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3 2 2 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3learning in philosophy and science created an openness to the basic authors ofpublic right, such as John Locke. The lesson of this period is that as the AmericanRevolution approached, higher education was increasingly grounded inboth reason and revelation. There was little pride in the mere irrationality offaith that we find in many Protestant denominations today.Interest in the importance of colleges and of higher education increasedduring the Revolutionary period. The founding of colleges coincided withthe advance of the Revolutionary spirit, which was not strictly theological.The colleges, though certainly religious in focus and instruction, were notausterely religious. As mentioned above, they accepted students regardlessof faith. Dartmouth’s graduating class of 1799 had only one person publiclyprofess to be a Christian. At Yale in 1796, only one member of the seniorclass claimed to be a believer, and at Williams College of Massachusetts, fiveof ninety-three graduates identified themselves as Christians. Indeed, fewerthan half of all antebellum students were professing Christians. In 1790,approximately ten percent of all Americans professed membership in a Christianchurch. 28 We may say that American colleges in the era of the Revolutionwere religious and evangelical, in the sense that they instructed students inmatters of reason and revelation, but did not limit the class to believers orbelievers of a certain denominational stripe. They were godly institutions inthe most general sense. Parents usually sent their children to colleges with theexpectation that the experience would make them more open to God’s Word.What is perhaps remarkable about this is that the colleges formed in the timeof the Revolution were open to Enlightenment rationalism and found reasonsupportive of the Christian faith. 29Liberal Education at the American FoundingProtestant theology came to support the principles of the American Revolution,and eventually adopted as a portion of its theology the social-compact28Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 63;Ringenberg, Christian College, 58, 62; McAnear, “College Founding in the American Colonies,” 24.The toleration of student beliefs in those days is much different from today’s version, where the fundamentalistschools are far more aggressive and boastful in their demands on the students. For example,the catalog at Bob Jones University currently asserts that any student who “in the opinion of theUniversity does not fit into the spirit of the institution, regardless of whether or not he conforms to thespecific rules and regulations of the University,” may be expelled. See Ringenberg, Christian College,178.29Ringenberg, Christian College, 61–62, 68.