Harvard has often been referred to as "godless Harvard." This is
far from the truth. The fact is that Harvard is and always has been
concerned with religion. This volume addresses the reasons for
this. The story of religion at Harvard in many ways is the story of
religion in the United States. This edition clarifies this
relationship. Furthermore, the question of religion is central not
only to the religious history of Harvard but to its very corporate
structure and institutional evolution. The volume is divided into
three parts and deals with the Formation of Harvard College in 1636
and Evolution of a Republic of Letters in Cambridge (Volume
1,"First Light"); Religion in the University, the Foundations of a
Learned Ministry and the Development of the Divinity School (Volume
2, The "Augustan Age"); and the Contours of Religion and Commitment
in an Age of Upheaval and Globalization (Volume 3, "Calm Rising
Through Change and Through Storm"). The story of the central role
played by religion in the development of Harvard is a neglected
factor in Harvard's history only touched upon in a most cursory
fashion by previous publications. For the first time, George H.
Williams tells that story as embedded in American culture and
subject to intense and continuing academic study throughout the
history of the University to this day. Replete with extensive
footnotes, this edition will be a treasure to future historians,
persons interested in religious history and in the development of
theology, at first clearly Reformed and Protestant, later
ecumenical and interfaith. Further information: Volume 1 - First
Light Divinings traces one of the threads in the larger story of
Western education, that of the role played by religion, first
defining and then weaving itself into the history of education at
Harvard College and its divinity school and into the larger
development of the university. This first of three volumes of that
history concerns Harvard and a "culture of colleges," a kind of
"first light" laid down for what would become the formation of
Harvard College in 1636 and would lead to "a republic of letters"
in Cambridge. This would become for the nation a model of
church/community, governance, and education. This story was taken
up first by rectors and presidents of the college like Increase
Mather in the eighteenth century and Josiah Quincy in the
nineteenth century, later by scholars such as Samuel Eliot Morison
in the twentieth century. This book is the first to tell that story
from the perspective of the role played by religion in the life of
the university. Volume 2 - The Augustan Age: This volume picks up
the story of religion at Harvard College from where it was left in
the previous volume, from a state of division in theological
understanding and the subsequent issues for moral order in society.
Volume 2 carries us from the presidency of John Thornton Kirkland
(1810-28) through that of President A(bbott) Lawrence Lowell
(1909-33), into the presidency of Nathan Marsh Pusey (1953-71). It
is an "Augustan Age" in that this period of years is characterized
by three institutional innovations. First, the period gives birth
to forces that propel Harvard College to become a private
university of national and then international renown. This
development is a part of the story of the separation of church and
state in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and in the United
States. Second, this period covers the founding and unfolding of
the Harvard Divinity School, attendant as it was to the streams of
intellectual history coursing through American culture. Third, the
period is also about the beginning and formation of The Memorial
Church, all the more striking in light of Congregational polity and
the symbolic significance of the gathering of a "Church within the
Walls" of Harvard College. Volume 3 - Calm Rising through Change
and through Storm The title for this third volume comes from the
"Ode to the Sons of Fair Harvard," by Samuel Gilman, A.B. 1811. It
gives voice to life in the university as three social movements
dominated the last half of the twentieth century. These were the
civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and the anti-Vietnam
War protest. Each of these climaxed in the late 1960s, the effects
of each reached throughout theological reflection and religious
life at Harvard and beyond. Each will prove to be infused by the
four theological themes identified in the previous volume: concern
for comparative ecclesiology, interest in world religions, research
into the psychology of religion, and commitment to a social gospel.
These three movements have continued to affect our understanding of
individuals and groups in society, of the nature of the person, and
of the interactions of communities with one another. Reaching back
to the earliest disputes in the college, these issues shaped
questions of inclusion and exclusion in community, of the nature of
a covenant of works and that of grace as applied to persons and
social structures, and of an understanding of the nature of the
renewal of persons and social order.
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