University Cultural Wars: Rival Protestant Pieties in Early Twentieth-Century Princeton

Abstract

Contrary to conventional wisdom, liberal Protestants, not fundamentalists, attempted to preserve Princeton University's traditional religious mission during the rapid intellectual and social change reshaping American higher education in the early twentieth century. In fact, when fundamentalists in the university community demanded the secularisation of the undergraduate programme, liberal Protestants spurned their efforts. Although American liberal Protestantism gradually dissolved into the surrounding secular culture over the course of the twentieth century, the conflict between the rival pieties of liberal and conservative Protestants reveals how and why liberal Protestantism was able to maintain hegemony over one key institution of American culture – the university – well into the mid-twentieth century.