Crafting the institutional history of a college or seminary presents manifold challenges. Often one succumbs to the temptation to emphasize a “bricks and mortar” story, noting how the physical presence of a school expanded over time. Or one chronicles an uncritical, triumphalist tale, glossing over issues that might tarnish an idealized image, diminishing the value of the book as a fundraising tool. Another common pitfall is to focus on the grand achievements of distinguished graduates, presuming that they owe their success only to the school.

Moorhead rejects these approaches, opting instead to locate this bicentennial account of Princeton Theological Seminary, his alma mater and professional home for three decades, in the broader, but rich intellectual and cultural context of American religious history. He succeeds remarkably well, especially in his presentation of the “old” Princeton, the seminary that flourished from 1812 until it was drawn into the fundamentalist-modernist upheaval of the 1920s. His account provides a prism through which to refract many major currents of American Protestant life, particularly that wing shaped by the Reformed tradition. Princeton Seminary's story thus becomes the story of Reformed America, from contention over revivals and challenges to Calvinist orthodoxy in the quarter century after the seminary's founding to the debates over Darwinian theory, biblical inerrancy, and the use of historical-critical method of biblical interpretation in the quarter century leading to the seminary's 1912 centennial.

In Moorhead's telling, one central theme propels the seminary's leaders such as Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge and dominates its ethos from its founding until the internal contention of the 1920s. That theme is a passion for good order integral to Calvin's theological system. Hence when Old School and New School divisions ruptured American Presbyterianism in the 1837, the seminary sought to avoid identifying with either so as to maintain order and the stability it represented. However, when faced with the inevitable, Princeton identified with the Old School as being more resonant with the Reformed heritage.

Once Princeton aligned with the Old School, its identity became entwined with assuring that it, too, remained committed to good order. In time, as Moorhead demonstrates, that became an unyielding insistence on doctrinal purity embodied in the Old School understanding of the Westminster Confession. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the so-called Princeton Theology of Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield held sway, the seminary stood as a bastion of orthodoxy to resist new theological currents, from those associated with Horace Bushnell to liberal approaches emanating from German thinkers like Adolf von Harnack and Albrecht Ritschl. Yet Princeton professors were well versed in the thought they opposed. Moorhead repeatedly reminds readers that Princeton Seminary faculty were second to none in their breadth of knowledge and familiarity with every theological impulse.

In time, other forces within the larger religious culture meant that internal contention threatened Princeton Seminary. By the 1920s, contention undermined the good order that had sustained “old” Princeton, with a minority of faculty voices offering fresh ways to be faithful to Calvinist orthodoxy while embracing new theoretical and methodological ways of understanding. For Princeton, dissension brought schism, with J. Gresham Machen epitomizing the uncompromising adherence to a narrow orthodoxy when he (and several likeminded professors) resigned from the faculty. In turn, Machen helped establish Westminster Theological Seminary and a denomination called the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Moorhead's focus on intellectual history means we get little sense of how this dissension directly affected theological education at Princeton or how those preparing for ordained ministry during these years found their own vocations challenged by it. But in Moorhead's analysis, a “new” Princeton emerged, one that would struggle to engage the Reformed tradition and bring it in conversation with the larger theological world of the twentieth century. No more would Princeton see itself as an isolated bulwark to protect a static theological system of belief.

At the center of this refocusing was John McKay, Princeton's president from 1936 to 1959. McKay's years as an educator/missionary in Latin America gave him an international and ecumenical perspective that “old” Princeton disdained, while his study in Europe that brought contact with Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and especially Miguel de Unamuno bestowed an appreciation for neo-orthodoxy or what some called the “new Reformation” theology. Indeed, Moorhead suggests that neo-orthodoxy, because of its reassertion of divine transcendence and the depths of human limitation, became a bridge that allowed the seminary to affirm its passion for ordered orthodox belief even as it embraced the contemporary world as the arena for proclaiming the Christian message.

Moorhead summarizes how the “new” Princeton reached out to both past and present, stressing sustained systematic theological reflection while celebrating the social sciences and pastoral theology through vignettes on the scholarly focus of many faculty who came to Princeton during the McKay years and those of James I. McCord, his successor. Among the more distinguished were biblical scholars Bruce Metzger and Bernard Anderson. These sketches are impressive, but lack the depth of critical analysis that Moorhead brought to his discussion of earlier figures such as Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge (and his sons), and B. B. Warfield. Later contentious issues, such as the role of women in ministry and on the seminary faculty, receive only cursory treatment. Moorhead does carefully sketch the larger context that framed Princeton's life as it evolved into a constructive pluralistic environment, reminding readers that Princeton historian Lefferts Loetscher had earlier captured the multifaceted character of the Presbyterian Reformed tradition in what he called the “broadening church.”

Meticulously documented, Moorhead's study is a model of institutional intellectual history, leaving others to explore how this intellectual heritage impacted generations who received training for professional ministry there and how, despite its unabashed Presbyterian and Reformed foundation, Princeton opened its doors to women and men from a multitude of religious backgrounds.