In academia, Fuller Theological Seminary has a reputation for being a conservative place. Within Evangelicalism, Fuller has a reputation of being a progressive, or even liberal place. I am not a big fan of the terms “conservative” or “liberal” in either the political or theological spheres. I do not find I “fit” within such a spectrum. I have too many questions about either side to associate myself with them. I don’t even want to call myself a “moderate” because that term still defines me within the liberal-conservative continuum.

But people still use the terms and, much of the time, pejoratively. Or if not pejoratively, then at least tied to some kind of value judgment about “conservatism” or “liberalism.” So, one unscientific way to explore the political leanings of Fuller Seminary, which may or may not have bearing on the theological leanings of Fuller Seminary, is via Facebook. Facebook has this feature to select your political leaning from a range of options (you can only select one): Very Liberal, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Very Conservative, Apathetic, Libertarian, or Other. Many people feel comfortable selecting one of these for their Facebook friends to see (I have picked “Other”) and you can thus search through a given “Network” of people on Facebook for those who have chosen those identifiers. Granted, not everybody picks the most accurate category. For example, for awhile, Josh McManaway jokingly selected “Very Conservative” to go with his tongue-in-cheek write-in answer for “Religious Views”: “Very Christian.” [I'd like to say that my favorite answer to Religious Views, by the way, is my friend Alan, who wrote: "Yes, I have some."] Nevertheless, I think people are usually pretty honest about where they feel they fall in the political spectrum.

Facebook created a network for Fuller Seminary about five months ago. Since then (at the time of writing this post), we’ve garnered 742 students, alums, faculty and staff with Fuller email addresses who have joined (you need an official email address to join a school network). Here is a breakdown of those who identify themselves with one of the above mentioned political categories (percentages are of the total who have chosen a category: 327):

• Moderate: 160 (49%)
• Other: 73 (22%)
• Liberal: 48 (15%)
• Conservative: 30 (9%)
• Very Liberal: 5 (2%)
• Apathetic: 4 (1%)
• Libertarian: 4 (1%)
• Very Conservative: 3 (1%)

I’m happy that the vast majority of my Fuller peers in this little Facebook poll are also uncomfortable with the terms “liberal” and “conservative.” We should note, however, that there are one and a half times more self-declared “liberals” than “conservatives” in the Fuller network. It may be fodder for those Evangelicals who believe Fuller is a bastion of “heretical” liberalism, but the numbers should at least give one pause before slapping a singular label on the school and all who reside there.