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The Secularization of the Academy
Edited By George M. Marsden and Bradley J. Longfield
New York, Oxford University Press, 1992. 323 pp. $35.00 $15.95 (pb).

The general history of higher education in North America has long been the subject of serious investigation, and numerous individual institutions have been well-served by competent historical surveys. The editors and six contributing authors of this important volume represent a variety of Christian traditions, and they write from the perspective of three national contexts. Together, however, they advance a coherent and convincing critique of most past interpretations: The history of higher education has been unduly influenced by the concept of an ideological conflict between religion and learning and by the notion of an early and inevitable secularization of the academy. None of the contributors idolize the nineteenth century Protestant establishment that was admittedly unjust in its privileged access to social and political power. All of the authors, however, ponder the question of how this tradition has been abandoned without a protest and why the Christianity that was once the principal support of the enterprise could now be considered positively alien to it. The book provides a sophisticated, carefully nuanced, and much-needed corrective to accounts that have interpreted the founding of universities, with their characteristic orientation around scientific research as secular attempts to counteract earlier religious values.

Seven chapters examine American institutions that were Protestant in origin, with particular attention to the Midwestern universities (Bradley Longfield) and the Eastern establishments (James Turner and D. G. Hart). Three chapters broaden the scope and offer the possibility of comparative analysis: Philip Gleason deals with twentieth century Catholic higher education; David Bebbington examines British universities, and G. A. Rawlyck provides comparisons with Canadian Protestant colleges. The book demonstrates in detail the remarkable extent and persistence of liberal Protestant values, structures, and organizations within these universities. By an analysis of patterns of chapel attendance; surveys of the religious views of faculty, their church attendance, and their assumptions about recruitment; descriptions of the clerical status and theological views of university presidents; and an overview of a variety of ancillary methods of advancing religion on university campuses, the authors illumine the ideal of a Christian civilization in America. If chapel attendance was less often required in most institutions at the very end of the nineteenth century, university sponsored worship frequently continued and thrived. Moreover, in those cases where compulsory worship was abandoned, it was not primarily a result of pressure from secular ideology. Since devout Christian leaders in the universities had come to believe that voluntary

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worship was compatible with the aims of the institutions, these changes were at least as much an attempt to preserve Christian influence as they were to challenge it.

The authors of this book thereby advance a social, rather than an ideological, interpretation of secularization. George Marsden's introductory essay sets the tone for the remaining chapters with carefully drawn distinctions about the nature and meaning of secularization. He shows how the putative ideological hostility between science and religion has often been read back into the evidence with seriously misleading results. To be sure, the pressures leading to the disestablishment of Protestant hegemony were unremitting; the tendency of universities to enhance their reputations as public institutions serving the entire nation made it harder for a single faith to dominate; and increasing stress on research and the accompanying specialization shifted the purpose and goal of education away from matters previously centering on character. By focusing on these non-ideological sources of secularization, the essays provide more nuanced and, hence, more valuable interpretations. In the case of post World War II Catholic institutions, for example, it was the rapid expansion of Catholic higher education that necessitated the hiring of lay faculty members, who were more socially assimilated and, hence, less inclined to insist on distinctly Catholic viewpoints. In the United Kingdom, the impetus to secularization was largely pragmatic; in a context where churches were established by law, if the Nonconformists were to have the education they demanded, religion could not long remain a distinctive qualification. The comparative aspects of the book thus prove to be highly valuable because it can be shown that, across several national contexts, we find largely the same developments. In addition, as Robert Lynn argues, denominational colleges led by Christian academics faced exactly the same pressures toward increasing secularization as the state universities. The book, thereby, provides the strongest evidence yet adduced that the important forces shaping education cannot be construed primarily in terms of a struggle between Christianity and science.

The book admirably accomplishes its goal of challenging reigning assumptions by providing the reader with an excellent survey of the best recent research, including exhaustive use of Ph.D. dissertations and a concluding bibliographic essay by D. G. Hart. Even those who are inclined to disagree with the leading arguments of this book will undoubtedly find themselves reconsidering the ideals of modern education in their relation to Christian values.

James E. Bradley
Fuller Seminary
Pasadena, CA