutions are likely to have access to more government funding than in the past, and there are widespread signs that public institutions will no longer be able to hold these issues at arms-length.

[1] The seminal work on this topic is the oft-cited, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War, With Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing Upon the College Movement, by Donald G. Tewksbury’.

[2] This legal history is vast and there is a voluminous scholarly literature, to say the least.  The National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) recommends the benchmark text, The Law of Higher Education: Essentials for Legal and Administrative Practice, by William A. Kaplin and Barbara A. Lee.

[3] Similarly, immigration could also become an issue, since the doctrine of many faith traditions call for service to refugees and other migrants. 

[4] “Faith-informed” is used to include institutions whose mission integrates elements of a faith tradition with schools who have a more nominal connection based on history.  My colleague David Rowe of Windermere Consulting uses the term, “church-related,” to describe institutions that have a historical connection to a religious group, such as my alma mater, Emory University, that has a historical connection to the Methodist church.

[5] Note that this overview of Executive Branch initiatives regarding faith traditions and higher education leaves aside the broad efforts to address antisemitism on college campuses.  These efforts are having a profound impact on many institutions and have involved an entirely different are of constitutional law under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.