Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford—Once Christian?
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, May 8, 2025
Many of
America’s and England’s oldest universities were established as religious
institutions, but now they advocate evolutionary thinking. What happened?
The Radcliffe Camera at Oxford
University, built between 1737–1749, was originally used to house the Radcliffe
Science Library.
Most of the colleges
in the United States that started over 300 years ago were Bible-proclaiming
schools originally. Harvard and Yale (originally Puritan) and Princeton
(originally Presbyterian) once had rich Christian histories.
Harvard was
named after a Christian minister. Yale was started by clergymen, and
Princeton’s first year of class was taught by Reverend Jonathan Dickinson.
Princeton’s crest still says “Dei sub numine viget,” which is Latin for
“Under God she flourishes.”
In the
United Kingdom, the earliest university-type establishment was probably the
College, established by the Celtic preacher St. Illtyd in about AD 500. Oxford
University was established by various religious orders. Likewise, Cambridge
University was established in 1209 by Christian leaders.
Saint
Andrews, Scotland’s oldest university, was founded principally for the teaching
and study of theology. The commitment of these religious founders might be
suspect, but many of the later colleges were founded by Bible-believing
Christians. The University of Edinburgh had a thoroughly evangelical beginning,
being founded under Presbyterian auspices.
Even my alma
mater, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC), had Christian
roots when it was founded in 1869. Our school motto was Deo Volente,
which is Latin for “God willing.” By the time I attended SIUC in the 1990s,
there was almost no vestige of that Christian heritage left.
In fact, the
university emphatically teaches evolution over millions of years and blatantly
rejects the possibility of biblical authority (that the Bible is
true—authoritative—and that we need to adjust our beliefs and actions to its
teaching).
So what
happened to cause so many schools to abandon their Christian roots?
Accepting a naturalistic worldview and compromising
Scripture were the first cracks in these universities’ Christian foundations.
These cracks led to the collapse of their Christian heritage.
Changing Worldviews
The book The
Sacred and the Secular University (2000) is an insightful study by Roberts
and Turner, two secular historians who show no evidence of overt Christian
bias. They discuss the change in American universities from the Christian
worldview to naturalistic philosophy. They point out that universities across
the board fell first in the area of science:
“In
the sciences, the critical departure from this hegemonic construct took place
in the 1870s.” They add that “‘methodological naturalism’[1]
was the critical innovation” (p. 11).[2]
Naturalism
opposes God’s Word in Genesis, the foundational book of the Bible. As Psalm
11:3 states, “When the foundation is destroyed, what can
the righteous do?” Cracks in the foundation led to a collapse of the
Christian worldview at these schools.
A Fractured Foundation
The cracks
first appeared in the late 1700s and early 1800s, culminating with the
influence of Charles Lyell’s three volumes of Principles of Geology in
the 1830s. Belief in an old-earth seriously wounded widespread acceptance of
the Flood and the biblical chronology, and Lyell just “finished off the victim
and nailed the coffin shut,” as AiG historian Dr. Terry Mortenson says.
This
old-earth belief permeated universities by the mid 1800s, setting the stage for
Darwin’s evolutionary model in 1859 (Origin of Species) and his later
work on human evolution The Descent of Man (1871), both of which
required long ages. After Christian universities adopted these compromises, the
slide from biblical Christianity to naturalism soon followed.
Roberts and
Turner explain why Christians compromised with naturalistic scientists:
“The
determination of scientists to bring phenomena within the purview of
naturalistic description evoked a mixed response from Christians outside the
scientific community. … Many clergymen and theologians—most commonly those who
embrace a ‘liberal’ approach to Christian thought—sought to avoid that outcome
by joining scientists in embracing an immanentist conception of
God’s relationship to the world [emphasis added]” (p. 31).[3]
An immanent
position holds that deity would be bound within the universe, which is what
these naturalistic scientists were teaching.
Undoubtedly,
compromise with belief in an ancient earth and evolution contributed greatly to
the spiritual downfall of these institutions.
Leaving the Bible Behind
Once
Christians began adopting a naturalistic view, including evolution or earth
history over millions of years, it didn’t take long for the rest of their faith
to come crumbling down. They had given up the Bible as their starting point and
had accepted naturalistic science instead.
Genesis is
written as literal history; so it should be taken as such.[4]
The demise of former Christian universities should be a lesson to individuals,
churches, Christian colleges and universities, and seminaries to stand firm on
the Bible’s clear teachings and beware of any doctrine that is not biblically
sound.
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3–4, NKJV).
earned both his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Southern Illinois at
Carbondale in mechanical engineering.
Originally here:
https://answersingenesis.org/christianity/harvard-yale-princeton-oxford-once-christian/;
June 27, 2007; from Answers Magazine July – September 2007. Republished
by permission.
[1]
Methodological naturalism says that scientists must do their
work as if there is no God and that everything they study must be explained by
three things: time, chance, and the laws of nature. Such a methodology for
studying the physical world rules out the miraculous and providential works of
God in His creation, even before investigation begins.
[2]
Jon Roberts and James Turner,
The Sacred and the Secular University, Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 11.
[3]
Ibid. p. 31.
[4]
See Steven W. Boyd, “The
Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell the Story,” ICR Impact
Article #377, Nov. 2004.
