Union of Christian and papal systems
These academies were denominational, it is true; still they offered this prescribed course of instruction. Almost immediately appear signs of the result of this union of Christian education with scholasticism. For instance, we read that “Brown University, though founded as a Baptist institution, was nevertheless one of the first schools of the period to emphasize the growing sentiment for a thoroughly undenominational collegiate training.” Why should a denominational college give an undenominational course of instruction, and why, above all denominations, should the Baptists do so, to whom such a flood of light had come, and who always with pride pointed back to Roger Williams and the State of Rhode Island as the ancestors and embodiment of all that is Protestant and republican? But this is not the only indication of this decline from early principles.
Harvard loses sight of original object
About 1793 Harvard assumed the name of university. Boone says, “Signs of Catholicity also appear, in that students were no longer required to attend the divinity lectures, except they were preparing for the ministry.... Literary societies, voluntary associations for social and general culture, were multiplied.”
Decline in other schools
“The first Greek fraternity,—the Phi Beta Kappa,—the parent of both secret and open college fraternity organizations of America,” was formed at William and Mary in 1776. This is another indication of the stealthy introduction of principles opposed to democracy, and which tend to break existing prejudice against the secret organizations of the papacy.
Again, “Yale, also, though nominally on a Congregational foundation, received aid (1792) from the state, and gave place in her corporation to state representatives.” Educational apostasy was beginning; religious decline must follow.
Schools ask state support
Boone gives another paragraph, which, in a few words, tells a story of much significance, more, perhaps, than the author realized; for he was merely chronicling the history of education, not searching for the philosophy thereof. He says, “The college, once an appendage to the church, was seen, in view of imminent state dangers, to have an equal value to the Commonwealth.” This, of course, is true, because the Commonwealth depended for support, for very existence, upon the educational ideas propagated in its schools. But the writer continues: “First encouraged because it provided an educated ministry, there was coming to be recognized an opinion, despite the deficiencies in culture, that education is something more—that it has a value in itself; that schools might well be maintained apart from the church as an organization, and in no way lessen their usefulness.”[163] Here was the challenge.