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Bluffton University is a private Mennonite university in Bluffton, Ohio. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, with four programs that have earned programmatic accreditation: dietetics, education, music, and social work. The university has more than eighty majors, minors, and interdisciplinary programs, and sixteen NCAA DIII athletic teams.
Located on a 65-acre campus in northwest Ohio, the university was founded in 1899 as Central Mennonite College but was reorganized as Bluffton College in 1913 and Bluffton University in 2004.
Bluffton University was founded as Central Mennonite College by the General Conference Mennonite Church and became affiliated with Mennonite Church USA when it was created in 2002 by a merger between the GCMC and the Mennonite Church. It has been a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities since 1991.
The Mennonite church is an Anabaptist denomination committed to nonviolence, social justice, and voluntary service. However, since its founding, Bluffton has been open to non-Mennonites. In fact, members of the Mennonite denomination now make up a minority of students.
Historian Perry Bush, in his centennial history of the college, argues that Bluffton's distinctive religious orientation has been to avoid both secularization and generic American evangelicalism. While many other denominational colleges adopted the latter, Bluffton leaders "refused to separate Mennonite ethical principles from the doctrines they held in common with other evangelicals. They refused to treat peace and service as if they were add-ons, 'nonessentials,' extra-chrome options. Christ's theological and ethical teachings were all of one piece, Mennonites have insisted, and a proper Christian college would be built on the firm integration of the two."
Evidence of this focus can be found in the high percentage of Bluffton graduates "devoting lives to service occupations: teaching, medicine, social work, church ministry, and the like."