The Unredeemed Liberal Arts in Christian Colleges (Part 2): And What We Can Learn from One Earlier Attempt to Save Them

As Part 1 of this post series mentioned, the liberal arts in early American Christian liberal arts colleges were usually not taught Christianly. By that, I mean they were not framed or analyzed within the larger Christian story or set forth as serving the theologically-articulated end of restoring the image of God and helping further our created purposes (see, for example, Yale College’s famous 1828 nontheological defense of the classical curriculum here). In addition, most liberal arts courses also relied heavily on pagan or secular texts.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, most Protestant liberal arts college curricula became more Christian in one crucial respect. Contrary to historical precedent, they started requiring Bible courses. This blog post briefly recounts this revolutionary curricular moment, some history behind it, and how it contributed to a key element that persists within Christian institutions trying to apply their Christian mission to their curriculum.

The Trend-Setting Bible-Teaching Protestant Institutions

Between the end of the Civil War and 1900, a major curricular change occurred at many colleges, especially in the 1880s. For example, in Howard College’s (today’s Samford University) 1875-76 catalog one will not find the Bible mentioned (seniors took the usual capstone course on moral science). Yet, by 1900, the Howard College course catalog proclaimed, “The Bible is the greatest of all books, and no man has a finished education without some knowledge of its teachings” (p. 17). Its 1900 schedule also required Biblical Literature courses for all juniors and seniors.¹

Interestingly, this curricular revolution was not led by the pace-setting Ivy League universities, although they did eventually end up shaping its future substance and direction. Instead, numerous other smaller and less prestigious Christian institutions led the way in making this radical curricular change. The earliest institution that I found that listed a Bible course in the course of study or official curriculum is Hope College (see their 1865 course catalog). Hope required sophomores through seniors to take courses related to sacred literature (with the senior year including the traditional courses on Evidences of Christianity and Moral Philosophy with the latter scandalously using a text from a Baptist, Francis Wayland, instead of a Reformed author). Eighteen years later in their 1883-84 catalog, they changed to require courses in Sacred Literature all four years (the last two years were the traditional course on Evidences of Christianity and Butler’s Analogy). This incorporation took place long before Ivy League trendsetters such as Yale started first requiring an undergraduate Bible course in 1888.

Similarly, 1966 Free Will Baptist institution, Hillsdale College, required “weekly lessons in English Bible” all four years in its 1866 catalog.  In the following decades, Hope and Hillsdale had plenty of company. For example, Baylor University went from only mentioning the Bible as being part of Sunday School education from 1865 through 1878 to listing it as part of the liberal arts curriculum in the 1879-80 catalog.

Likewise, here is Emory College’s (present-day Emory University) academic catalog from 1879-80. Once again, we see that by 1880, in addition to the usual liberal arts of English, Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, students were required to take a Bible course for the first three years. By 1890 the Emory College catalog declared, “The courses in English and the Bible are required for any degree at Emory College. Our mother tongue and our holy religion occupy the first place in the work of this institution” (p. 17). Of course, that is no longer the case at Emory University.

In light of this evidence, we should dismiss as inaccurate historian James P. Wind’s conclusion that during the late nineteenth century “the sacred book became increasingly unable to provide a common foundation for the main varieties of believers who claimed it.”² In fact, the opposite is the case if one looks at the course catalogs of Protestant colleges. Now, what produced this change needs more serious historical study, but I would venture to guess that a little competition from the Bible school movement that emerged in the 1880s probably helped.³

Thus, Yale College Professor William Rainey Harper’s famous call in 1887 to extend beyond devotional study to more academic study of the Bible is more the culmination of an earlier groundswell than an initial announcement of a new movement. Still, his talk likely gave elite permission for this curricular switch to other mainline Protestant institutions. In 1883-84 the Congregationalist Carleton College (MN) still had the old liberal arts core with no Bible. The usual Evidences of Christianity and Moral Philosophy courses were taught during their senior year. Yet, by 1894 and 1895, they started requiring Bible courses all semesters for the first two years. Similarly, by 1887, Macalester College required three years of Bible.

New Christian colleges that started from that time also made the Bible central. In its catalog from its first year of existence (1891-92), Concordia College (Morehead) proclaimed,

Believing that the Bible is the fountain of truth unto salvation, that Christ is the corner-stone of the church and the Savior of men, and that the future of the church must be maintained by properly taking care of the young people, the constituting the management of the institution do not apologize but would rather deem it a sad neglect of duty did then not insist that religious instruction should be given a prominent place in the curriculum of the school.

Accordingly, every student who was Lutheran was required to take part in religious instruction two hours a week unless, for valid reasons, he was excused by the faculty.

Overall, we see an important transformation regarding how educators cultivated the relationship between the liberal arts curriculum and Christianity. In the early American liberal arts college, they practiced what I call a “Christ-Assumed” curriculum for years one through three with only the senior year including a course or courses directly or indirectly addressing Christian ethics and/or theology. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, many colleges started a Christ-added approach to the curriculum by adding required Bible courses throughout various college years.

Yet, three things are important to note. First, whether an institution was early at requiring the Bible says nothing about whether it retains a strong Christian identity today. In 1879 Wheaton College did not teach the Bible nearly as much as Hope, Hillsdale, or Emory. It only required a course on the Greek New Testament for one semester of the sophomore year. As usual, seniors took, Evidences of Christianity and a course on Butler’s Analogy along with a unique course I have never seen in other catalogs called Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation. Similarly, according to Taylor University’s 1892-93 course catalog, only future pastors were required to take bible and theology courses. Sustaining a Christ-animated curriculum takes effort and faithfulness that some institutions did not continue, and some institutions undertook later.

Second, the fact that certain institutions required Bible courses hardly meant that Christian colleges began engaging in Christ-animated learning concerning the other subjects within the liberal arts curriculum. Adding Bible courses alone has never been enough to help Christians think theologically about learning, the liberal arts, or various college majors (another curricular innovation from this time).

Finally, the idea that if we teach students plenty of Bible and theology, they will automatically transfer Christian framing, thinking, affections, virtues, practices, and wisdom into other areas of life, including other general education requirements or their major, is likely an empirically dubious assumption. One study of the efficacy of the transferability of key academic skills from one general education course to another concluded, “the pursuit of general transferable core/key skills is a wasteful chimera‐hunt and should now be abandoned.”

Only in the late twentieth century have Christian educators more systematically engaged in setting forth a Christ-animated approach in other general education subjects outside of core Bible and theology classes or capstone courses that address Christianity. In this approach, Christianity shapes the whole approach to the basic liberal arts found in the general education curriculum and our understanding of particular arts (see for example Christian works on particular arts in our list of top faith-animating books).

Yet, as my study of general education course descriptions at Christian colleges and universities in America has shown (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), most Christian colleges and universities appear to have a long way to go before demonstrating that they provide a Christ-animated general or liberal arts education. Still, we can take inspiration from these early curricular reformers. Like those revolutionary Christian educators and institutions from the late nineteenth century who began adding Bible courses to the liberal arts curriculum, we should not be afraid to change the curriculum inherited from the past to take Christ-animated learning further.⁴

1. Oddly, the catalog proclaimed, “This course is neither theological nor sectarian, its purpose being to give such general information of the Scriptures as every one will need, no matter what his profession in life or his religious creed.”
2. James P. Wind, The Bible and the University: The Messianic Vision of William Rainey Harper (Scholar’s Press, 1987), 23.
3. Virginia Lieson Brereton, Training God’s Army: The American Bible School, 1880-1940 (Indiana University Press, 1990).
4. For my suggestions about what this curriculum might look like see Perry L. Glanzer, Identity Excellence: A Theory of Moral Expertise for Higher Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) and Perry L. Glanzer, “General Education Sucks: So Teach the Great Identities,” Journal of General Education 69, no. 3-4 (2020): 175-95. https://doi.org/10.5325/jgeneeduc.69.3-4.0179