When Nia Allen applied to Dillard University, she didn’t know the school was founded by a church or that it was a Christian school at all.
“When I applied here it was mainly for the theater program,” Allen said.
Many religion-affiliated historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across the country have taken up marketing themselves as secular schools on their websites. Some barely make mention of their church founding and the fact that they are Christian-based, leaving some students unaware that they are applying to what was originally a Christian university.
For Allen, who was raised Christian, Dillard’s religious background was a happy surprise. She’s been able to join a women’s group on campus called Leading Ladies where she and other students are able to grow in their faith. Despite this, Allen said Dillard has more to do in sharing their Christian identity.
“They don’t make it a priority,” she said. “I don’t think I ever see on the Dillard page, story, Instagram ‘Hey we have church service tonight,’” she said.
Dillard is not the only church-founded HBCU without a distinctly religious online presence. More Americans are moving away from religion, with 8 out of 10 Americans finding religion losing its influence according to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center.
“The churches are accused of being extremely authoritarian but now people are seeing clear hypocrisy in their actions,” said University of Texas government professor Eric McDaniel. “The size of the middle class has grown considerably, people are not as reliant upon churches for services and it’s not as important of a place to meet and be with family.”
Although the amount of Americans leaving religion has been rising, it’s unclear if this is why many of these schools don’t promote their church founding.
Esinam Dedoo, a freshman at Livingstone College, says she wants her HBCU to do more to incorporate religion onto campus.
“My math teacher before a test, he prays and we do have on Wednesdays a program called ‘I Need A Word Wednesdays’ so it’s kinda like a mini church service, but other than that I expected it to be more,” she said.
Church-founded HBCUs are a part of a monumental turn in history. Black ministers would teach out of basements and pool together money to open institutions dedicated to educating Black people. Religious schools are now seeing in real time the shift happening made as people decide where to attend college.
“At Howard Divinity School there are less people coming saying ‘I want to be a pastor’…folks are coming, but it doesn’t translate to ‘I’m going to be in the pulpit,’” said Hazel Cherry, a former director of student affairs at Howard University’s divinity school. She said many of Howard’s divinity students will receive their degrees yet pursue different career paths.
This has made recruitment efforts for religious students top priority for some schools. Livingstone College, which was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion church, established a $5,000 scholarship for freshman students if they went to one of their churches. It’s difficult to know who these AME students are though, according to the school’s president, Anthony Davis.
“Last year we had 46 students who said they were members of the AME Zion church on campus, but then you have 309 students who say we’re not gonna disclose our religious affiliation,” Davis said..
He said the school’s website could do more to highlight its faith background.
“I think we missed an opportunity because we don’t say enough about the relationship between the AME Zion church. It may be in some instances you have leaders who have wanted to distance themselves from that, but I embrace it,” Davis said.
Faith-based universities across the nation are steering more towards secularism. Popular Jesuit schools like Georgetown and Fordham have large numbers of nonreligious students. Despite this, the Christian community on HBCU campuses is still going strong.
“Here I feel like I’ve been able to take steps in religion for myself to really explore God and Christianity and what He can do for me for myself,” said Zuri Primos, a sophomore at Dillard University.