The History of American Higher
Education
Introduction
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American colleges
Sectarianism
Transition to universities
Secularism
Conclusions
Primary Source
The Soul of the
American University:
From Protestant
Establishment to
Established Nonbelief
George M. Marsden (Oxford
University Press, 1994)
American Colleges
American Colleges
• The first American college
– Harvard College (1636)
– Congregationalist
– Primarily Cambridge University (Emmanuel College)
professors found Harvard. Some Oxford professors
served on the faculty, too.
– Founded with the Puritan belief that all vocations are
sacred
• Half of the first graduates became clergy
• Other half pursued other professions with a view that this
was their Christian mission
– Motto – Christo et Ecclesiae
American Colleges
• Yale College (1701)
– Anglican (in the midst of a Calvinist colony)
– Founded by Connecticut clergy reacting to
perceived decline of Christian orthodoxy at
Harvard
– Became a focal point of the 1st Great
Awakening
American Colleges
• Other Ivy League colleges
– College of New Jersey (1746) – Princeton
• Presbyterian
– King’s College (1754) – Columbia
• Anglican
– College of Philadelphia (1755) – Pennsylvania
• Presbyterian
– Brown College (1764)
• Baptist
– Dartmouth College (1769)
• Congregationalist
American Colleges
• Other prominent American colleges
– Queen’s College (1766) – Rutgers University
• Dutch Reformed
– College of William and Mary (1693)
• Anglican
– Free School (1743) – University of Delaware
• Presbyterian
– College of California (1860) – UC Berkeley
• Presbyterian and Congregationalist
American Colleges
– Newbury Biblical Institute (1839) – Boston
University
• Methodist
– Boston College (1863)
• Catholic
– St. John’s College (1841) – Fordham
University
• Catholic
– University of Chicago (1890)
• Baptist
American Colleges
• Land Grant Colleges – 1862
– Morrill Act granted a portion of land in each
state to found a technical or agricultural
school
• University of Illinois
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Texas Agricultural and Mechanical
• Mississippi State University
• Pennsylvania State University
• University of Kentucky
Sectarianism
Sectarianism
“The ‘ambition and tyranny’ of the
Presbyterians… ‘would tolerate no rival if they
had power’…Presbyterians, Jefferson was
convinced, yearned to reinstitute a Protestant
inquisition that would...‘exterminate all
heretics to Calvinistic Creed’ ” Marsden, 68.
Sectarianism
• Two kinds of sectarianism in colleges
– Presbyterian
• Emphasized orthodoxy and creeds
– Jeffersonian
• Emphasized freedom from religious tests
“Liberal unitarian Christian moralists were
not any less a religious party than were
conservative Presbyterians” Marsden, 76.
Sectarianism
• American colleges were sectarian
– Each belonged to a particular Christian
denomination
– Each had a particular statement of faith
– Students and especially the faculty were
required to adhere to that statement of faith
– These were early speech codes
Sectarianism
“In letters to [Yale College] founders, the
Mathers (Increase and his son,
Cotton)…suggested that they follow a
continental rather than English model for
Reformed colleges by requiring faculty to
subscribe to the confessions of the church
as a guarantee of orthodoxy” Marsden, 52.
Sectarianism
• As more American professors were
European educated, they resisted these
statements of faith
– The professors were more open minded, and
saw fewer necessary distinctions between
denominations
– They viewed sectarian statements as divisive
– Many professors, frankly, no longer believed
them
Transition to Universities
Transition to Universities
• Expanding industrialization
• Increasing demand for research universities
– Scientific advancement
– Meet the needs of industry
• The Gentleman Scholar
– People not pursuing specific professions
began studying at colleges
– The colleges could not meet the demand for
undergraduate much less graduate education
Transition to Universities
• Professors and scholars began going to
Europe for post-graduate education
– Master’s and doctoral degrees were
unavailable in America
– If colleges were to become universities,
faculty with post-graduate degrees were
necessary
Transition to Universities
• Scholars and professors returned from
Europe with primarily German ideals
– Divine mission of the university to pass on
knowledge from one generation to the next
– Growth and development of knowledge and
human civilization
• Darwinism
• Literary criticism
– Christians defended these ideas as the latest
advancements
Transition to Universities
• Change from English to German style of education
– British tradition emphasized
• empiricism and common sense
• science
• mechanism
• the divine in heaven
– German tradition emphasized
• a romantic nation of scholars
• science in the humanities
• growth and development
• the divine in humanity
Transition to Universities
• Universities should not be church, but state run
“Educational reform should come from the state.
German universities were controlled by the various
German states” Marsden, 107.
• Differing educational models
– English – research and writing
– German – classes and examinations
• From 1852-1863 University of Michigan under
chancellor Henry P. Tappan became the first
institution to adopt a German model
Transition to Universities
• The German “method” included rigorous empiricism
that emphasized science and not theology
• Methodological secularization
“One of the major dynamics of complex modern
societies arises from the principle that many tasks are
done most efficiently by isolating and objectifying
them…In effect, one creates a mechanism for
addressing the issue and applies this to a practical
problem. Religious considerations play little if any role
in the mechanism itself” Marsden, 156.
Transition to Universities
• Christians defended methodological
secularization, because “ ‘religion…claims to
interpret the word of God, and science to
reveal the laws of God’ ” Marsden, 157.
• Modern universities were founded on
scientific empiricism that resulted in
naturalism when God was removed from
knowledge and consequently the classroom
Transition to Universities
• Christian theology was taught less and less
– Higher criticism
– It was harder for modern professors to justify
sectarian statements of faith
– Theology reduced to moral philosophy – the
Jeffersonian ideal
• For a few decades it was taught in classrooms
• Later it was removed from classrooms and
relegated to the Student Life office
Transition to Universities
– Teaching theology was replaced with teaching
virtue
• What defines what is virtuous?
– Society?
– Personal reflection?
– God?
• Any focus other than God leads ultimately to
humanism and naturalism
– In the end senior courses in moral philosophy
which integrated collegiate studies with a
Christian worldview were cast off
Transition to Universities
“By purporting to discover a universal set of
rationally based moral principles, the new
ethics was presuming to do for core elements
in human experience what the new physics did
for the periphery…It was hence more difficult
to see that this project, at least when it was
conducted by pious confessing Christians, also
had the potential for making Christian
revelation superfluous” Marsden, 52.
Transition to Universities
• American colleges began adding graduate
schools and became universities
• Established institutions began drifting away
from sectarianism, and some newly
established universities, like Cornell,
deliberately emphasized nonsectarianism
Secularization
Secularization
• A weakened traditional Christian presence in
the university, a broadly accepted liberal
Protestant remnant, and a new passion for
nonsectarianism led to secularization
• Christians were powerless to stop it
– Many had abandoned the university
– The church had bought Kantian dualism
• Real world – five senses, science – knowledge
• Private world – God, morality – no knowledge
Secularization
• The process of secularization began with the
labor union movement
– Professors tended to be more sympathetic to
unionization
– American Association of University
Professors (1915)
• Faculty tenure
• Academic freedom
Secularization
• AAUP members were appointed to
accreditation committees
– All colleges and universities have there
curriculums reviewed and reaccredited every
5-10 years
– AAUP members had tenure and academic
freedom added to accreditation requirements
Secularization
• The result of reaccreditation
– Most colleges couldn’t or wouldn’t reconcile
the requirement of academic freedom with
particular statements of faith
– Most institutions consequently cut ties with
the denominations that gave them birth
Secularization
• Foundations, such as the Carnegie
Endowment, began offering large grants for
nonsectarian institutions of higher learning
– Some denominations could not give as much
money to their schools as Carnegie promised
– This encouraged many other colleges and
universities who remained Christian to
jettison their religious affiliations for the
promise of major foundation funding
Secularization
• The fruit of tenure
– Sixties radicals could not change the
establishment from without
– They put on suits and went to graduate
school
– They now hold most tenured faculty positions
in universities.
Secularization
• The fruit of academic freedom
– Most 20th century professors were steeped in
Nietzschean nihilism
– If the individual should be free to do anything
they wish, then statements of faith are
ridiculous
– Academic freedom promoted the
abandonment of statements of faith
Secularization
• Nature abhors a vacuum
– The abandonment of statements of faith left a
spiritual and ideological vacuum
– Without Christian influence, universities
rapidly gravitated to political correctness
– This is the new orthodoxy in secular
universities, with their own statements of faith
– Speech codes are now hidden in nondiscrimination statements
Conclusions
Conclusions
• The university is still often fighting a
Christian establishment that no longer exists
– They are living in the past – Christians no
longer rule
– The new orthodoxy tests restrict freedom for
non-naturalistic ideas
Conclusions
• Beware of campus Nazis who demand
loyalty to the naturalistic hegemony
– Nazism stifles any dissent or differing views
• Political Nazis like Code Pink or radical
environmental groups
• Moral Nazis like militant homosexuals,
feminists, hedonists, etc.
Conclusions
• Finding a voice
– Postmodern sentiments permit a Christian
voice
• Don’t buy postmodernism
• Postmodernism is just as exclusively
naturalistic as modernism
– Appeal to academic freedom in order to bring
a Christian viewpoint back to the classroom
and the laboratory
Conclusions
– Appeal to tolerance and diversity as
justification for religious viewpoints
– Appeal to social justice as grounds for
including Christian ideas
– Do not be cowed by church and state
arguments, especially in state universities
– Don’t be afraid to defend the Truth
Conclusions
– Science itself is now viewed as “sectarian”
"Few academics [believe] in neutral objective
science anymore and most would admit that
everyone's intellectual inquiry takes place in a
framework of communities that shape
priorities. . . . Hence there is little reason to
exclude a priori all religiously based claims on
the grounds that they are unscientific“
Marsden, 430.
Conclusions
“Are there churches willing to contribute their
members, riches and practices to an essentially
public venture of the human mind which they judge
to be good but which they do not seek to control?
Those concerned about contact between higher
learning and Christianity need to examine not only
the condition of religion in dominant intellectual
centers but also the condition of intellect in dominant
religious centers”
Mark R. Schwehn and Dorothy Bass, Christianity and
Academic Soul-searching, www.religion-online.org
Conclusions
• The Church today should view the university
as a mission field
– Christians should boldly re-enter the
academic profession in large numbers
– Being a professor is a sacred calling
– The primary missionaries to the campus
should be those who live and work there, not
an outsider