Faith and reason at Hillsdale College

When I sent my son off to Hillsdale College in 2015, I had no idea he was going to come home an expert on Calvinism.

I felt certain that his strong Catholic faith would be safe at the conservative Michigan college, but it was a far cry from the very tiny, very Catholic school I had attended, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

It soon became apparent to me that he had found a supportive Catholic community, centered around Hilldale’s Catholic Society, “The Grotto,” where students meet for Rosary, weekday Mass, Adoration, and convivium, and St. Anthony’s Parish in downtown Hillsdale, where Father David Reamsnyder tends to his flock of students, faculty, and local families.

On my first visit to the college, I attended a packed All Saints Day Mass at St. Anthony’s. Students, faculty families and locals filled the little church to overflowing that chilly evening. The liturgy was beautifully orthodox, Latin singing complimented by a chorus of babies—always a sign of a vibrant parish.

As my son moved through his college years, St. Anthony’s was a constant in his life. However, I was struck by how much he was learning about other faiths as well. On breaks, we talked at length about the differences between Calvinists and Lutherans, Evangelical Lutherans and Missouri Synod Lutherans, between the Church of England and the Anglican Church in North America. One of his friends was the son of missionaries and had spent his childhood in New Guinea, another’s father was a Lutheran bishop, another was an observant Jew.

Much of what he learned came through long conversations, often late into the night in the old house he shared with several other students.

Clearly, faith was—and is—a subject of intense interest for many Hillsdale students.

Although the college is officially non-denominational, Hillsdale consistently ranks high in the Princeton Review’s “most religious students” ranking—this year, it’s #2 on the list.

The school is unusual in its variety of faiths, which the college’s chaplain, Anglican rector Adam Rick, called an “interesting sort of demographic spread across multiple traditions” in a 2018 article Hillsdale Collegian article.

The article compared the college to other schools that are institutionally either Protestant or Catholic, but not both. Hillsdale is unique in “the high level of devotion among both Protestants and Catholics on campus,” Rev. Rick said.

Hillsdale Professor Darryl Hart told the Collegian that a spectrum including Protestants, Roman Catholics and Orthodox believers, as well as Muslims and Jews, “gives you the opportunity to explain yourself more than at other places … Here, no one can necessarily assume what you are. And then if they find out that you are something, then that invites discussion, argument, debate.”

An outsize influence

Seriousness of purpose seems to be a common thread among the various denominations on campus.

That’s not surprising given another common thread—a conservatism that makes the school a frequent target of liberal media for its outsize influence. Last spring, the New Yorker dubbed Hillsdale “The Christian Liberal-Arts School at the Heart of the Culture Wars.”

In March 2022, left-wing news portal Daily Kos was less charitable. In an outraged article with the title “A tiny, largely unknown Christian college is at the epicenter of today’s dark conservative movement,” it complained, “The frightening thing is that Hillsdale, like a virus unchecked, is rampant.”

The little college that inspires this frothing at the mouth sits serenely on the east end of tiny Hillsdale, Michigan, a town of faded Victorians two hours from Detroit.

Founded in 1844 by Free Will Baptists, Hillsdale College has always marched to a different drummer. It admitted women and blacks from its founding. During the Civil War, the proudly abolitionist school sent over 500 men to fight for the union, at a time when, in many northern colleges, student life was going on as usual.

In the 1970s, as quotas and diversity were overtaking higher education, Hillsdale saw no need to change, and instead became a bastion of conservative thought. Today, under longtime President Larry Arnn, it remains a potent cultural force, particularly in politics and education. Many people know it only through its newsletter, Imprimis, which reaches over 6 million households with words from leading lights of the conservative movement: past authors have included Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Dinesh D’Souza, Rush Limbaugh, Victor Davis Hanson, and Clarence Thomas. Hillsdale rests secure in its sterling reputation and boasts a challenging acceptance rate of 21 percent.

All of Hillsdale’s roughly 1500 students take a core curriculum of liberal arts courses—which the college calls “a life-changing invitation to understand the good, the true, and the beautiful”—in addition to the many majors offered by the school. The core curriculum features required great books courses and places a strong emphasis on the study of primary texts.

A keen awareness of what unites those who find their way to Hillsdale may be one reason that the various denominations on campus get along so well. There’s an unusual amount of mutual respect—an attitude that may be novel to incoming freshmen, students say, but is taught and fostered during their years at Hillsdale.

At the time of the 2018 Collegian article, senior Sammy Roberts (who got an affectionate call-out from Arnn at commencement for his efforts to convert him) noted that Hillsdale’s Catholic Society made a “concerted effort” to foster relationships between denominations. He cited a lecture series the previous year entitled “This Far By Faith: the Reformation at 500,” which had been co-sponsored by the Catholic Society and Hillsdale’s Intervarsity Christian fellowship.

“There were Catholic speakers, Lutheran speakers, evangelical speakers,” Roberts said. “And Father Rick’s point was, this wasn’t a celebration of the Reformation, but it was a discussion which everyone should have, whether they like it or not.”

A friendly rivalry exists, as evidenced by this year’s first ever Protestant-Catholic soccer game, co-hosted by the Catholic Society and Campus Rec. on November 4. (Protestants won, 3-0.) The newly established “El Classico” tradition aims to “generate more campus community,” sophomore Sophie Schlegel told the Collegian, adding, “Everyone knows the Catholic and Protestant debates at Hillsdale, so we kind of drew on that to make a campus-wide event.”

In some ways, Hillsdale is a college of contradictions—some of them quirky. Its reputation is synonymous with history and political thought; yet every issue of its alumni magazine gives prominent place to its athletic teams. On the leafy campus, visitors can explore dignified old buildings or take a side trip to view the campus’s more eccentric offerings such as the giant, photo-realistic painting of a donor’s family in the former student union building. Commencement speakers in recent years have included not only Jordan Peterson, Mike Pence, and Bishop Robert Barron, but also Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak and comedian Tim Allen.

In this unique environment, conversions are happening. And a significant number of those conversions are to Catholicism. As my son forged lifelong, close friendships during his undergrad years, he walked with friends as they traveled from Protestantism to Anglicanism or Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism.

Between 2016 and 2019, St. Anthony’s welcomed 76 people into the Catholic Church, many of them Hillsdale students. In 2019 alone, 12 out of 24 converts were Hillsdale students.

Remarkably, 2020—a year when Covid was closing schools and churches across the country—saw 18 students enter the Church.

Last spring, the diocese of Lansing released a video that captured the holy joy of the Easter vigil at St. Anthony’s as 23 souls were brought into the Church. Once again, many of them were Hillsdale students.

The number is astonishing, considering that at other campuses across the company, conversions are waning, and even more notable given that Hillsdale is not a Catholic college.

Objective truth exists and can be known

I asked Hillsdale English professor David Whalen if there is something about the college that makes it rich soil for Catholicism, in particular. Whalen, a Catholic, is associate vice president for curriculum. He served as provost for many years, and acts as faculty advisor to the college’s Catholic Society.

Like most everyone I spoke with for this article, Whalen was quick to point out that Catholicism is not the only beneficiary of deepening faith at Hillsdale. “In general,” he said, “young men and women (especially in collegiate environments) scrutinize their deepest beliefs, and so conversions of all kinds are common.”

However, Whalen continued, “As regards Hillsdale, I think the traditional curriculum here, with its emphasis on great books and primary material, brings to light elements of the Catholic intellectual tradition that prompts some students to stop and think about the ultimate questions of faith.”

I asked Whalen if he saw a similarity between the blossoming of faith at Hillsdale, and what happened at his own alma mater, the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. That great books program, which immersed students at a secular university in the good, the true and the beautiful, resulted in an astounding number of conversions to the Catholic faith.

“I do think there are parallels,” Whalen said. “Specifically, the focus on great, primary texts in the western intellectual and cultural tradition raises questions and issues that touch directly on matters of faith. Even though there is (and was) no proselytizing, and for that matter most of the great texts are not specifically Catholic, it seems inevitable to me that a genuine dive into the western tradition is going to stimulate serious thought about ultimate things. As a result, some students are likely to find the Catholic faith the deepest answer to these questions.”

A deep dive into the primary texts of Western civilization is not always synonymous with deeper faith, however. Some great books programs are notable for having the opposite effect, spawning atheists and agnostics. Here, Hillsdale shines because of its firm conviction that objective truth exists, and can be known.

“Studying the great books purely dialectically,” Whalen noted, “in a context that leans toward a kind of agnosticism regarding truth (‘maybe there is, maybe there isn’t’) can result in ‘soft skepticism.’”

On the other hand, “Studying the great books in the understanding that truth can be known, albeit imperfectly, and with the guidance of brilliant people who know how not to dictate but to get students to see for themselves—this will result in many who take the pursuit of truth seriously and enrich their lives and faith thereby.”

Permanent things

Writing on the diocese of Lansing’s website in June, Hillsdale alumnus and convert Kelly Cole reflected on what brought her to the Catholic faith:

“When I started studying the liberal arts at Hillsdale—and especially our Judeo-Christian heritage—I realized that there was great spiritual meaning behind much of what I already believed. Thanks to so many of my professors just doing their job teaching me the history, philosophy, and literature of Western Civilization, I came to have faith in the triune Christian God (without actually taking a single theology or religion class!).

“After continued study and prayer, I came to believe in the Catholic Church as the one true Church founded by Christ. My progression was similar to what one of this year’s college converts, Carly Moran, described in a video filmed by the diocese this spring: ‘As a student at Hillsdale College, [there is a] firm belief in following the permanent things. It was the permanent things in Church history that made me realize that I had to be Catholic.’”

‘The dominos falling’

Henry Hoffman came to Hillsdale as a devout Calvinist. “I would read and study and argue a lot, and pray privately,” he told me, but he didn’t attend church, and his faith remained on an intellectual level.

“As I learned more about the Western heritage and the value of tradition and community,” he said, “I began attending the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination services and received baptism my sophomore year (2010). I practiced my Presbyterian faith very devoutly, with Bible studies, Sunday services morning and evening, and evening prayer groups.”

Hoffman’s faith journey took a different turn during his junior year. That year, along with a group of Presbyterian friends, he did an independent study in which he read the entire Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin’s work of systematic theology.

To describe the work as anti-Catholic is an understatement: Calvin calls the Mass a “sacrilege,”and “a device of Satan.” Nonetheless, he frequently quotes St. Augustine and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The course emphasized Calvin’s alignment with tradition, especially St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, which in turn led Hoffman to study more explicitly Catholic materials on the Eucharist, grace and justification, and sanctification.

As he pondered these questions, he found himself “very attracted to Catholic art, piety, and practice.” However, the doctrines that went along with them were a stumbling block. “I wanted to be Catholic, for the sake of the Church’s beauty and piety, but couldn’t get my head to agree,” he said.

“Over time,” Hoffman continued, “I realized more and more how human and natural the Catholic religion is. How much we need authority, tradition, and structure, as well as worship which incorporates the senses and imagination. I came to understand more clearly the teachings on Purgatory and the intercession and Communion of the Saints, from reading the Summa of St. Thomas.”

Nonetheless, he “obstinately refused to become Catholic.” Despite the persuasive efforts of his Catholic friends, some doctrines were holding him back, particularly that of the Immaculate Conception. “The other Marian dogmas made sense to me, except for that one, especially as it had not always been held by the Church. So back and forth my friends and I argued without results.”

Hoffman’s conversion finally happened in an unexpected and startling way. As he tells it, “One Saturday morning, some of my Catholic friends came over to my house with holy water, and told me that if I drank it, I would become Catholic. I thought to myself, ‘Well, if the Church is true, then the water is truly holy, and then it’ll make me Catholic, and that’ll be good if the Church is true … and if the Church isn’t true, then it’s just normal water, so there’s no harm there, so what the hell, I’ll drink it.’”

He drank the water, and thought no more of it. A couple of hours later, he felt compelled to go to the library and read the Council of Trent. The Council documents were very familiar to him already—he had read them several times—but this time, he said, “I discovered that I believed everything that it said.”

“And then I read the Catechism, with the same result. I then, feeling the dominos falling, read a sermon by Saint John Henry Newman on the Immaculate Conception, and I was sold. That was that; I realized that I had become a Catholic.”

The following day, for the first time, he attended Mass. “It was incredible to believe in Transubstantiation happening right before my eyes,” he recalled. He was received into the Church on Easter 2013, along with 13 other students.

Hoffman’s story was just beginning, however. Shortly after his conversion, he felt a call to the religious life or priesthood. His attraction to a life of study and prayer was “somewhat of a stretch for me,” he said candidly, “since I was given to heavy drinking and raucous behavior … But I tend to go all in on whatever I do, so I gave up those things and devoted myself to answering this inner calling,” which he called “a longing, almost like a hole in my heart, that only God could fill.”

Today, Father Henry Hoffman is a priest for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.

“Ideas matter. It’s in the air you breathe there.”

Ryan Elefson came to Hillsdale in 2009 as an Evangelical Protestant. “I was excited to find myself in the company of others who had a zeal for service, for worship, and for sound doctrine,” he said, noting the presence of “earnest, God-fearing students” and “the great variety of theological traditions” at Hillsdale.

Although he soon became aware of doctrinal disagreements among his friends, “this was not a crisis,” he said. “In the cafeteria and in the dorms, I constantly discovered new doctrinal views, and the variety dispelled my own preconceptions. I realized that important disagreements had not yet been resolved among Christians. I realized that church membership had a deep impact on belief and action. I realized that I could not afford to be presumptuous or flippant about our differences. Doctrine, the content of faith, grew in significance for me where I had once only been concerned for the ardor with which faith was felt.”

After two years at Hillsdale, it was a deep desire for unity among Christians—and the conviction that there must be one true Church for that unity to occur—that began moving Elefson towards the Catholic faith. As he began questioning whether the Catholic Church was that one true Church, he was helped by several Catholic professors who answered his questions. “Every time, I walked away finding Catholic doctrines progressively less foreign and more sane,” he said.

“Bishop Fulton Sheen identified what I came to see: ‘There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.’ I am deeply grateful to those professors who made me feel welcome through the selfless gift of their time.”

Finally, “my doubts were dismissed,” he said, “and the claim of the Catholic Church rang true: this is the one true Church established by Jesus Christ upon the Apostles and persevering intact to the present day.” St. Anthony’s parish—a place of “joy and conviction”—became his first home in the Catholic faith. He entered the Church in 2012.

Elefson recalled his first Confession: “I unburdened my heart before my Savior, and when I had finished, a friend followed after me. Together, we wept in the dim, empty pews of the church, and we prayed our penance before stepping out into the sunshine, a new life of grace.”

Hillsdale, while not a Catholic school, played a dual role in his conversion, in that it “respects the practice of religion, and it upholds the principles which guarantee our freedoms.”

“Hillsdale challenged me. I was encouraged to think, and I couldn’t take for granted the preconceptions I brought with me,” he said.

“Ideas are taken seriously” at his alma mater, Elefson said, “because ideas matter. It’s in the air you breathe there.”

The journey toward Christ

Although he was drawn to the Catholic Church out of a desire for unity, Elefson hesitated to call what is going on at Hillsdale ecumenism. He said the term suggests that the many conversations about faith on campus “were orchestrated for a definite purpose, whereas the reality, as I experienced it, was quite spontaneous. Faith was simply our interest and a part of our daily lives.”

He also emphasized the journey toward Christ over the term “conversion.” “Some students who underwent a change might call it a ‘conversion,’” he said, “but not all who changed views became Catholic. Regardless of how we finally stood, I think that it is typical for a Hillsdale student to deepen his faith while at college, to understand his own tradition better, and to learn more than he expected about the faith of others.”

He expressed gratitude for his Evangelical roots: “The Catholic faith was attractive because I had received a love for Christ through years of fellowship with my Evangelical pastors and friends, and it was that same love for Christ which led me to desire more.”

A faith that permeates academic and student life

Brad Birzer has been teaching history at Hillsdale since 1999. The author and Imaginative Conservative founder made it clear that faculty are not “using the classroom to promote conversions.” More important is the lived example that is abundant.

He added, “Since Hillsdale is so deeply entrenched in the Western tradition—that is, the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian tradition—there’s a fair amount of sympathy for the church of St. Augustine up through Thomas Aquinas and Thomas More.”

Other denominations, such as Missouri Synod Lutherans or Orthodox Presbyterians, “have their own stories of success,” Birzer said. “That is, Christianity is very much alive at the college. It permeates academic and student life to a surprising degree.”

“This tiny little church in the middle of nowhere”

An important part of the equation is found off campus at St. Anthony’s, downtown. Father Reamsnyder is himself a convert, having journeyed from Calvinism to Anglicanism to Catholicism. His journey from Anglican pastor to married Catholic priest gives him a unique ability to reach those who may be traveling a similar path of discernment.

“Anyone I have talked to who comes and goes from Hillsdale says that St. Anthony’s is so different and so special,” Claire Calvert, class of 2020, told The Collegian that year. Calvert grew up in Hillsdale and credits the parish with her conversion. Her family, including history professor Kenneth Calvert, converted as well.

“It is hard to pinpoint what it is,” Calvert said. “It’s Father David, it’s the local families, it’s a conglomeration of all these people who really have a passion for their faith and a love for this tiny little church in the middle of nowhere. It somehow draws you in and you feel this presence of God and a welcoming spirit.”

Transcendent truths
Back on campus, in September 2020, the college’s first ever Latin Mass was celebrated by Hillsdale graduate Fr. Nathanael Anderson. The Mass was celebrated, fittingly, in Hillsdale’s new chapel, a stately building designed by noted ecclesial architect Duncan Stroik.

The dedication of Christ Chapel—with its hefty pricetag of around $30 million—in the college’s 175^th year, was “a genuinely transgressive act” in today’s academic environment, wrote The New Criterion’s Roger Kimball in November 2019. Kimball approvingly noted “the cheek—the audacity—of a liberal arts college circa 2019 choosing to build and give such prominence to an explicitly Christian chapel.”

From Hillsdale’s perspective, the act made perfect sense. At a time when many colleges were busy deconstructing evidence of their Judeo-Christian roots, the chapel would stand as a tangible reminder that the college’s foundational four pillars—learning, character, faith, and freedom—remained unchanged.

“Faith and reason are mutually reinforcing,” Justice Clarence Thomas said at the chapel’s October 2019 dedication. Christ Chapel, he said, “reflects the college’s conviction that a vibrant intellectual environment and a strong democratic society are fostered, not hindered, by a recognition of the divine.”

Certainly it is that recognition of the divine, perhaps also an acknowledgement that what unites those who find their way to this corner of Michigan is greater than that which divides. There’s definitely another indefinable element—“Drink the holy water!”—that seems unique to this place. Whatever it is, there is something beautiful and mysterious going on at Hillsdale, and it goes beyond tolerance, or a Catholic presence on campus.

Faith and reason fuel an ongoing conversation here, as like minded students unite in a search for—in the words of Hillsdale professor Benedict Whelan at convocation, 2020—“that which is higher and finer, those permanent things, those transcendent truths that rightly order our existence and give our lives meaning.”