Theology as a Craft

I am reprinting a series of brief posts on the nature of theology from my old blog Levellers. After I reprint each post, I’ll make an index page and put the series up on my page of “popular posts and series.” (The series was popular on my old blog, anyway, and I’m trying to make sure that former readers can still find material they liked on this blog, Pilgrim Pathways.)

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What IS ‘theology?”

Different definitions of theology lead to different methods/approaches of “doing theology.”  I propose the definition given by the late Baptist theologian of the “[b]aptist Vision,” i.e., the constitutive vision of the Believers’ Churches, James Wm. McClendon, Jr. (1924-2000).  Theology, McClendon said, is “the discovery, understanding or interpretation, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is.”  He intended this definition to be broad enough to encompass the theologies of other world religions and of philosophical substitutes for religion, such as Marxism, socio-biology, etc.  If the “convictional community” in question is the Christian Church, then theology is the discovery, understanding or interpretation, and transformation of the convictions of the Christian Church, including the discovery and critical revision of disciples’ relation(s) to one another, to the Triune GOD, and to the rest of Creation.” (My adaptation.)

Certain things follow from such a definition:  i. Theology is pluralistic; done in different, even rival, camps.  There is struggle in theology–the struggle for truth. This sometimes involves struggle against the perceived errors of others.  Because Christ prayed that the Church would enjoy the same unity that he enjoys with the Father, striving for ecumenical reconciliation in the fractured Church is mandatory.  But all the ecumenical good will in the world cannot disguise the fact that theologians (and churches) disagree and that some of these disagreements are sharp and deep. Another way to say this is that theology is contextual  –related to differing church traditions (e.g., Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, “baptist,” etc.), differing eras, differing cultural contexts.

ii. Theology is narrative based, construing the lived experience of the convictional community by means of Scripture.  There are, of course, different readings of Scripture:  A 12th C. Franciscan “take” on the biblical narrative differs from a 17th C. Jesuit take on the same narrative–but they are both much closer than either is to the “take” of a 16th C. Dutch Mennonite, of 19th C. antebellum African-American Christians in the U.S. South, of a WWI-era Pentecostal, of a Peruvian “base community” in the 1970s, of a Reformed “take” in South Africa during the “Boer War” resistance to British rule, of an African Christian response to both the British and Afrikaaner readings, etc.

iii. Theology is rational.  Some (Schleiermacher, Barth) have called theology a “science,” and in the broadest sense of the term, this is true.  But because in English “science” is understood after the model of the natural sciences, McClendon suggests (and I agree) that it is less confusing to call theology a discipline that is to display the rationality appropriate to its metier, just as the disciplines of art, law, and medicine display their own particular rationalities. Thus, like these other cases, theology is a practice, a craft, that is rooted in the other practices (e.g., mission, evangelism, worship, communal prayer, preaching, hospitality to the poor and the stranger, life together in the Body, nonviolent service to the neighbor, nonviolent encounter/witness with the enemy,  etc.) of the Church.  The theologian must likewise be rooted in these practices, in a particular Christian community, even if s/he is employed by a secular or pluralist university.

iv. This leads us to the fact that theology is self-involving.  Possibly in rare circumstances a Christian theologian could write a Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist theology (Hans Küng has attempted this regarding Judaism and Islam) or some non-Christian could undertake to write a Christian theology.  But these would be exceptions that prove the rule.  In convictional work, self-involvement is the rule, exceptions must be explained case-by-case.  (This is NOT to say that Christian theologians should not be in dialogue with non-Christian movements. The missionary nature of the Church means that, in each context, theologians will dialogue with major forces and thought-forms in their cultural context.  But the theologian does not attempt to adopt a “neutral” or “detached” observer frame. S/he is not an anthropologist.)

I. Is this a good way to understand theology? Why or why not?

II. What does the practice of theology look like when understood this way?

Index: Hidden Gems: U.S. Colleges & Universities Making a Difference

I. The Southeast.

II. Mid-Atlantic Region.

III. New England.

IV. Upper Mid-West.

V. South Central Plains.

VI. Non-Coastal Northwest.

VII. Non-Coastal Southwest.

VIII. West Coast

Why I Am a Straight Ally in the Struggle for LGBT Equality: A Testimony for Family & Friends

I’m behind on this blog.  Among other things, I’ve promised a personal tribute to New Testament theologian Walter Wink, who died a few days ago. I’ll have to publish that on Sunday, I guess.  A Facebook conversation with one of my nephews last night prompted this blog post–more than the heartbreaking passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina (defining marriage as one man and one woman–thereby not only banning same-sex marriage, but also same-sex civil unions, domestic partner benefits and protections even for unmarried heterosexual couples, etc.) on Tuesday. It was also a greater prompt than Wednesday’s surprise announcement by President Obama that he has finished “evolving” and now fully supports marriage equality–both heart-stopping events for different reasons.

Last night, one of my nephews, a college student active in the LGBT rights group on the campus of Virginia Tech, and who came out last year while at university (although he started coming out at the end of high school), thanked me for my efforts as a straight ally.  Actually, I’m not sure I’ve done all that much.  Yes, I wrote a blog series on “LGBT Persons in the Church: The Case for Full Inclusion.” I’ve preached some sermons along this line in places where they’ve seldom heard a Christian support LGBT equality.  I spoke against and voted “no” in 2000 when the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship voted to include a rule against hiring any personnel or endorsing any missionaries who were out, non-celibate lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgendered persons. (I think the CBF actually said, “practicing homosexuals,” but that language is misleading and I won’t use it.) When I returned home from that meeting, I recommended to our congregation (and they followed through) that we cease to be members of CBF and not contribute to their missions.  I voted “yes,” in 2004 when the Alliance of Baptists, the small denomination to which I and my congregation belong, endorsed marriage equality.  (The Alliance was already strongly on record for LGBT rights, including ordaining out LGBT persons for ministry and endorsing out LGBT missionaries. Several Alliance congregations had already performed same-sex weddings by 2004–some in states where these marriages would have legal recognition and some, like mine, where the state would not recognize what God’s people did in blessing covenantal unions.) After the 2004 elections resulted in 11 states, including KY where I live, writing discriminatory bans against same-sex marriage into their state constitutions, I urged my congregation (already a leader in LGBT equality fights–with many persons in our congregation well ahead of me in actions taken and leadership shown) to lift our flag higher by joining The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB), a network of gay-affirming Baptist congregations–mostly, but not entirely, in American Baptist circles.  Since 2000, I have spoken and marched more on these kind of issues than before–but it is minor compared to other justice causes and very minor compared to what others have done.  So, I’m not sure I deserve my nephew’s praise.

I take that praise as a goad to do more–to be more worthy of the title “straight ally” in the struggle for LGBT Equality.  But whether I am a strong ally or a weak one, I didn’t really start out trying to be an ally in this movement whatsoever–and this is a good chance to state why I’ve become a straight ally (however weakly or poorly) and what led me, precisely as a Christian, to take such a stance.

First, I should say, that, although I never sought to be an ally in this struggle, nor did I seek to be an adversary or opponent, much less an LGBT enemy.  I’m not saying that I didn’t grow up with homophobic and heterosexist prejudices–that would be nearly impossible in this culture. I don’t think there are any non-racist American whites–just recovering racists who struggle for racial justice while also seeking constantly to root out hidden racial prejudices and keep repenting and struggling toward greater sanctification in this area.  I don’t believe there are any men in this or other patriarchal cultures who are completely non-sexist–just those of us who keep repenting of our sexism and keep struggling for sex and gender justice in home, church (synagogue, mosque, etc.), and society and seeking greater sanctification in our own lives.  I must say the same thing regarding homophobia and heterosexism–I seek to be a recovering homophobe and recovering heterosexist. One of my hopes is that there can be generational progress as well as individual progress.

But even from childhood, I did try somewhat to swim upstream on these issues when I first became aware of them in the 1970s.  The issue of marriage equality was nowhere on my radar, but I join my parents in opposing former Mouseketeer and orange juice saleswoman, Anita Bryant, in her hate-filled witch-hunt against gays in public schools who were supposedly “recruiting” because they couldn’t reproduce.  My mother was furious that Bryant was using her fear-mongering as an excuse to get FL to vote against the Equal Rights Amendment (and this bait-and-switch was successful)–and, from this, we both learned that there is a profound connection between patriarchy and homophobia.  I had one gay teacher (that I know) and he was amazing–the man who first made history important for me. I knew him to be a person of integrity who had no designs on anyone’s children–except to get them to fall in love with learning.  By contrast, in those far off days, I knew several male teachers sleeping with high school girls and two female teachers sleeping with high school boys. The former were at risk of prison for statutory rape, but the same abuse of boys by adult women was only considered “contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” and there was little risk of prosecution in those days. Fathers of boys seduced by a female teacher would probably have patted the kid on the back and thanked the teacher for “making a man out of my boy.” (These attitudes seem archaic–but maybe not. We seem to be going backward in so many areas lately.) So, I early on opposed laws which singled out “homosexuals” for discrimination–the more so after an elderly Jewish couple whose lawn I mowed (Holocaust death camp survivors with numbers tattooed on their arms) told me about the “men of the pink triangle,” the gay men and suspected gay men whom Hitler rouned up and sent to death camps right along with the Jews.

But I didn’t have any openly gay friends in high school. In the 1970s, in Florida, few teens “came out.”  I knew a few of those who did, but we were only aquaintances and, as they embodied many stereotypes, they made me uncomfortable. I squirmed around them even though I stopped those who tried bullying.  My attitudes were mixed. In my late teens I became a born again evangelical Christian and so adopted the common evangelical view that “homosexual practice” is sinful. (It was a long time before I believed differently.) But I rejected as clearly unbiblical the view that such actions were worse than other sins and needed to be singled out for special condemnation. As a young, liberal, social justice activist (even then), it bothered me that more Christians were angry about the supposed growth of the “gay agenda” than were angry about poverty, war, capital punishment, racism, damage to the environment.  Also, I had to sympathize at least a little bit with gays who were bullied. As a born again Christian, I was trying to be celibate until marriage–and in many circles this led people to suspect I was gay. I was also involved in theatre and chess, and was socially awkward around girls (even with 3–and later 4–sisters!). So, I know what it’s like to be called “faggot,” and “queer,” and even though I am heterosexual, I didn’t want others called such names, either. And I was sometimes the victim of violent bullying–and I knew that gays had it worse.  So, my teen years were marked by very, very mixed feelings. I thought “homosexuals” were sinning, but I thought those harming them were guilty of greater sins.

When I briefly joined the U.S. Army at 17 (leaving as a conscientious objector), I discovered a small piece of what closeted gays have to endure in the military–and this was before even the “compromise” of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” much less the recent ability for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces.  Even straight men in the military would act “hyper-masculine,” because anyone suspected of being gay would be beaten by gangs of their peers. Some even died and the military did little to investigate their deaths.

By the early 1980s, when finishing college and heading to seminary, I mostly wanted this “issue” to leave me alone. I wanted to help revive the older 19th C. evangelical tradition in which evangelism and mission went hand-in-hand with campaigns for social justice.  I was and am an opponent of the Religious Right.  But I knew that “evangelical” did not used to mean “political conservative.” In the 19th C., evangelicals–born again, on-fire, holy-rolling, revive-us-again, Jesus-loving, hard-preaching, GOSPEL living Protestant Christians–were often the leaders in such social struggles as: the abolition of slavery, women’s education and women’s right to vote, the end of child labor, prison reform, workers’ rights, including the rights of organized labor to organize and engage in collective bargaining, the rights of immigrants, racial justice, peacemaking and the abolition of war.  Today, I would say that the struggle for LGBT equality fits seamlessly in that tradition, but as I headed off to seminary I couldn’t see how it fit.  I read a few revisionist biblical interpretations but didn’t find them exegetically or hermeneutically credible and I was (and remain) committed to biblical authority in the church.  I don’t mean “inerrancy,” which is a heresy from the late 19th and early 20th C., but the authority of the Word of God speaking in and through the human words of Holy Scripture in power and authority. I hold to that to this very day.  I agreed that Christians should defend the civil rights of gays and lesbians versus those who wanted to deny employment and housing, etc., but I thought that those who wanted to ordain out and non-celibate gays and lesbians were simply jumping on a bandwagon. I wanted Christian social activism to flow seamlessly from the gospel and not be driven by whatever fad of political correctness came along–and that’s what I thought the “gay Christian” movement was.  But I did not rest easy in this view. My conscience was guilty.  I suspected that I was guilty of special pleading.

The AIDS epidemic complicated matters, to say the least.  On the one hand, the attitude of the Religious Right that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosecual sins absolutely horrified me. How could anyone worship a God they believed was capable of such things??? And the illogic floored me, too. I knew that lesbians were the group least at risk of catching the HIV virus.  Yet no conservative argued that this was a sign of God’s special approval of lesbianism.  Yes, risky lifestyles, gay or straight, increased the risk of infection–which in the ’80s meant death, horrifying and 100%. There is a degree of self-punishment in passing one’s body around like pieces of baloney, regardless of whether one catches any diseases or not.  Sexual addiction is self-degradating and sex outside of covenant love almost inevitably involves exploitation and abuse (things which are not easily avoided even with covenantal structures in place). And I could see that, socially, AIDS had much in common with leprosy in Scripture and that Jesus would expect the church to minister to AIDS victims in exactly the same way as He healed lepers.  But AIDS linked sex and death very closely and this made it difficult for most people to think clearly–it made them, including me, to some extent, victims of fear.

I compartmentalized those feelings and concentrated on other areas–although I began meet gay and lesbian Christians who lived lives of discipleship and holiness that put mine to shame–and this was a chink in my armor.  To my shame, I refused to seriously investigate the issues (biblical, psychological, theological, etc.) until after I was married.  I remember–and am deeply embarrassed by this memory–that when I first went to the seminary library to check out every book I could on the many related LGBT subjects that I kept flashing my wedding ring in the air–subconsciously afraid that someone would think I might be gay. Why the fear? Why was I so insecure in my sexuality? It is not easy to confront such images in my past.

By the 1990s, I had “evolved,” sort of.  I had joined a gay-affirming congregation.  I had come to embrace one sexual ethic for everyone.  I had come to endorse the ordination of out gays and lesbians, to advocate for full equality of LGBT persons in church and society. (It did take me longer to understand what “transgendered” meant and that Transgendered persons are not “homosexual” at all.) But I wasn’t very loud about it.  I wanted to be hired to teach theology and ethics in evangelical contexts and I knew that being an out-front advocate of LGBT equality would make this difficult–and I knew that my degrees from evangelical institutions would make it unlikely that I would be hired by mainline Protestants who were more gay-friendly.  I thought that if I simply had academic freedom to “teach all sides of the issues,” I could keep my integrity.  I was very afraid that if my views on LGBT equality were known, I would lose influence on issues that were vitally important to me: peace and nonviolence, racial and gender justice, economic justice for the poor, etc. Others could take up the cause of justice for LGBT persons–none of us can do it all.  I tread this path  for most of the 1990s. But as more LGBT persons “came out” to me, I knew my silence was harming them–especially as American society seemed to become more homophobic and heterosexist than ever.  By 2000, I decided that by virtue of being a married heterosexual white male with a Ph.D. in theological ethics, I had, ipso facto some social power–even if not very much because I was always at the bottom of the academic heirarchy.  It finally dawned on me that I needed to take some risks on behalf of LGBT persons with less power, whose very lives could be at risk if they spoke out.  Coming out as an ally might cost me some jobs (it has), but it likely would not lead to humiliation, eviction from home, family, or congregation, and not to legal charges or loss of life.  All of that could be true for LGBT persons, whom I now knew included friends and at least one family member (one of my wife’s brothers).

The elections of 2004 pushed me, too. The Republican Party put bans against same-sex marriage as amendments into 11 state constitutions–and it was done simply to turn out more rightwing voters in order to “re”-elect George W. Bush president.  What horrified me the most about this was that I knew that George W. Bush didn’t really care about this issue.  Laura Bush is in favor of same-sex marriage. Dick Cheney’s daughter is an out lesbian.  Thousands of lives of LGBT persons were harmed and they weren’t really the target–just an excuse to advance OTHER (equally bad, in my view) political agendas.  That brought the men of the pink triangle back to my mind.  And I couldn’t pretend that LGBT equality was a “lesser cause,” however worthy, than economic justice, racial or gender justice, or peace and nonviolence–all causes that were originally closer to my heart.

So, stumblingly, and fearfully, I became a straight ally.  Since that time, the “issue” (and no person likes to be thought of as “an issue”) has become more personal for me.  We Baptists don’t really have godparents, but my daughters’ unofficial godmother is lesbian.  I have participated in the ordination of several out gay friends, now.  And my daughters were flower girls at a lesbian wedding–in a state where this has no legal standing at all. Two brothers-in-law are out gays and one is a Presbyterian minister.  And, about a year ago, as I said at the beginning, one of my nephews came out in his first year at university–and his mother, my sister, is a much more conservative evangelical Protestant than I am–a devotee of the Religious Right I have spent my adult life opposing. She’s been as supportive of her son as she knows how, but I have felt compelled to give more open support. My nephew’s “coming out,” (and becoming an activist) has subtly (without his asking at all) pushed me to do more–just as the thanks he gave me, which I don’t really deserve, pushes me to go further and risk more.

Even with setbacks like NC’s Amendment 1 (and NH, MD, MN, and Washington State may see similar rollbacks on election day in November), I’ve been thoroughly amazed at the rapid pace of progress since 2004.  And my daughters’ generation cannot see what the fuss is about.  I don’t mean to downplay the bullying in school, not at all, but their generation has known many more out gays and lesbians personally, adults and people of their own age, as well as far more celebrities than in my generation. (My mother’s generation didn’t realize Liberace was gay and my generation didn’t know Elton John was gay! We seriously had no gaydar at all.) I cannot explain to my daughters why Ellen deGeneris lost her 1990s sit-com by coming out of the closet.  They grew up on Will and Grace and their favorite news anchor is openly lesbian Rachel Maddow.  Polling shows that from Gen X onward even evangelicals are far more accepting of gays and lesbians than their elders. (Younger evangelicals are even MORE anti-abortion-for-any-reason than were those of my generation, so this change is NOT a result of simply going along with the wider culture.) And, although young people are leading the way, polling shows that ALL age groups, including the 65 and older (which is the most anti-gay) and all demographics, are becoming more accepting of LGBT equality–though at different rates.  Frankly, I have more hope for social progress here than on other pressing concerns which seem to be moving the other direction. But it is no time for resting.  As progress is made, those who are most homophobic and heterosexist, most fearful of change, are getting desperate.  They are enacting laws they themselves predict will be overturned within 20 years–just to set back the changes as long as possible.

So this Christian straight ally, along with everyone else who cares about justice, has more work to do.

The Case for Women’s Colleges

There’s a myth that women’s colleges are no longer necessary; that they are a relic of the past and have no place in today’s higher education.  One can easily see how the myth would spread.  Women’s colleges began in the U.S. (and, to a lesser extent, around the world) in the 19th C., at a time when the very idea of women’s education was controversial.  In most cultures throughout most of human history, women were denied education. By the end of the 19th C., less than 1% of women in the U.S. had any education beyond what we would today call “high school” (secondary school).  It was widely believed (even by medical doctors) that too much education would make women sterile or in other ways less female, less able to fulfill the roles of wife and mother that were nearly universally believed to be the primary roles that God and nature had assigned.

It was the cause of missions, in the United States and internationally, that allowed the opening for women’s education.  Most of the women’s colleges founded early in the 19th C. began as what were called “Female Seminaries.” Now, today, a seminary (at least in the United States) is a theological college or divinity school, sometimes freestanding and sometimes attached to a university. In the U.S. context, a modern seminary is a professional school (like a law school or medical school) that presupposes the prior completion of a baccalaureate degree at an accredited institution. It’s purpose is to educate priests, ministers, chaplains (civilian and military), and related ministers such as youth ministers, pastoral counselors, etc.  The “Female Seminaries” of the 19th C. did not presuppose a baccalaureate and they certainly did not expect the young women who matriculated there to become clergy.  They were to train women to share the gospel in strange cultural settings (often in ones where male missionaries would not be allowed to talk to women) and this involved educating them more than women had ever been educated previously.  Even the push for the first women physicians (or, at least, the first in centuries) was initially so they could become medical missionaries.

These “Female Seminaries” evolved into liberal arts colleges and some began to offer graduate degrees, too. As 19th C. “First Wave Feminism” gathered steam, some institutions of higher education (e.g. Oberlin College, Cornell University) were co-educational from their founding and others that were once all-male began to admit women, especially the state-supported land-grant universities, but most elite universities stayed all-male (at least at the undergraduate level) until the 1960s.  In the 1960s and 1970s, elite, formerly-all-male, institutions began the transformation into co-ed institutions. This led many women’s colleges to merge with their male, elite partners:  Radcliffe College (founded in 1879) merged with Harvard in 1977; Pembroke College (1891) merged with Brown University in 1971). When Princeton University decided to go co-ed in the late 1960s, it sought to merge with Sarah Lawrence College (1926), but talks broke down and Sarah Lawrence College remained independent, but went co-ed in 1968 with Princeton following in 1969. The same pattern played out between Yale and Vassar College (1861): Yale started negotiations in 1966, they broke down and both campuses independently went co-ed in 1969. (Across the pond, the same pattern also played out at Oxford and Cambridge: At first all the colleges of both universities were all-male and stayed that way for centuries. In the 19th C., women’s colleges were established first as “private halls” and then as full colleges of the universities. Then, in the mid-20th C., male-colleges began admitting women and, later, women’s colleges began admitting men. Today, there are no single-sex colleges remaining at Oxford and only 3 women’s colleges remaining at Cambridge (Murray Edwards College, Newnham College, and Lucy Cavendish College).

The co-educational movement put huge economic pressure on most women’s colleges. They were now competing with co-educational institutions for students.  Many closed and many others went co-ed.  In 1960, there were over 200 women’s colleges in the U.S.  There are now only about 60 as the same economic pressures continue:  In 2005, Hurricane Katrina ended the independent existence of Newcomb College and its remaining assetts were merged with nearby Tulane University.   Even many women’s colleges that have remained single-sex at the undergraduate level have had to admit men to graduate programs or weekend programs.

It is clear that economics could end women’s colleges in the near future, at least in the United States.  Which leads back to the question of whether or not women’s colleges have any distinctive mission in the 21st C.–any reason they should continue as single-sex institutions? After all, the context is very different now from the 19th C. which birthed the women’s college movement:  With only 3 remaining all-male liberal arts colleges in the U.S. (Wabash College in Indiana, Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, and Morehouse College–which also an HBCU or Historic Black College/University–in Georgia), and no remaining all-male research universities, practically all the doors are now open to women educationally that were once closed to them.  Further, women have walked through those doors.  In 1960 the majority of U.S. women were still not educated beyond high school.  Of those which did matriculate in college or university, about 50% dropped out when getting married (obtaining their “M R S degree” as the saying went). (They were also expected to drop out of the work force and give up their own careers–a pattern which continued until the early 1970s, when stagnating wages and rising prices made a middle class lifestyle on 1 salary increasingly rare and difficult.)  When many women, inspired by the second wave feminist movement to reclaim dreams not subordinated to their husbands’, went back to college/university in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it resulted in much marital discord and many divorces.  But today 55% of all college/university students are women–and the percentage is even higher in most graduate programs, business schools, seminaries/divinity schools, and even in many law schools and some medical schools.  Although the Equal Rights Amendment failed to be ratified, Title IX gave, if not yet equality, certainly much progress toward equality in women’s collegiate sports–offering parity in gymnasium locker rooms, equipment, scholarships and recruitment, etc.

So, is there a good rationale for the continued existence (and good health) of women’s colleges in the 21st C. U.S.?  Are there reasons that one would wish a daughter, a granddaughter, a niece or some other young woman in one’s life to at least consider a women’s college when deciding where to apply for admission?  Yes. Despite the enormous gains of women in the last 35 years, this is still a patriarchal, sexist society–and sexist assumptions and attitudes are still firmly interwoven into American higher education, although usually in more subtle forms than previously.  As recently as January of 2005, the economist Larry Summers, then the President of Harvard University, spoke at an academic conference and gave the opinion that the reason women are underrepresented in the STEM fields (Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) was because of biological differences that mean that, according to Summers, most women are simply not good at math and science!

Most teachers and administrators are not so openly sexist (and, to be fair, some have said that this speech did not reflect Summers’ true record on promoting women’s equality), but in co-ed institutions, the expectations often remain sexist.  Women who graduate from women’s colleges are better prepared for life after college:  Women who graduate from women’s colleges are accepted into law schools, medical schools, and graduate programs at a higher rate than women in co-ed colleges. They go into the STEM fields and other male-dominated fields at higher rates than women who graduate from co-ed institutions.  In general, women at single-sex colleges are more engaged (academically and socially) than women at co-ed institutions.  Seniors at women’s colleges are more likely to be engaged in higher-order thinking activities than women seniors at co-ed institutions.  They see more female role models in both professors and fellow students. This makes a radical difference.   The results are seen in the alumnae produced by women’s colleges: Today, Harvard’s president is a woman, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, an alumna of a women’s college (Bryn Mawr College, class of 1964).  The U.S. has had 3 female Secretaries of State and two of them (Madeleine Albright and Hillary Rodham Clinton) went to a women’s college (in fact, the same one, Wellesley College–Albright, class of ’59, Clinton, class of ’69). Other leading women in politics are also women’s college graduates including House Minority Leader (and former Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi (Trinity College–now Trinity Washington University, class of ’62); Secretary of Health and Human Services (and former Governor of Kansas) Kathleen Sebelius (Trinity Washington University, class of ’70). 12 of the 77 women in the U.S. House of Representatives are alumnae of women’s colleges, as are 2 of the 17 women in the U.S. Senate.  Of the very few women to become U.S. astronauts, only 3 have been shuttle pilots and one of them, Pamela Melroy, is a Wellesley College alumna (’83).

The alumnae networks are often major resources for jobs, internships, interviews to graduate programs, etc., providing an alternative boost to the “old-boys’ networks” that still thrive in academica and the professions.  This adds to the success rate of women’s college alumnae after college.

And, now, women’s colleges are also continuing their original mission of providing education to women who would otherwise have no opportunities for education:  Recruiting international students, especially from areas of the world where the very idea of women’s education is still controversial. Also, some women’s colleges in the U.S. are sponsoring or partnering with women’s colleges in some of these same patriarchal places, especially Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Now, I am not saying that every woman should go to a woman’s college. Obviously, most will go to co-ed colleges and universities.  But bright, high-achieving, and ambitious young women should at least be exposed to such colleges. They should be part of the mix in the college search and application process. Because, until sex and gender equality is achieved globally, our world and our daughters need such institutions to thrive and continue to lead.

On a purely personal note, my oldest daughter is in the college search process and while she has definitely looked beyond women’s colleges, I am glad they have been part of the search process. Three women’s colleges will probably be among those to which she applies early in the Fall of 2012:  Bryn Mawr College (Lower Merion Township, PA), Agnes Scott College (Decatur, GA), and Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA).

If a young woman of high school age in your life might profit from exploring the women’s college option, introduce her to the website of The Women’s College Coalition.