In the middle of the 2000 Republican presidential primary, then candidate George W. Bush ignited a firestorm of controversy when he set foot on the campus of South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, the fundamentalist Christian college infamous at the time for its ban on interracial dating, fulminations against the satanic nature of the Catholic Church, and a host of other unpleasant traits.

Though Bush later apologized for not turning the speaking engagement into his own Sister Souljah moment – by decrying the bigotry of the school’s leaders – his visit was clearly calculated, and it paid off politically. He won South Carolina by a comfortable margin, carrying the state’s evangelical vote. Yet merely a month after the 2000 presidential campaign, Bob Jones ended the interracial dating ban, leading some involved with the school to claim that the university was bowing to secular pressure.

Interracial dating is one thing; same-sex dormitories are another. The problem of how strictly religious schools maintain their devout character while also trying to remain relevant in the modern world is the challenge that Naomi Schaefer Riley thoroughly captures in “God on the Quad” (St. Martin’s Press, 274 pages, $24.95). To research and write her book, Ms. Riley visited 20 religious colleges and universities, from Yeshiva to Brigham Young. She sat in on classroom discussions, hung out with students, and interviewed professors. Her book offers a full range of perspectives on how the people who make up these schools perceive the mission of their institutions and their place within them.

Ms. Riley’s observation that the political comity on these campuses is due to the fact that students there already have a religion (as political agitation seems to serve as a secular faith for many left-leaning college students these days) is especially apt. But her greatest weakness is one of omission. The book correctly purports that “the most important question” regarding religious colleges is “whether this missionary generation, as its leaders hope, will transform the broader, secular culture from within; or whether these hopes are bound to be dashed by the influence of secularism on these young men and women.”

But Ms. Riley spends so much time examining the day-to-day intricacies and internal debates among students, faculty, and administrators that she barely does any research at all into the lives of the graduates of these institutions and what effects that they are already making on the culture at large. According to Ms. Riley, religious colleges have graduated 1.3 million students, yet she interviews a scant few.

Instead, she profiles a handful of the most prominent alumni of religious colleges, like Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon, and Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, a Catholic. This does little to inform readers of how these schools are shaping American life. The crucial dichotomy that religious universities face in being intensely insular (“in, but not of the world”) and their professed desire to make a difference in the secular realm is hardly explored.

And while the book’s journalistic aspects, exploring the lives of those who attend religious colleges, will be of interest to any college student (especially those who attend schools in Blue States), Ms. Riley’s conclusions about these schools are problematic. Her belief that the effect religiously educated students will have in society is entirely positive seems to be colored more by her own political leanings. It is hardly supported by her own findings:

How, just to cite one of many examples, does the establishment by Baptist Baylor University of a center to study “intelligent design,” (a trendy euphemism for Creationism) point to her contention that the students who attend these schools are not “intellectually backward?” I don’t dispute Ms. Riley’s portrayal of the students at the colleges she profiles being more studious and conscientious than their peers at mainstream universities. But what these students are actually learning is just as important, if not more.

Though Ms. Riley is at all times respectful of those she profiles, her sympathy for her subjects in many ways prevents objective narration. Her positivism is unhindered by the curricular and hiring policies of religious colleges, many of which refuse to teach supposedly heretical texts or employ members of different faiths. Toward the end of her book, Ms. Riley decries postmodernism’s creeping effects into many religious colleges. But she demonstrates the worst characteristic of postmodernism by so often hesitating to judge those she writes about.

The self-proclaimed values of the modern university are a commitment to a liberal education. While conservatives may deny the success of American higher learning in living up to these standards, it is difficult from Ms. Riley’s book to see how religious colleges, strictly informed by unquestioning and narrow dogma, do better.

Mr. Kirchick is a junior atYale University and a columnist for the Yale Daily News.