from popular American religiosity, materialism and individualism. At a spring

1995 "Church and College in Partnership" conference on Goshen's campus,

listening committee members reported that participants suggested that "our

churches and our colleges have imbibed from multiple streams, some of which

ran alongside the Anabaptist stream and fed it with fresh water and some of

which have perhaps tainted the water."⁹

Institutionally, however, the college remains deeply embedded in the

Mennonite Church, unlike many once-religiously-affiliated schools which

have severed their denominational ties, or been set adrift by their founding

churches.¹⁰Goshen College is "owned and operated" by the Mennonite

Church. The college's mission statement describes Goshen as a four-year

liberal arts college "dedicated to the development of informed, articulate,

sensitive, responsible Christians."The statement continues:

As a ministry of the Mennonite Church, we seek to integrate Christian values with educational and professional life. As a community of faith and learning, we strive to foster personal, intellectual, spiritual and social growth. We view education as a moral activity that produces servant leaders for the church and the world.

While various advisory boards include other-than-Mennonite representatives,

all members of the college's Board of Overseers must be members of the

Mennonite Church. The school, and its sister institutions Hesston College and

9_{Listening Committee Report, "The Church and College in Partnership:A}
Vision for the Future," 23-26 March 1995. The report also said, "Anyone who
has been a part of a Mennonite congregation or attended a church conference
in the last decade, or even read a denominational periodical, is aware of the
broad diversity in the Mennonite churches. How is it possible to meet the
needs of such a diverse constituency? Are the churches called to please all of
the various parts of the church? Which of the various types of Mennonite
church are the colleges called to strengthen?"

10_{At the first meeting of the Rhodes Consultation on the Future of the Church-}
Related College, each participant described his or her institution's relationship
with its sponsoring denomination. With tale after tale of quite tenuous
linkages and occasional wistfulness about past interconnectedness, I felt
strangely out-of-place, as though I had entered the wrong room.

8