4 - The Legacy of Higher Education

Summary

Higher education in England and in America also arose from Judeo-Christian religion and its speech. Here, the focus turns from Protestants to Catholics, because the establishment of higher education in continental Europe and in England was by Roman Catholics. Because universities are largely secular today, it is easy to forget that the oldest universities were founded by a Judeo-Christian faith with a heavy focus on educating Roman Catholic ministers and canon lawyers, and that their curricula and activities were pervasively religious. The same is true of the oldest universities in Europe – the Universities of Bologna, Salamanca, Paris, and others. Only after dozens of European universities had been established by Catholics did the Reformation bring Protestant colleges to England and to America. What was religious about early higher education was its message and perspective – its religious speech in the forms of teaching, reading, questioning, defending – adding a religious message and perspective to Greco-Roman classical studies. Early universities were founded by church officials, designed primarily to train prelates or ministers, taught with specified church-approved texts from a religious perspective, and presided over by bishops’ appointees or other ministers. Colonial American colleges followed the religious path of the early English universities.