Dr Paul Allen

English: Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University. Photo by C. Szabla. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Universities sprang up in Medieval Christendom. Nothing like them had been seen in history, for not only did they concentrate teachers, they embraced the idea of set coursework whose requirements must be fulfilled before a specific degree was awarded. Students were periodically tested before being certified in their chosen subjects. Universities were modeled on guilds which trained and rated apprentices and journeymen and gathered members for mutual protection. The Christian ideal often tends to clump people together for mutual support in a body. Puritans, many of them university educated in England , brought the idea of a university to New England . "After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for Gods worship and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed f...

Image via Wikipedia How did America's great Christian colleges come to abandon their faith and become the secular institutions they are today? When Harvard College was founded by the Puritans in 1636, they knew well what they wanted from their school. "Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all found knowledge and Learning..." The great school was intended to produce a godly clergy. In less than a hundred years, that high ideal faltered. Liberals won control of the school.  On this day, January 24, 1722,  they appointed Edward Wigglesworth to fill the newly created Thomas Hollis chair at Harvard College. This made Mr. Wigglesworth the first divinity professor commissioned in the American colonies, but what should have been cause for rejoicing was actually...