A Mission of Understanding

"You're basically saying, 'I may think it's wrong, but someone else might think it's right,' " he later recalled saying. "I can't wrap my arms around that." Such topics, he said, are like concrete slabs between him and others.

"We're describing the slab differently because we see different sides of it," he said. "I don't think people here have a good sense of people like me. And I don't have a good sense of these people."

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Leydorf had long been certain he wanted to go to a secular college -- a top secular college. He had founded the debate team, had played junior varsity soccer and was on the student disciplinary board. But what he really craved was the chance to deconstruct the religious and political beliefs with which he was raised. He'd even set aside his own "right-of-center" political leanings during his senior year and pursued an internship with Democratic U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), "a notorious liberal," Leydorf said.

"I want to sincerely seek the truth," he said in May, "not just what you want to believe."

With his secular ambitions and accommodating views, Leydorf is a curious product of the 30-year-old evangelical private school movement. Educational historians say the movement was one of the fastest-growing segments of the private-school world from the 1970s, when the schools began, until recently, when growth flattened.

The Association of Christian Schools International, the largest group of such schools, represents 5,000 U.S. schools, compared with 1,000 when it was founded in 1978. But today such academies are at a crossroads as they become more focused on academic success. Parents increasingly want top-of-the-line teachers and SAT prep courses. To pay for such programs, tuitions have gone up from the days when every parent volunteered and teachers were willing to accept lower pay to be part of a idealistic venture.

"In the beginning, we kept costs down because we starved. It was: 'You're doing this for Jesus.' Now we're getting more and more into the laity mentality, like, 'What does it cost to live in Washington?' " said John Holmes, director of government affairs for ACSI.

But the changes in Christian private schools mirror the debates U.S. evangelicals have had through this century about how to best bear witness to a seemingly godless culture: by changing it? Rejecting it? Incorporating it?

Mary Sue Burgess, who was Leydorf's guidance counselor, knows these questions well. Ninety-eight percent of Annapolis Area Christian School's graduates go to college, compared with 57 percent in 1986. And just 20 percent of the college-bound go to Christian schools, nearly half of the number who did 20 years ago.

Burgess ranks schools on the basis of "opportunity to be a Christian witness." They range from "solid ground" schools, where professors are all professing Christians, to "battlefield schools," she says. "To go to that kind of school, you're asking for it."

Despite significant growth in Christian colleges in recent years, most religious schools are still viewed as less competitive, students and administrators say.