Initially this issue was conceived as one exploring religion in the academy. However, it morphed as we went along. The major focus remains religion in the academy, but American higher education itself is undergoing extraordinary changes. The university as we have known it is, in many ways, a thing of the past. Corporate underwriting of research is bringing in a sea change in the culture of higher education. Traditionally, universities regarded ownership claims to research efforts as inconsistent with their obligation to disseminate knowledge in the broadest possible manner. Today, most research universities have technology licensing offices which commercialize discoveries and manage patent portfolios. At many institutions traditional academic types are being replaced with entrepreneurial people. That commercialization continues downstream from the elite research universities throughout higher education. It is felt on the community college level with technological changes such as online courses.

But first things first. How does religion fare in the academy? The answer seems to be that it is tolerated, as has been the case for at least the last 250 years. Peter Gomes, writing about the religious history of Harvard, points out that when Harvard was founded in 1637 it was assumed that Christ was "the only foundation of all social knowledge and learning." However, by the time of its 200th birthday in 1836, "Veritas [was] no longer necessarily understood as the comprehensive and revealed truth of the Christian religion, but as a truth which stood at the end of scientific discovery and verification."

Since that time the struggle for people of faith in higher education has been to be both reasonable and faithful, discerning and doubting. By 1915 the hegemony of the enlightenment project had become such that the American Association of University Professors, in its declaration of principles, denied to religiously based institutions the name "university" because "they do not, at least as regards one particular subject, accept the principle of freedom and inquiry."

The uneasy compromise is that religion as a point of view is welcome in the academy so long as it offers itself with reserve and diffidence appropriate to liberal decorum. Academic freedom in a real sense means that religion can be a part of the university so long as it renounces its claim to have a privileged claim on the truth, which is, of course, what religion is all about -- knowing the truth. While religion is tolerated, if it ever seriously challenged the ruling paradigm, it would find itself in exile.

While there are many conservative Christians who believe that the world of the academy has shut them out, there is little evidence that Christianity has been driven underground. Early this year a study sponsored by the Lilly Endowment was made public. The study concludes that religion is thriving on college campuses. It may not look like the campus ministry of yesteryear -- most students are likely to consider themselves as spiritual rather than religious and denominational allegiance is pretty rare. However, religious classes are extremely popular and students often use the intellectual study of religion to sort out their own beliefs. The study found widespread tolerance on university campuses. And, as this month's profile of Michael Levinson points out, spirituality and social service are often strongly connected.

In this issue, Robert Wuthnow of Princeton, writing on "Pursuing the sacred in the academy's 'hallowed halls,'" accepts the reality of the uneasy perch of religion in the academy and suggests that the proper inquiry for academics is what kind of contribution colleges and universities can make to the public expression of religion. Among these, he points out, is the academy's promotion of tolerance for cultural pluralism.

But one of the dangers with our unquestioning acceptance of the tolerance pervading the academy is that religious folk will be lulled into forgetting our very real differences with the academy. We will forget that we really are strangers in a strange land. The principalities and powers are very seductive and turn self-evidently good, noble virtues against the Kingdom. Tolerance is an example. It is wonderful to live in an atmosphere of civility, and with all the religious strife throughout the world there is a good deal to be said for the peace treaty of liberal tolerance. But when tolerance leads to religious folk forgetting who, and most importantly whose, they are, then the powers have prevailed.

Corporate power, in particular, has subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, changed the historic mission of the university in America. At one time we worried about the military-industrial complex as a threat to our way of life. It was and remains so. But still below the radar is a powerful academic-industrial complex in which universities and researchers own equity positions in companies that support their work and online teaching threatens to diminish face-to-face contact with tenured professors and to increase the "franchising" of education.

Darryl Brown, a professor of law, describes the subtle ways in which corporate power influences the mission of legal education. While law schools don't have the sorts of research budgets that places like M.I.T. have, there are plenty of opportunities for law professors to sign on as consultants to corporate America. The history of private consultation is such that the law school accrediting authority, The American Association of Law Schools, has seen fit to warn against excessive private practice while encouraging law professors to provide more legal assistance to those who can't afford high private-practice fees. Indeed, corporate funding incentives seem to account for a large body of research critical of punitive damages -- which is a major worry for corporate America -- but a paucity of research on many topics critical to social justice, such as access to the legal system by the poor.

And as corporate culture's technocratic bias renames university students as either "inventory" or "product," another insidious principality, the standardized test, determines who enters the hallowed halls. The granddaddy of them all, the SAT, begun 50 years ago as a utopian experiment so that the Ivies could expand their base beyond the offspring of the WASP elite, has become such a powerful symbol that it stops almost all attempts at genuine discussion about education. Now the son of SAT, called the standards movement, is sweeping the country.

All this is to say that theologian William Stringfellow was right a quarter century ago when he argued that the powers are legion in the academy. But the articles in this issue also carry the message that there are important pockets of resistance on American campuses. William Willimon reports that the Christian community at Duke University provides a pretty constant reminder to him that life is different if one is religious. And Michael Levinson's efforts at Georgetown University began in an interfaith prayer service. In fact, the Georgetown Solidarity Committee was able to call Georgetown back to its own history by appealing to the strong tradition of Catholicism for a living wage, for just working conditions, and for a preferential option for the poor.

We people of faith must not forget that the cultivation of the mind -- as Stringfellow would put it, "the exercise of definitely human faculties" -- can lead not only to the cultivation of human originality and creativity, but also to the cultivation of conscience. And that is an important form of resistance.

Andrew W. McThenia, a former contributing editor of The Witness, teaches law at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va.