10
Consortium, several other evangelical colleges joined,
either at the first meeting or over the next several
months. Not surprisingly, Coalition membership mirrored
the denominational pluralism of the evangelical movement;
indeed, it quickly displayed a more kaleidoscopic makeup
than its parent organization, the Consortium. Among early
joiners that were not in the Consortium and have maintained
continuous Coalition/CCCU membership since 1976, the
following denominations were represented: American Baptist
(Eastern and Judson); Southern Baptist (Campbellsville);
Presbyterian Church in America (Covenant); Reformed
Presbyterian (Geneva); Grace Brethren (Grace); Wesleyan
(Marion, since renamed Indiana Wesleyan); Assemblies of God
(Evangel); and Christian and Missionary Alliance (Nyack and
Simpson). Like the Consortium, the nascent Coalition
included several independent colleges (Azusa Pacific,
Biola, Bryan, and John Brown).
13
12
Werkema, "Semi-Annual Report to the Board of
Directors of the Christian College Consortium," 3 March
1977, 3.
13
None of the available Coalition documents specify
exactly what colleges gathered at the initial meeting in
1976. In fact, early records are fuzzy on the membership
question. The identity of the earliest members has to be
inferred from items in the Christian College News Service
and from other unpublished materials. A further
complication is that some early Coalition members dropped
out in the first few years, including Anderson (Church of
God, Anderson, Ind.), Barrington (an independent school