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The William G. Bowen Series
The Sacred and the Secular University
American higher education was transformed between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I. During this period, U.S. colleges underwent fundamental changes--changes that helped to create the modern university we know today. Most significantly, the study of the sciences and the humanities effectively dissolved the Protestant framework of learning by introducing a new secularized curriculum. This secularization has long been recognized as a decisive turning point in the history of American education. Until now, however, there has been remarkably little attention paid to the details of how this transformation came about. Here, at last, Jon Roberts and James Turner identify the forces and explain the events that reformed the college curriculum during this era.
The first section of the book examines how the study of science became detached from theological considerations. Previously, one of the primary pursuits of "natural scientists" was to achieve an understanding of the workings of the divine in earthly events. During the late nineteenth century, however, scientists reduced the scope of their inquiries to subjects that could be isolated, measured, and studied objectively. In pursuit of "scientific truth," they were drawn away from the larger "truths" that they had once sought. On a related path, social scientists began to pursue the study of human society more scientifically, attempting to generalize principles of behavior from empirically observed events.
The second section describes the revolution that occurred in the humanities, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when the study of humanities was largely the study of Greek and Latin. By 1900, however, the humanities were much more broadly construed, including such previously unstudied subjects as literature, philosophy, history, and art history. The "triumph of the humanities" represented a significant change in attitudes about what constituted academic knowledge and, therefore, what should be a part of the college curriculum.
The Sacred and the Secular University rewrites the history of higher education in the United States. It will interest all readers who are concerned about American universities and about how the content of a "college education" has changed over the course of the last century.
"[Jon Roberts and James Turner's] thoroughly researched and carefully argued presentations invite readers to revisit stereotypical generalizations and to rethink the premises developed in the late nineteenth century that underlie the modern university. At the least, their arguments challenge crude versions of the secularization thesis as applied to higher education."--From the foreword by William G. Bowen and Harold T. Shapiro
The first section of the book examines how the study of science became detached from theological considerations. Previously, one of the primary pursuits of "natural scientists" was to achieve an understanding of the workings of the divine in earthly events. During the late nineteenth century, however, scientists reduced the scope of their inquiries to subjects that could be isolated, measured, and studied objectively. In pursuit of "scientific truth," they were drawn away from the larger "truths" that they had once sought. On a related path, social scientists began to pursue the study of human society more scientifically, attempting to generalize principles of behavior from empirically observed events.
The second section describes the revolution that occurred in the humanities, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when the study of humanities was largely the study of Greek and Latin. By 1900, however, the humanities were much more broadly construed, including such previously unstudied subjects as literature, philosophy, history, and art history. The "triumph of the humanities" represented a significant change in attitudes about what constituted academic knowledge and, therefore, what should be a part of the college curriculum.
The Sacred and the Secular University rewrites the history of higher education in the United States. It will interest all readers who are concerned about American universities and about how the content of a "college education" has changed over the course of the last century.
"[Jon Roberts and James Turner's] thoroughly researched and carefully argued presentations invite readers to revisit stereotypical generalizations and to rethink the premises developed in the late nineteenth century that underlie the modern university. At the least, their arguments challenge crude versions of the secularization thesis as applied to higher education."--From the foreword by William G. Bowen and Harold T. Shapiro
184 pages, Hardcover
First published March 6, 2000
61 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 8, 2020
This short but dense book tells the history of the change in American universities between the Civil war and WWI. Prior to the Civil War, the goal of universities was the acquisition of knowledge, professors passed on that knowledge, universities were rooted in Christian presuppositions, and basically everyone took the same courses.
In the decades between 1870-1910, all of this began to change. In the natural sciences, specialization began to be more common. Rather than merely passing on knowledge, the goal shifted to the discovery of knowledge with an emphasis on original research. This contributed to a loosening of the idea that all subjects were unified and one complete story of knowledge could be told; instead professors focused on their own areas of research. Thus, moral philosophy, once the final class that tied everything together, began to disappear. The humanities attempted to step into the gap, but could not provide the unifying ideas moral philosophy once had.
It would be easy to see this process as some sort of attack on Christianity. Yet the authors show that many of the natural scientists continued to be people of faith. The difference was that rather than approaching scientific studies with the goal of proving the truth of faith, they approached it to discover new facts about the natural world. It was already common for more liberal Christians to shift their interpretation of the Bible to fit with scientific findings. But now, with specialization, scientists were able to compartmentalize their faith into a separate realm. In other words, they may have been churchgoers and believers, but they left these ideas at the door of the university. When pursuing science, they adhered to "methodological naturalism" with no constraints from faith.
There is so much more in this small book. The authors succeed in helping understand what changed universities from religious institutions prior to the Civil War to religiously neutral by WWI. A good read to go along with this would be George Marsden's work on fundamentalism, for that seems to be the next part of the story: as universities became secular and liberal Christians adapted faith to fit the new sciences, fundamentalists retreated into their own colleges. But that's another story...
I read this book because I work in Christian campus ministry and part of our new staff training is a bit of history about universities. This book is definitely going to supplement and sharpen the story we share with our new staff, for these changes a century ago contributed to the beginning of campus ministries as outside organizations as well as shaping the university we work on today.
In the decades between 1870-1910, all of this began to change. In the natural sciences, specialization began to be more common. Rather than merely passing on knowledge, the goal shifted to the discovery of knowledge with an emphasis on original research. This contributed to a loosening of the idea that all subjects were unified and one complete story of knowledge could be told; instead professors focused on their own areas of research. Thus, moral philosophy, once the final class that tied everything together, began to disappear. The humanities attempted to step into the gap, but could not provide the unifying ideas moral philosophy once had.
It would be easy to see this process as some sort of attack on Christianity. Yet the authors show that many of the natural scientists continued to be people of faith. The difference was that rather than approaching scientific studies with the goal of proving the truth of faith, they approached it to discover new facts about the natural world. It was already common for more liberal Christians to shift their interpretation of the Bible to fit with scientific findings. But now, with specialization, scientists were able to compartmentalize their faith into a separate realm. In other words, they may have been churchgoers and believers, but they left these ideas at the door of the university. When pursuing science, they adhered to "methodological naturalism" with no constraints from faith.
There is so much more in this small book. The authors succeed in helping understand what changed universities from religious institutions prior to the Civil War to religiously neutral by WWI. A good read to go along with this would be George Marsden's work on fundamentalism, for that seems to be the next part of the story: as universities became secular and liberal Christians adapted faith to fit the new sciences, fundamentalists retreated into their own colleges. But that's another story...
I read this book because I work in Christian campus ministry and part of our new staff training is a bit of history about universities. This book is definitely going to supplement and sharpen the story we share with our new staff, for these changes a century ago contributed to the beginning of campus ministries as outside organizations as well as shaping the university we work on today.
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December 28, 2024Very, very interesting. Informative, nuanced, and specific—a lot to chew on here (for personal profit and pleasure). Also, as a bonus: engagingly and enjoyably written.
November 9, 2024
A compact study of secularization in American higher education during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on Christianity. The authors divide the book into discussions of secularization in the sciences and in the humanities. As scientists embraced naturalism and empirical evidence, appeals to God became less and less common in scientific discourse. As humanities embraced philology and began to view art as culturally conditioned, appeals to God and transcendent truth became less common, although talk of morality could be a cover for professors to keep Christian influences in the classroom. Naturally, people objected to secularization in both science and humanities classrooms. I found the authors' claim about the humanities driving secularization to be compelling. The book's focus on Christianity made me wonder what discussions of secularization were like among Jewish academics.
March 14, 2015
This is a really excellent little book about the changing regime of knowledge in academia at the end of the 19th century. Very clear and very readable, Roberts and Turner make a compelling case that religious knowledge, and especially the Protestant presuppositions of knowledge, was slowly delegitimized over a generation. There was an increasing sense that metaphysical and supernatural accounts of natural phenomena did not suffice as explanations. "Though rarely explicitly formulated," they write, it was "no less adamant and programatic for that. In effect, the very idea of what counted as an explanation had changed."
Recommended for anyone interested in the history of secularization, the history of American higher ed., the sociology of knowledge, or Christian engagement in the public sphere.
Recommended for anyone interested in the history of secularization, the history of American higher ed., the sociology of knowledge, or Christian engagement in the public sphere.
April 12, 2017
Fascinating history of the transformation of the American university between 1870 and 1920. Essentially, this change replaced a theocentric worldview with an anthropocentric one as it rejected a moral philosophy that presented a unified truth, knowledge, and reality for one extolling the sciences, humanities, and fragmentation of knowledge (i.e. specialization). As one who believes that all truth is God's truth (including science), this was a quiet yet powerful revolution that changed the trajectory of American culture and life for the worse. The fruits of humanism and naturalism in the 20th century have led to one of the most bloody, most meaningless, and most amoral centuries in recorded history. And although America didn't experience the death and destruction of these worldviews like Europe and Asia did, she is on a slippery slope and would benefit by reconsidering a bibliocentric worldview. Regardless, the authors did a stellar job in presenting the history in a objective manner.
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