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Liberal Education Imperiled3 2 1of sectarianism—especially among the Baptists—these schools became notonly more ideologically rigid on the administrative side, but also less attachedto their community. Administration came increasingly under the control ofindividuals from outside the community and even outside the states in whichthe institutions were located. They also drew more denominationally friendlystudents from outside the local community. This led to increased monitoringof what constituted orthodox faith on campus. The faculty, college presidents,and other employees were closely monitored for “doctrinal impurity.” 23The decline of liberal education before the Civil War does not explainwhat colleges looked like at the time of the Revolution, or more precisely,how they were influenced by the Revolutionary spirit. The rationalist Revolutioninfluenced the Protestant religions in the newly constituted states.Two developments are especially worth noting. First, reason was acceptedas a legitimate “supplement to the authority of scripture.” 24 Second, becausereason was a complement to faith, institutions and their pious administratorsaccepted reason as an authority. They even adopted as a part of their faith theLockean standard of a social compact and limited government. The AmericanFounding, then, enlisted a variety of sectarians not to advance a country forChrist, but to secure the inalienable rights of all. This was not the approach ofearly Christians in the colonies, where reason was replaced by the doctrinesof grace and the gospel: “the consequence of this [earlier] view was an earlytendency…to disparage reason and learning and to elevate the dangerouspassions connected with fanaticism and persecution.” 25 Seventeenth-centuryPuritan theology represented a rejection of learning rather than its propagation.The dedication to a “by faith alone” theology fostered an “irrationalspirituality.” 26 This hostility to reason did not continue indefinitely, nor, as wehave already noted, was it evident in all places.The acceptance of human reason began to emerge in places such as Harvard,and the pagan philosophers were not found wanting. Harvard took Aristotle’sEthics seriously, and his works were admired. Reason became respected “as alegitimate path to God’s order and law.” 27 Respect for the Catholic tradition of23Ibid., 371. The narrowing of the mind to make room for a more sectarian education was the “originalstumbling block” to the liberal arts and intellectual inquiry. See Linda Eisenmann, “ReclaimingReligion: New Historiographic Challenges in the Relationship of Religion and American HigherEducation,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Autumn 1999): 297.24West, “Transformation of Protestant Theology,” 187. West is here referring to Protestant approachesto Christianity in particular.25Ibid., 195.26Ibid., 196.27Ibid.