Nazarene College Beefcake

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, higher education was frowned up.  Secular universities were full of atheists and Catholics who would brainwash you.  Besides, what did you need a college degree for?  Your job was to win souls for Christ.  Studying for four years would be just a distraction.

The only legitimate reason to go to college was if God had called you into the ministry.  For that purpose, the church set up seven colleges, one for each region of the U.S..  They had other majors, too (for backslidden Nazarenes or members of other churches), but 90% of the boys were majoring in religion (to become ministers or evangelists), missions, or music, and 90% of the girls were majoring in education or music (to become their wives).

I'm going to go through each of the Nazarene colleges, looking for studly student.

1. Olivet Nazarene College, in eastern Illinois, was the biggest and most prestigious Nazarene college.  Today there are 5,000 students, including 2,000 in graduate programs.  But you still don't get to teach evolution in biology class, and of course all discussion of gay people is forbidden (the Nazarene manual decrees "the depth of perversion that leads to homosexuality."

So look carefully at these representatives of the Olivet Tigers swim team.

2. Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.  There aren't a lot of Nazarenes anywhere, but they are especially rare in predominantly Catholic New England. Eastern has less than a thousand undergraduate students, mostly theology majors, although there are graduate degrees in business and psychology.  At least it's more inclusive than Olivet, prohibiting sexual behavior of all sorts, not just the "homosexual lifestyle."

I couldn't find a single beefcake photo, so here's a wrestler from a Jesuit high school in Boston.






3.Midamerica Nazarene College is in Olathe, Kansas, right outside the Nazarene General Headquarters, soyou'd think it would be the flagship school.  But it's not.  It was founded relatively recently, in 1966, and it has less than 2,000 students.

I found a wrestler among them.













4. Mount Vernon Nazarene College is in Mount Vernon, Ohio, about 50 miles from Columbus.  It opened in 1966 also.  Only a third of the students are male (at Nazarene colleges, future wives outnumber future preachers two to one), so beefcake was impossible to find.  Here's the golf team.








5. Point Loma Nazarene College, in a suburb of San Diego, a venerable Nazarene institution founded in 1902 (the church itself was only established in 1895).

I don't know what these Point Loma athletes are dong, but they have their shirts off.








6. Southern Nazarene College  is in Bethany, Oklahoma.  That strikes me as more west than south.  It was Oklahoma Holiness College before the holiness community of the area converted en masse to Nazarene.  Today there are less than 2,000 students, mostly training to become ministers or their wives.

This looks like a football player, not a wrestler.












7. Trevecca Nazarene College, founded in 1901, is in Nashville, home of the general headquarters of the United Methodist Church.  It was originally Pentecostal, named after Trefeca, Wales, site of the Welsh holiness movement.

3,000 students, but no beefcake photos, so how about a wrestler from Notre Dame?  (Nazarenes are notoriously anti-Catholic,or at least they were in my childhood).