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Scholarship March 29, 2017

The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief

The Wabash Center

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Author
Marsden, George M.
Publisher
Oxford University Press, New York, NY
ISBN
195106504
Table of Contents
Introduction
Prologue (I): God and Buckley at Yale (1951)
Prologue (II): Henry Sloane Coffin's Yale (1897)
Prologue (III): A "Christian College"? The Yale of Noah Porter and William Graham Sumner (1879-1881

Pt. I The Establishment of Protestant Nonsectarianism
ch. 1 The Burden of Christendom: Seventeenth-Century Harvard
ch. 2 The New Queen of the Sciences and the New Republic
ch. 3 Two Kinds of Sectarianism
ch. 4 A Righteous Consensus, Whig Style

Pt. II Defining the American University in a Scientific Age
ch. 5 American Practicality and Germanic Ideals: Two Visions for Reform
ch. 6 The Christian Legacy in the Epoch of Science
ch. 7 Positive Christianity versus Positivism at Noah Porter's Yale
ch. 8 California: Revolution without Much Ideology
ch. 9 Methodological Secularization and Its Christian Rationale at Hopkins
ch. 10 Liberal Protestantism at Michigan: New England Intentions with Jeffersonian Results
ch. 11 Harvard and the Religion of Humanity
ch. 12 Holding the Line at Princeton
ch. 13 Making the World Safe from the Traditionalist Establishment
ch. 14 The Low-Church Idea of a University

Pt. III When the Tie No Longer Binds
ch. 15 The Trouble with the Old-Time Religion
ch. 16 The Elusive Ideal of Academic Freedom
ch. 17 The Fundamentalist Menace
ch. 18 The Obstacles to a Christian Presence
ch. 19 Outsiders
ch. 20 Searching for a Soul
ch. 21 A Church with the Soul of a Nation
ch. 22 Liberal Protestantism without Protestantism

Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Index
In this bold reexamination of the role of religion in higher education, Marsden provides a fascinating look at the histories of many pacesetting universities, including Harvard, Yale, and the University of California at Berkeley. The author argues for a new place for traditional religious perspectives in American universities. (From the Publisher)