Many scholars of religion who teach today in nondenominational schools may take it for granted that these schools have no institutional mandate to espouse a particular religious agenda. Yet, how did this relatively new approach become common during the last century, when in the preceding era the opposite was true? A close reading of one context or institution can reveal broader trends applicable in many other realms. The evolution of the approach to religious scholarship at nineteenth-century Harvard can serve as one such specific, but widely illuminating, point of inquiry. The deliberate shift away from instruction in doctrinal theology toward a more modern approach to religion as an academic field of study became a prominent trend in American higher education, with Harvard leading the way. But why did Harvard pursue this particular agenda in advance of other institutions? This article suggests that the answer lies largely in political concerns. Harvard was concerned with issues of perception and the practical consequences resulting from public expression of disapprobation.
Other scholars in recent years have considered the evolving roles of theology and religion in the nineteenth-century American academy. Two works have emerged as particularly significant and represent key current interpretations of the distinction between theology and religion in this era: George Marsden's The Soul of the American University and Julie Reuben's The Making of the Modern University.
Marsden argues that the pattern embodied in the twentieth-century academy of “the virtual exclusion of religious perspectives,” or at least the viewing of religiously informed perspectives as “obscurantist,” was a pattern that Christian liberals actually established in the nineteenth century in a deliberate effort to move away from theology as an enterprise in the university context.Footnote 1 These nineteenth-century Christians, “having defined themselves increasingly in terms of their service to the public … were divesting themselves of the specifics of their Christian heritage.”Footnote 2 For Marsden, no place serves as a better example of this pattern than Harvard. Marsden focuses on the late-nineteenth century when considering the evolution of Harvard, and he presents the religious perspectives of the administration and faculty as so vague and vacuous as to allow them to posit “that whatever Harvard does simply is Christian.”Footnote 3 In Marsden's assessment, the “humanistic religion of humanity and high culture” espoused by Eliot and relevant faculty “was conceived of by most of its proponents not so much in opposition to Christianity as an extension of its liberating and uplifting spirit.”Footnote 4 Marsden clearly disagrees with their self-perception. In his view, the humanism which liberal Protestants espoused in the academy was not an extension of Christianity but an abnegation of its theological claims.
Reuben in some ways is responding to Marsden. She asserts that by emphasizing the fault of the liberal Protestants in the way that he does, Marsden has neglected to give attention to “the connection between educators' commitment to scientific technique and secularization.”Footnote 5 For her, religion in general and theology in particular were pushed aside because of the failure of a new scientific approach to bridge the gap between functional analysis of religion and even the most basic forms of belief, resulting in widespread student indifference, which together served only to confirm the “intellectual marginality” of religion.Footnote 6 If Reuben assigns any fault for the marginalization of religion, she attributes it to the inability of curriculum reformers to successfully incorporate a scientific approach to religion (focused here on the period 1890–1920).
In these two texts, we have divergent approaches to explaining the changes in the religion curriculum. On the one hand, Marsden's analysis of Harvard (as one of many schools he considers) does not provide a full investigation of the religious perspectives of those active in bringing change, and thus misses the complex movements of theology and politics behind the scenes motivating change. On the other hand, Reuben, in contrast to Marsden, is interested in following the influence of science and the failure of the later reformers to create a religion curriculum that met contemporary academic standards and retained relevance. Her analysis, while helpfully identifying the modern scientific approach that scholars wanted to embrace, does not do full justice to the previous theological model that was intentionally being left behind. Harvard was not just moving forward toward something new, it was deliberately rejecting something old.
This article proposes an analysis distinct from, but complementary to, both of these earlier approaches. Another way of responding to Marsden is to give careful consideration to the shifting role of theology and specifically to the milieu of the central figures urging change in the nineteenth-century context. This should be an interpretation that not only hears what these figures claim for themselves but takes account of the intensely political nature of religion in this era. Theology had become a veritable minefield, and as Harvard discovered early in the century, one false step could cost dearly.
Students at Harvard College in the early-nineteenth century were taught the “truths” of systematic theology during at least half of their undergraduate program of study—as had been the case since the school's founding. This was the common pattern among American colleges in this era. However, by mid-nineteenth century, three prominent Harvard presidents declared that their institution had no business being in the theology business. President Josiah Quincy penned a twenty-page statement of vision for the school in 1840, and in his very first sentence declared that “Harvard University is not a theological establishment.”Footnote 7 His successor, James Walker assented and argued that this principle was true across the board in higher education. “Of course,” Walker wrote in 1855, “it is no longer necessary that the religious teaching, or the religious discipline of colleges, should look to making men theologians.”Footnote 8 Theology was considered a relic of the past, or at least the domain of those engaged in providing a narrowly sectarian education—an enterprise viewed with open suspicion by these Harvard figures. President Charles Eliot by the 1870's affirmed, and ultimately expanded upon, the position articulated by his predecessors. He regularly asserted that “religious instruction of an exegetical or dogmatic character cannot well be offered to its students by an undenominational school.”Footnote 9 Quincy, Walker, and Eliot all possessed a politically savvy understanding of the importance of public perception, and this was a major factor shaping their agenda with regard to theology as an academic enterprise.
President Josiah Quincy (1829–1845)
While President Quincy was loathe to admit it, the Harvard that he inherited upon his appointment in 1829 was very much theological in orientation. In Quincy's estimation, this emphasis on theology was the cause of many of his administrative headaches. The theology that had been taught to Harvard students since 1805 by Profes-sor Henry Ware, Sr. reflected the distinctive and liberal principles of Unitarianism (in that year a Unitarian was appointed to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity, the oldest endowed chair in North America). The Unitarians suggested a revision of traditionally authoritative Christian doctrines, including teachings regarding human nature, the person and work of Christ, salvation, and even the being of God. As one might suspect, given the conflict between liberal Unitarianism and Trinitarian Christian doctrine, battles over Harvard's official theological position ensued. By the 1830's this still noisy debate over Harvard's politically incorrect stance was continuing to cost the school students. Conservatives targeted potential Harvard parents, who were “entreated not to jeopardize their children's hopes, both as respects the present and the future life, by subjecting them to the temptations and dangers to which an education at Harvard College would inevitably expose both their bodies and souls.”Footnote 10 Quincy spent his first few years in office trying to calm the situation and sought ways to attract more students to his shrinking and impoverished school, but to no avail. Harvard College was coming into dire financial straights, and Quincy was helpless to remedy the situation. Finally, the pragmatic solution to all his troubles appeared in the form of a physical impairment. When the ancient Unitarian Hollis Professor (now suffering from near blindness) retired after thirty-five years of service, Quincy gleefully refused to find a replacement. His inactivity set the standard for presidential lethargy on this issue, for despite repeated faculty protests, the Hollis Professorship was deliberately left unoccupied for over forty years, until it then reappeared in the removed context of the Divinity School—although even the ongoing existence of the Divinity School itself was threatened on several occasions in this era.
Quincy's plan, as clearly endorsed by his successors, was to get out of the theo-logy business. He correctly attributed many of his College's troubles to the public and constant concern voiced by conservatives regarding the shockingly liberal practice of a college teaching Unitarian beliefs to pliable undergraduates. Indeed, there seems to have been an increase in Calvinist anti-Harvard activity in the 1830s, some quarter century after the initial appointment of a Unitarian theologian. One widely circulated booklet echoed the sentiments felt by many in this era:
Whence has it come to pass that, from the unequalled advantages of a College, the property of the whole people of the Commonwealth, for which they have been so often and so liberally taxed, all the people are virtually excluded, except for the few who are Unitarians, and those who are willing to submit their sons to a probability, amounting almost to a certainty, of their becoming Unitarians? … What right have the Unitarians to the exclusive monopoly of Harvard University? Why is it that none but Unitarians can safely send their sons to the College of Massachusetts? … Children of the Pilgrims, where is the spirit of your fathers? People of Massachusetts, where is your famed, unyielding resistance of aggression, your unbending determination to vindicate your sacred rights?Footnote 11
Once Harvard no longer taught theology (because of its intentionally vacant professorship), Quincy went on a public relations campaign, asserting to any and all who would listen that Harvard did not teach Unitarian theology.
It is now more than sixteen years since I accepted office of President of Harvard College, and I here openly and unequivocally declare, that, so far from the influence of Harvard College being devoted to the propagation of Unitarianism, or the labors of its teachers being directed to this object, this has never, so far as I have seen, known, or believed, been made the chief or any special object of their thoughts or labors at all. For the purpose of avoiding, as much as possible, the communication of any peculiarities of religious opinion to the students, writings free from such an objection by the universal consent of all classes of Christians, such as ‘Paley's Evidences,' and ‘Butler's Analogy,' are selected as text books.Footnote 12
Quincy was correct in asserting the near universal acceptance of Butler and Paley in this era. These texts advocated the principles of natural religion and endorsed the Bible as a revealed document, but avoided engaging in the fully detailed nuances of systematic theology as an enterprise. However, Professor Ware's old lectures had moved beyond discussion of these noncontroversial texts and into the specific doctrines of Unitarian theology. A review of Ware's lectures and his attempt therein to convince students of the reasonableness and veracity of Unitarian dogma indicate that he indeed promulgated a particular theology.
What Quincy's statements make clear, other than the fact that he was willing to bend the truth, is that he was now, in 1845, able to make a significant number of these claims simply because he had recently altered the curriculum so that Unitarian theology (or any systematic theology) was no longer being taught in the College. While he could not deny the theological positions held by his largely Unitarian faculty, he was able to argue that these were not being explicitly taught to the students, since he had dismantled the theology courses for precisely these political and fiscal reasons. Quincy was a pragmatic administrator, and declared that he considered “it an incumbent duty of every officer of the institution to abstain from any act tending to bring within its walls discussions upon questions which the passions and interests of the community are divided.”Footnote 13 Thus, in bringing an end to theology in the college, Quincy was performing his “duty.” By happy coincidence, this obligation coincided with his personal view of theology as a subject. For in his inaugural address, he had declared his desire to “break the shackles of this ancient discipline [theology], to remove the obstacles from the path of the intellect.”Footnote 14
The complete removal of theology seems like quite a risk for Quincy to take, for such a radical maneuver might attract even more undesired attention, but he had few options. If Quincy had appointed a Trinitarian to the Hollis Chair (unlikely given his own leanings), Harvard's then Unitarian support base would have been in an uproar. At the same time, he could hardly afford to continue to stir up conservative resentment by appointing yet another Unitarian. So, he hoped that the best defense was no offense, so to speak. As it turned out, Quincy's plan was surprisingly effective. The public attacks from conservative Trinitarians virtually disappeared under his new policy. The only residual issue was the occasional critique of the school for failing to offer sufficient religious instruction to its students. On this issue a few faculty and members of the overseers were the loudest critics, but their concerns seem to have been largely ignored by the administration.
President James Walker (1853–1860)
Some ten years later, President Walker needed to find a solution to this lingering problem left to him by Quincy. In response to the continued internal requests urging expanded religious instruction, he created a new Chair of Christian Morals. While maintaining an historically minded concern not to stir up the old embers of doctrinal debate, he asserted that “this [new] Professorship is not properly a theological one.”Footnote 15 Walker asked, who would, or could, protest a professor offering moral instruction based upon the Bible? He provided stipulations that this new professor was to rely only upon broad principles provided by natural and special revelation to encourage ethical living. The Bible was considered safe fodder for teaching, and the guidelines for the Plummer Professor indicated that he was not to move beyond that uncontroversial realm and draw from the well of systematic or doctrinal theology.
Walker's plan of a new professorship grew out of a context of a decade of debates between the faculty, the Harvard Corporation and the Overseers, in which Walker himself had an important role. Before Walker was in office, the faculty, concerned over the vacant Hollis chair, had petitioned the Corporation (Harvard's most powerful governing body) in 1844 regarding “the want of a Professor of Systematic Theology.”Footnote 16 The Corporation failed to respond to the plea, and two years later the Overseers (Harvard's secondary governing body), after some urging from the faculty, decided to revisit the issue. The report of 1846, under then Overseer James Walker, noted that “the religious condition of the students is not as good now as it has been in times past.”Footnote 17 For previously, students had been subject to more “conscious influences of religious principles,” and it should be “questioned whether the College has kept pace with the community in a growing sense of the value of religious culture,” which is by and large considered “an indispensable part of a liberal education.” Ever aware of the danger lurking with regard to public controversy on religion, the committee did urge caution. “For obvious reasons, most of them originating in the religious differences which prevail, the College is obliged to rely on the old and universally acknowledged means of Christian culture, such as instruction in the evidences of Natural and Revealed religion.” They suggested a post akin to a “Pastor of the College,” who was to exert a general “religious influence” not only upon the students, but also upon the faculty.Footnote 18
That same year, President Everett, Walker's immediate predecessor, echoed this perspective in a letter to the faculty of the College. New to his office, Everett stated that “what observation I have been able to make of the state of the Institution … leads me to fear, that it is suffering under an almost total absence of religious influence, and that this defect is blighting its highest interests.”Footnote 19 Something had to be done to bolster the presence of religious instruction in the College. “The duty which I owe to my station in the University, to the young men for whose character we are responsible, to the extent of making every practicable effort for their moral improvement, and above all to our Common Master, has seemed to me to admit no compromise.”Footnote 20
The Overseers, led by Walker, continued to harp on this issue. They proceeded to compare the College's current situation “to its past history; to its origin, in the Christian faith, not less than in the love of learning, which distinguished its founders,” thereby indicating that they did not fully understand the current political concerns of the Corporation or the importance of avoiding additional religious controversy. Instead, they chastised the school's leadership for neglecting “the care, which was always taken, till within the last few years, to give the young men opportunities of instruction” in matters of religion. Harvard College, they said, “must not be so unfaithful to the associations, which hang about her name, as even to appear to undervalue the formation of character, and the highest elements in our natures.”Footnote 21 They wanted action and here indicated their new realization that they needed to provide not only a moral but also a political reason for action on the part of the Corporation. For if the school appeared to outsiders to have an insufficient interest in religion or character formation, then the old problems that had been resolved with discretion by President Quincy might return to haunt Harvard in a slightly modified fashion.
When Walker came into the Presidency on the heels of these events, he sought an agenda that balanced the desire for inclusion of religion with the political realities of the nineteenth-century religious landscape. He created a new professorship that was carefully designed to safely navigate these dangerous waters. In correspondence with the Chairman of the Committee on the Rules and Statutes of the new Plummer Professorship, Walker emphasized the importance of avoiding any appearance of partisanship. For this position, “sectarian action is not thought of. So contrary is every kind of sectarian action to the taste, the judgment, and the policy of the Corporation, that if this officer were to be justly charged with it, they would deem it sufficient grounds for removal.”Footnote 22 This was a bold claim for a Unitarian President who sat on a Corporation of Unitarian members that controlled a Divinity School with Unitarian faculty. Yet, despite the almost absurd nature of this assertion for mid-nineteenth century Harvard, it was still an astute political position to maintain. Walker was likely repeating these claims in an attempt to overcome previous perception problems. He indicated that with the Plummer Chair, sectarianism did not seem a potential danger, “because the Professorship is not properly a theological one.”Footnote 23 For, if this professor was not dealing with doctrinal or systematic theology, then how would he fall into sectarian debate? This is precisely why the Corporation wanted a new position, rather than filling the long-empty Hollis Chair. This new professorship was specifically designed to avoid the old theological hot spots, and as such could not “provide an excuse for doing nothing in the fear of doing something that was meant to be prohibited. We have had too much of that already, as regards the religious condition of the College.”Footnote 24
A few weeks later, Walker further delineated his vision of the Plummer Profes-sorship. He contrasted it with the older and now vacant position, explaining that “it is difficult to conceive of two professorships more unlike each other than the Hollis and Plummer Professorships. The incumbent of the former is to be continually employed in reading lectures on ‘Positive, Controversial, and Casuistical Divinity' [systematic theology] … What the incumbent of the latter is to do is wholly practical and devotional.”Footnote 25 Walker had successfully maneuvered through the hostile territory of religion and avoided the potential problems which had frozen action on the part of the Corporation for over a decade. The Plummer Professorship was a strategic triumph. As he noted, “it is believed that the friends of the College, and the public generally, do not wish to have dogmatic and controversial divinity taught at present to the undergraduates, as it must be, if the Hollis Professorship is filled, and its statutes obeyed.”Footnote 26 For this very reason, the Hollis Professorship was to remain vacant until 1882, when it reappeared at the Divinity School, rather than the College.
The increasing divide between the College and the Divinity School grew to a chasm in the mid-nineteenth century. Few people who work in today's recently renovated Divinity Hall would ever suspect that during this era, the building was almost turned into a sock factory. The same type of political motivations that moved the Corporation and President to avoid systematic theology in the College also caused them to advocate the separation of the Divinity School from Harvard. One of New England's manufacturing families was apparently eyeing the structure as an ideal facility for the production of men's hosiery, should such a “divorce” take place.Footnote 27
As early as 1831, under Quincy, there had been public discussions about the discontent of the Corporation regarding the relation of the Divinity School to Harvard University. The inchoate School, then only a decade and a half old, was considered by those in power to be something of a bastard child. According to Corporation member F. C. Gray, “the separation of the Theological Institution from the College was most important and desirable, perceiving how much prejudice against the College was caused by the union of it with this institution.”Footnote 28 Mr. Gray described the connection of the Divinity school to the University as “impolitic” in light of continuing Trinitarian hostility over Harvard's earlier theological shift toward Unitarianism. He assumed that the interests of the College, the older and more central body of the University, should be protected despite the consequences for the troublesome “Theological Department.”
This sentiment was echoed twenty years later by President Jared Sparks in correspondence with his predecessor, Edward Everett. “I agree entirely with the views expressed in your letter. I argued in that way when Divinity Hall was erected, and have never seen cause to change my opinion. Cambridge is not the proper place for the School, and the quicker it is removed the better for all parties and all interests concerned.”Footnote 29 During Sparks's tenure, great efforts were made to bring about the desired division. A report of the Board of Overseers on this issue asserted the advisability of division “on account of any embarrassments that now attend, or at some future time may grow out of, these relations.”Footnote 30 According to their analysis, the connection established between these two schools “was, from the very first, a matter of apprehension and regret to some of the friends of both Institutions.”Footnote 31 Although early patrons had been optimistic that the association could exist “without prejudice to the College as a whole, without alienating any of its friends, or opening any disturbing issues among the public,” in actuality “this generous hope” was not fulfilled.Footnote 32 This unfortunate union of Divinity and College proved “prejudicial to both,” having “impeded the success of the former, and brought into question the impartiality of the administration of the latter.”Footnote 33 Again, their concerns seemed primarily oriented toward the best interests of the College, fearing that “the general repute of the College has suffered from this cause,” for through this relationship, “the College proper incurs the odium of sectarian partiality.”Footnote 34
Although many close to the situation maintained that the “reciprocal influence of the School and the College is practically nothing,” the larger issue was the perception of the relation, by which the College suffered “an injury to its reputation.”Footnote 35 The Divinity School could potentially become, or some thought was already becoming, a public relations nightmare which might threaten the stability and status of the College. This is what drove the Corporation during the Walker administration to seek permission from the State Legislature to dissolve the relationship with the Divinity School. In the end, the Senate refused the request, but according to Sydney Ahlstrom, this had little impact upon the treatment of the Divinity School. President Walker's way of handling the situation “brought about a separation of the School, almost as complete, as if, like the Medical School, it were in another city.”Footnote 36 What the legislature would not permit by law, Walker accomplished in fact.
The point of this analysis is to draw out the extent to which decisions relating to religion at nineteenth-century Harvard were motivated by the issue of public perception. No one in a decision-making position at Harvard felt that the Divinity School was doing anything improper (for they were almost exclusively Unitarians). Rather, the fear of stirring up old controversies with the Trinitarians and the public unrest which followed those episodes are what motivated policy initiatives. The same principle can be applied to the broader policies of the College pertaining to religion. The decision to stay away from doctrinal theology (a minefield), while at the same time keeping religion as a presence through the Plummer Professorship (to avoid charges of secularism) proved politically expedient.
This story reveals that Quincy and Walker had brought about genuine change. As the eminent historian George H. Williams has noted, the early nineteenth century at Harvard was the era “when theology became differentiated as the primary concern of the Divinity School and was in consequence moved to the margin of the University.”Footnote 37 Quincy and Walker's subsequent efforts to sever relations with the Divinity School only underscored the message that theology was considered by Harvard to be a political liability.
President Charles W. Eliot (1869–1909)
President Walker's Plummer Professorship and its broad conception of religion was the guiding principle for the “Religious Instruction” offered by the College for several decades, until President Eliot later came to consider even such a vague affirmation of religion to be an inappropriate position for the school to espouse. For him, any claims founded upon the principles of special or even general revelation were anathema. Religious presuppositions such as these did not meet the epistemological standards that Eliot imposed on his University. Politics remained a motivation behind change, now with an emphasis not merely on content (avoiding doctrinal theology), but also on the broader application of proper scholarly methodology in religion.
Eliot wanted to free the educational experience from the authoritative control and religious agenda of organized Christianity. This was particularly important in relation to courses pertaining to religion specifically. As he explained, a true “university will not demand of its officers and students the creed, or press upon them the doctrine, of any particular religious organization.”Footnote 38 Eliot's 1886 address to the 19th Century Club of New York, “What Place Should Religion Have in a College?,” indicated that to take any sort of doctrinal stance, or even to offer “inculcation” of general religious principles would mean that a college did not fit in Eliot's desired “undenominational” category, for to ascend to this level, schools must take pains to eschew even the “appearance of partiality” in matters of religion.Footnote 39 In his estimation, religion should not be granted any kind of special status. In another address that year to the Unitarian Club of Boston, Eliot stated, “it seems to me that all colleges should try to exhibit in every department of research and every classroom, one and the same serious, candid, truth-loving spirit, no matter whether the subject in hand be philology, philosophy, history, natural science, or religion.”Footnote 40 Notice that Eliot sought to avoid the “appearance” of partiality. Just as with Quincy and Walker, perception, or politics, remained a key motivation for Eliot. Only now he sought to avoid not Trinitarian controversies but rather the impolitic position of a university appearing to have an epistemological bias.
Here was Eliot's real agenda for religion, he wanted it to be handled in a “scientific” fashion. Eliot realized that his model was not an orthodox proposal. “The scientific conception of God is, of course, not the same as that held in any organized church. Nevertheless it is a religious conception.”Footnote 41 He recognized that “there is danger” in this approach, in that “respectful neutrality should appear to be indifferent to religion,” but he felt that such concerns would only be asserted by the narrow-minded. In Eliot's view, only those with dogmas to defend would label an education based on respectful neutrality as “Godless.” Eliot argued that such a label “pays no allegiance to ‘our' one truth in religion.”Footnote 42 To those with less biased sympathies, however, the impartiality of his “scientific” model was clearly superior, for this model allowed religion to be taught in accordance with the same standards applied to any other discipline, and this was the only acceptable approach for Eliot.
In his 1878 annual report, Eliot affirmed that religious subjects held a valid place in the university curriculum, but they had to be handled in a specific fashion to avoid regression back to the old approach of inculcation. Thus, “the literature and criticism of the New Testament, ethics, natural theology, philosophy in its relation to religion, ethnic religions, and the history of religions are all, when properly defined and treated, matters of pure science.”Footnote 43 The term “scientific approach” became Eliot's mantra in relation to religion, and he used it frequently when discussing his model for the scholarly treatment of religion. It became the standard by which he evaluated any methodology, and he insisted that religion match the standards applied to other subjects.
In the new courses on religion developed during Eliot's administration, Christ-ianity and its scriptures were to be studied under the same methodology applied to any other religion. In his estimation, any special status granted to Christianity would bias the academic enterprise and simultaneously restrict academic freedom. Even at the Divinity School, where theology as a discipline had been relegated decades earlier, Eliot now specifically encouraged the study of “religion” over that of “theology.” Thus, when Eliot was making plans for his revamp of the Divinity School in 1879, he wrote to Francis Greenwood Peabody that he encouraged following the method of “comparative religion (which is a purely scientific subject like history).”Footnote 44 He defended his stance by asserting that “it is impossible to teach Christian dogmatic theology to any purpose in a university which declares itself unsectarian, without impairing public confidence in the genuineness of the impartiality which the institution professes.”Footnote 45 In the words of one of Eliot's often repeated phrases, “a university is not founded on a sect,” and he sought above all else to keep his University from espousing any particular religious position. This pursuit of perceived “impartiality” is the same concern that motivated Quincy and Walker to avoid the “odium of sectarianism.” Eliot, however, advanced this pursuit by applying the same political concern to the methodology of religious scholarship, not merely the content of instruction in religion.
Eliot's revisions did not go unnoticed, and critics labeled him a secularizer. He responded publicly by engaging in a debate with the conservative James McCosh of Princeton (an outspoken advocate of “religious education”) in 1886. Eliot insisted that functionally there were only two kinds of higher education: the “denominational” and the “undenominational.” The former, in his characterization, offered a narrow-minded indoctrination, whereas the latter pursued truth unrestrained by predetermined religious formulations. As he explained, “religious instruction of an exegetical or dogmatic character … cannot well be offered to its students by an undenominational college, in its programme or list of courses of instruction.”Footnote 46 McCosh responded by presenting a different model. In his estimation, the two possible kinds of education were the “religious” or the “irreligious.” The former was for him not by necessity denominational or doctrinal in any way. He wished to “inculcate religion without interfering with anyone's conscience” by teaching religion “of a thoroughly catholic character.” He thus attacked Eliot's ideal of the “unsectarian” college, arguing that Harvard's practice “does not mean that they teach religion without sectarianism—which is perfectly possible, I think—but that they teach no religion at all.”Footnote 47 One word in this exchange points to the essential difference between these two presidents. McCosh still desired to “inculcate,” whereas Eliot could not tolerate the perpetuation of that old educational pattern in religion. McCosh thus suggested that for the sake of truth in advertising, Harvard should revise its signage, and “over the gates of this model university might be written, ‘All knowledge imparted here, except religious.' ”Footnote 48 Eliot countered that religion could be taught as an academic subject, but no single stance was to be advocated, for the “undenominational” college “must avoid as far as possible even the appearance of partiality or injustice in religious matters.”Footnote 49
McCosh's view was certainly the common one in that era. Eliot himself recognized this, as evidenced by the fact that, unlike McCosh, he refused to publish his half of their debate. And yet, while Eliot advocated a lonely cause in 1886, his perspective was ultimately triumphant in the American academy. Quincy, Walker, and Eliot were deliberately moving Harvard away from espousal of a theological stance. For them, the teaching of theology constituted institutional advocacy of particular theological positions. Each eschewed pursuits that could potentially give their school the “odium of sectarian partiality.” As administrators, they realized that the institutional advocacy of religious particulars carried significant political consequences. All three men deliberately distanced their school from the enterprise of theology, but only Eliot replaced it with the newly distinct academic pursuit of religion, evidenced by the establishment late in his administration of Harvard's new division of study “The History of Religions” in 1902. Here Eliot demonstrated that while Quincy and Walker were simply seeking to avoid potentially divisive content in what was taught in the College, Eliot moved beyond them to consider what new methodology in religion was appropriate for the university context. This move promoted a resurgence of the study and teaching of religion at Harvard, now under the rubric of scholarly investigation, rather than inculcation of belief.
