The Collapse of American Education (Pt. 3) – The Christian History of our Colleges

July 20, 2024

The Collapse of American Education (Pt. 3) – The Christian History of our Colleges

Sam Kastensmidt

July 20, 2024
10 Minute Read

If you’re just joining us for this series, see Part 1 and Part 2.

As Americans, we have been conditioned to believe a series of falsehoods. In this series, I hope to reaffirm a few truths. First, the quality of a religious education is not inferior to secular education; in fact, studies have found that religious schools are superior to secular schools. Second, it is abnormal for the Church to abdicate its responsibility to educate future generations. Until recently, the Church has always played the dominant role in advancing education. And third, America’s institutions of higher learning were not established as bastions of secularism; they were founded to advance the gospel and to train up a godly citizenry.

In my last article, I addressed the rise of literacy. In the 16th century, in the aftermath of the Reformation, literacy rates soared in Protestant nations, making education increasingly accessible to the masses. This, in turn, helped to spark the Enlightenment with a flurry of both faithful and skeptical thinkers. The Reformation and the Enlightenment caused Europe to splinter into a wide assortment of religious beliefs, sparking an era of religious conflict and persecution. As persecution intensified, the Pilgrims voyaged to the New World, bringing with them an intense devotion to education. In the 1600s, some of the earliest laws of the American colonies required villages to train children to read so they would be able to read the Bible.

These Protestants began constructing universities in America. It may surprise some people to learn that our oldest and most prestigious universities were founded by Protestant churches for the express purpose of advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Consider several of our nation’s oldest universities.

Harvard University was founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its charter declared that its purpose was to “train a literate clergy,” because the colony’s leaders were “dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust.” The college was named after Reverend John Harvard, who donated his library and considerable funds to establish the university. Initially, the Harvard’s motto (in Latin) read: “Truth for Christ and His Church.”

The list of requirements for Harvard’s students was stunning. Rule #1 required that every student must be able to “speak true Latin” and to “decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue.” Rule #2 decreed, “Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning.” Rule #3 required students to read “the scriptures twice a day” and to “be ready to give such an account” of his insights. Rule #4 required students to avoid “all profanation of God’s name, attributes, word, ordinance, and times of worship,” and to actively “retain God and the love of his truth in their minds.” Other rules emphasized godliness and piety.

The College of William & Mary was founded in 1693 by decree of King William III and Queen Mary II. Its charter states that it was founded so that “the Church of Virginia may be furnished with a seminary of ministers of the gospel, and that the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners, and that the Christian religion may be propagated among the Western Indians to the glory of Almighty God.”

Yale University was founded in 1701 by a coalition of ten pastors. The Board of Trustees wrote that the university was founded out of a “zeal for upholding and propagating the Christian Protestant Religion.” To this day, the Yale Coat of Arms features an open book with the Hebrew words “Urim” and “Thummim,” objects placed on the breastplate of Israel’s High Priest which were thought to lead him toward the will of God (Exodus 28:30). At the bottom, the banner features two of the titles of Christ written in Latin: “Light and Truth.”

The University of Pennsylvania was founded in 1740 by Reverend George Whitefield — one of the most consequential preachers of the Great Awakening. According to the University of Pennsylvania website:

“The University of Pennsylvania dates its founding to 1740, when a prominent evangelist, George Whitefield, and others established an educational trust fund and began construction of a large school building at Fourth and Arch streets in Philadelphia. The building was designed as a charity school for the children of working-class Philadelphians and as a house of worship for Whitefield’s followers.”

The university seal features a stack of books with “theology” reigning atop all other fields of study. Above all the books, the seal features the Latin words Sine Moribus Vane, meaning “Without Virtue, Useless.”

Princeton University, originally called the College of New Jersey, was founded in 1746 as a seminary to train up pastors. To this day, its seal features the image of an open book with the Latin words “Vet Testamentum” (i.e. Old Testament) and “Nov Testamentum” (i.e., New Testament) placed above a chevron meant to represent the university building. In other words, the Bible reigns over the institution. Around the edges of the seal, there is a Latin inscription that means “Under God’s Power, She Flourishes.” An earlier seal featured the Latin words “Vitam Mortius Reddo,” meaning “I restore to the dead.”

Princeton’s early list of presidents reads like a “Who’s Who” of Great Awakening figures. Ministers like Jonathan Dickinson, Samuel Davies, Samuel Finley, the great Jonathan Edwards, and Jonathan Witherspoon helped to set America’s Great Awakening in motion; they also served as Princeton’s earliest presidents.

Reverend John Witherspoon, the second longest serving president of Princeton, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was not tepid in his zeal for the faith. Witherspoon once famously quipped, “Accursed be all that learning which sets itself in opposition to the cross of Christ!” Today, such comments are unimaginable in the Ivy League. But Witherspoon was so influential upon our founding generation that, upon learning of the “shot heard ‘round the world,” British Lord Horace Walpole announced to Parliament: “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson.”

Though Princeton University may have abandoned such faith, their website still proudly boasts of his legacy:

“In addition to a president [i.e. James Madison] and vice president [i.e. Aaron Burr] of the United States, he taught nine cabinet officers, 21 senators, 39 congressmen, three justices of the Supreme Court, and 12 state governors.”

Columbia University was founded in 1754 as Kings College. The name was later changed after the Revolutionary War made the royal name untenable. Reverend Samuel Johnson, the first president of Columbia, sought to establish an “Episcopal College” in New York City. In marketing the school to prospective parents of differing denominations, he assured them of his intentions to “inculcate upon their tender minds, the great principles of Christianity and morality in which true Christians of each denomination are generally agreed.”

Johnson then explained the primary mission of the school in no uncertain terms:

“The chief thing that is aimed at in this college is to teach and engage the students to know God in Jesus Christ, and to love and serve Him in all sobriety, godliness, and righteousness of life.”

Perhaps more than any other Ivy League university, the seal of Columbia University is filled with religious significance. At the top of the seal is the personal name of God (Yahweh) blazing forth in Hebrew. On the bottom, there is a scripture citation (1 Peter 2:1-2), in which the Apostle Paul urges people to “long for pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.” Above the citation, an enthroned woman holds an open book with the Latin words “Logia Zonta” meaning “living words.” The Hebrew banner unfurled from her throne reads: “God’s Light.” The Latin expression encircling the upper half of the seal simply means: “In your light, we see light.” In the distance (on the right), you find the rising sun which was meant to allude to Malachi 4:2: “The sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.”

Dartmouth College was founded in 1769 by Reverend Eleazar Wheelock. The school was dedicated to educating Native American students. In fact, Wheelock partnered with his protégé, Reverend Samson Occom, a converted member of the Mohegan tribe. The school’s charter called for a college to be “erected in the province of New Hampshire by the name of Dartmouth College for the education and instruction of youth of the Indian tribes in this land in reading, writing, and all parts of learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and Christianizing children of pagans…” The school’s seal, still used today, features a book shining down from the heavens upon the institution as two Indians approach the school holding an open book.

Prior to the second half of the 19th century, it was largely considered unthinkable to establish a university, even a public university, without some sort of religious affiliation.

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Prior to the second half of the 19th century, it was largely considered unthinkable to establish a university, even a public university, without some sort of religious affiliation.

The University of Georgia is the oldest public university in America. The school was founded in 1785 by Abraham Baldwin, an ordained minister and signer of the U.S. Constitution. As the university’s first president, Baldwin helped to write its founding charter:

“It should therefore be among the first objects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to encourage and support the principles of Religion and morality, and early to place the youth under the forming hand of Society that by instruction they may be molded to the love of Virtue and good Order.”

There was no insistence upon secularism; in fact, the opposite was true. This was the norm in early America. I recently discovered that my own alma mater, the University of Florida, was founded as East Florida Seminary in 1853 after the Florida legislature voted to constitute a college on each side of the Suwanee River. Reverend R.H. Howren (the first chairman of its Board of Trustees) wrote, “Observation and experience have taught, that an institution of learning cannot be sustained unless controlled by some denomination.” Thus, it was placed under the governance of the Methodist-Episcopal Church. Florida State University was then established on the other side of the Suwanee River as West Florida Seminary.

There is no need to cherry-pick historical examples to support this premise. The Universities of Georgia and Florida were both founded to be religiously affiliated and publicly funded, and they were not anomalies. According to Wesleyan University: “Almost every university and college founded in the U.S. and Europe until the mid-19th century…was founded by some religious organization.”

This, of course, brings us to another great falsehood about our history. If our Founders were committed to secularism and the purging of religious influence from the public sphere, how did the Church manage to lead so many institutions of higher learning? Throughout my childhood and college years, I was taught that our Founders intended to erect an impregnable wall between church and state. In the next article, we will examine the clearly expressed intentions of our Founding Fathers regarding the education of America’s youth.

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Sam Kastensmidt

Sam Kastensmidt serves as the Pastor of Education at Rio Vista Church in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He graduated from the University of Florida in 1999 with a B.S. degree in Finance, and he went on to graduate from Knox Theological Seminary (M.Div) before being ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America. He has published several books including two biblical textbooks: Christ from Creation and Christ in Creation. Prior to becoming a pastor, Sam worked as a writer for Coral Ridge Ministries, a teacher at Westminster Academy, and the Headmaster of Bethany Christian School. In addition to being a pastor, Sam is the host of The Bible Show Podcast and the Under the Hood video series on YouTube. He is married to Laura with four children.

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