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Liberal Education Imperiled3 1 7higher education, those influences do not affect most colleges. They are fewindeed, and we could conclude they are ineffectual and not much of a threatto the purpose of higher education. By the author’s admission, religion doesnot have a role inside academe so it is hard to understand how there may bethat particular threat emanating from within. We ought not to dismiss thefunction of religion in higher education, however. It has had an important,and positive, impact in the past.Kronman notes that there were three stages of higher education: the ageof piety, the age of secular humanism, and the modern age, the latter of whichbegins in the 1960s and consists of the rejection of the importance of themeaning of life as a basis of study. The age of piety was one of dogmatism; theage of secular humanism is one in which dogmas were not taken for grantedand there was a more serious study of the great works of Western civilization. 9The age of secular humanism, in which there was a separation of church andeducation, is clearly the era the author prefers. Before considering the meritsof his argument, we should reflect on our past, our ancient faith.A Brief History of Higher EducationNo discussion of higher education would be complete without a look at itshistory, especially in the context of the United States. Our project here is tooutline the development of higher education and determine the proper role,if any, of religion in higher education. Many religious conservatives yearn fora return of the Harvard of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whichwas supposedly a golden age of education. 10 The American college was shapedby a Protestant heritage and the university system was built on the foundationof Protestant sects. However, Christianity was displaced effortlessly.Institutions like Yale, Princeton, and Harvard abandoned their commitmentto Christ to pursue academic excellence. 119Kronman, Education’s End, 46–47.10By conservatives, I am speaking more specifically about evangelical Protestants. These conservativeslook back on the glory days of higher education in the seventeenth century when colleges such asHarvard adhered to their religious foundations. In reality, these were not the glory years at Harvard.It had horrible beginnings. Its first master acted in ways that can only be called tyrannical, and thatincluded the beating of one of his students. The conditions were so unbearable that many students in1638–39 deserted the college. The experience actually delayed the development of higher educationin America. See Joe W. Kraus, “The Development of a Curriculum in the Early American Colleges,”History of Education Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1961): 64.11Nathan O. Hatch and Michael S. Hamilton, “Can Evangelicalism Survive Its Success?,” ChristianityToday, October 5, 1992, 30; George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University (New York: