By Naomi Schaefer riley [St. Martin’s Press, 288pp., 2005]

One of the many paradoxes of America is that it is the same nation to give birth to pay-per-view pornography and the Christian Broadcasting Network, Planned Parenthood and the Promise Keepers. It hosts among the highest rates of divorce, violent crime, and drug abuse in the world, and yet significant minorities that shun drinking, gambling, dating, and even tea. Perhaps only in its natural diversity is its moral diversity exceeded.

Unsurprisingly then, its university system, the microcosm in which a society conceives its own image, is just as variegated. For those readers who studied in secular institutions, Naomi Schaefer Riley’s first and new book, God on the Quad, opens a fascinating window onto the alternate universe of religious colleges and universities. Once a negligible player in the American higher education scene, sectarian schools have since buoyed upwards, aided in part by surging enrollments and a renaissance in the evangelical world. The Ave Maria School of Law for example, a Catholic institution founded with a generous grant from the founder of the Dominoes Pizza Corporation, routinely averages in the top 25 law schools of the nation. Other schools have cultivated top-notch curriculums, imparting the Great Books to their students. Wheaton College, sometimes referred to as the “Harvard of evangelicals”, ranks 11th among all liberal arts colleges for the number of their graduates who go on to earn PhDs.