About two weeks ago or so, I slowly began reading The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Non-Belief by Professor George Marsden. The book was published in 1994 and today, Marsden is a history professor at the University of Notre Dame.
I had heard about this book before, but I what made me go buy it was partly due to personal experience. As I travel around to America’s universities, I have noticed something, particularly about the oldest, most traditional, and most well-established schools – they all have chapels as the centerpieces of their campuses. I think it really first dawned on me last November, when I made my first visit to the Duke University campus in Durham, NC. When I walked in and saw the wonders of it, I thought to myself… does anyone on this campus even know this is here? Obviously, some do. But, where is the reverence for the beliefs that come with the building?
Duke has an amazing cathedral-like chapel. It is “an example neo-gothic architecture in the English style” according to it’s website. I have also now been to the Princeton campus twice, and they have a very similar chapel. The Princeton students told me that Duke’s chapel was actually modeled after Princeton’s. The next time you are on a campus, particulary a historical one (the Ivy’s especially), I encourage you to go discover the chapels that are there. Read the writings on the walls, discover the history.
What Marsden’s book is showing me so far is that when our earliest universities were built, the main purpose of the university was to ground us morally. In fact, Yale, for example, had a prominent seminary, and the earliest schools like Harvard, Yale, William & Mary, and Princeton, all had ministers as their university presidents. Marsden’s thesis is intriguing, and I’m still in the process of discovering it. But, the premise is that the Progressive spirit during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century chipped away at the traditional roots of religion, and in fact eroded it away.
Marsden basically argues that for the first two centuries of the American university experience (as it predates the Revolution), the university was dominated by religious thought. And, he demonstrates that the religious-dominated academy made room for all types of other (non-religious based) ideas, such as darwinism, multiculturalism, feminism, etc… and he argues that now that these ideas dominate the academy, they too should once again make room for religious perspectives.
Here’s a Book Review of Marsden’s book, from one of my favorite magazines, First Things. I’m sure to have more thoughts on this book as I go forward.