The Bible was once highly valued in the curriculum of the first universities founded in America. Harvard’s original motto which can be seen in the front room on the third floor of the Harvard Club in New York was “Veritas pro Christo et pro eclessia” (Truth for Christ and the Church). Yale’s motto is “Lux et Veritas” (Light and Truth). Up until the 19th century, knowing Hebrew and ancient Greek was essential to get in to Harvard found in 1636 and Yale founded in 1701. The Congregationalist ministers who founded Yale wanted that “Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences who through the blessing of God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State.” Furthermore, students had to “live religious, godly and blameless lives according to the rules of God’s Word, diligently reading the Holy Scriptures, the fountain of light and truth; and constantly attend upon all the duties of religion, both in public and secret.” In the mid-18th century, approximately two-thirds of the graduates of Yale University went into the ministry.
Something strange then happened in American universities starting in the early 1800s culminating in a dramatic shift in the mission of universities over the next 150 years. While it started in the early 1800s, it was Charles Eliot, when he became President of Harvard in 1869 that accelerated the university’s shift in mission. For example, Eliot appointed Dean Christopher Langdell as the first Dean of Harvard Law School in 1870. Langdell removed Sir William Blackstone Commentaries on the Laws of England which had been the standard teaching text in Law Schools. Blackstone (1723-1780) was a recognized legal English scholar who believed that the Ten Commandments should be at the heart of his Commentaries. He believed that mankind was created by God and granted rights by God. Man’s law must be based on God’s law, which was the basic concept in the Declaration of Independence. Dean Langdell reversed Blackstone’s belief in the supremacy of God’s law by teaching man’s law as supreme when he introduced the case study method of law. Case law introduced the notion of moral relativism into the study of law instead of the prior absolutes in law. Starting in 1890, other law schools started to follow the case study method, which has become standard teaching.
Eliot oversaw the end of many longstanding requirements that involved the Bible including the end of compulsory daily chapel in 1886. This started a trend which other universities followed to eliminate mandatory daily chapel, including Yale in 1926 and reducing the role of the Bible in colleges.. Gradually, the formal study of the Bible got integrated into “Religious Studies” where it became one of many religions studied as if all religions are equal.
But the Bible is making a comeback now in the 21st century at the Ivy League Colleges in a very interesting way. On the Princeton campus, which was the first campus that Christian Union went to in 2002, there are now 400 of the 4,000 or so students or 10 percent of the students at Princeton doing a very detailed and methodical study of the books of the Bible such as the Letter to the Romans in voluntary, not for credit course written by Christian Union. On other Ivy League campuses, that were started afterwards there are the same active voluntary Bible studies that are growing in popularity. Since Christian Union writes its own Bible study materials so that we can incorporate the latest rigorous scholarship, but we also make the material relevant and applicable to the daily lives of students. It is significant that students engage in our Bible studies voluntarily, on top of their regular heavy academic load because they have such a hunger to learn what the Bible has to say. In one small group study led by one of our employees, four of the twelve young women had never before owned a Bible, so they were given ESV study bibles to study the New Testament book of Hebrews this fall. The students are intellectually curious, and when presented with the robust scholarship on Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament, they take a deeper look at religious belief that they may have passed over in the past.
What these students discover, much like what the founders of these great universities understood, is that there is no better foundation for life and scholarship than the Bible.
We have developed an annual competition between Ivy League Colleges on performing Bible
We have developed an annual competition between Ivy League Colleges on performing Bible memorization The Spoken Word Contest. Students—or teams of up to four students—who enter the contest and are selected as finalists will present, in a creative spoken word format, from memory, a Biblical text from one particular passage or from a range of passages in the Old and/or New Testaments.
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