Spurgeon. Pillsbury. Atlantic. Calvary. Northland. Now Tennessee Temple. These are all names of fundamentalist educational institutions that have closed their doors (through dissolution, merger, or “gifting” their campus to another entity) over the past decade or so. The most recent, Tennessee Temple, had been standing on wobbly legs for years. This week its board voted to shut the doors and to merge whatever is left of the school into Piedmont International University. Upon receiving word of the closing, one colleague remarked, “Another one bites the dust.”
Tennessee Temple will probably not be the last fundamentalist institution of higher learning to go bust. Most—maybe all—of the schools within historic fundamentalism are struggling for funding, students, or both. Some have managed to increase revenues by going to Internet-based education. Others have attempted to increase their constituency by...