Posted on 12/20/2006 10:05:13 AM PST by Caleb1411
Even the Ivy League schools seem to have noticed: Their students are not only arriving biblically illiterate but leaving pretty much the same way.
So a faculty committee at Harvard has considered making a course in religion part of the school's core curriculum.
The course would deal with "reason and faith," and touch on topics like the relation between religion and American democracy. Goodness, why not just have the students read and discuss Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"? Nobody's ever done it better. Except maybe Daniel Boorstin in "The Genius of American Politics."
But that would be too much like studying history for what it can tell us instead of for what we can read into it. It's not as if the past had an existence of its own apart from what we make of it. A usable past, that's what's we need, right?
G-d may not matter all that much to Harvard's well-gated community, but He seems to matter a great deal to a lot of us out here in the grubby world. Therefore, if America's oldest university is going to turn out graduates who'll be able to communicate with the rest of us, even lead us, they'll need to be religiously knowledgeable. At last religion would be usable.
There's an old name for this approach: profanation.
A more tactful term for it is instrumentalism. And it's not limited to academicians. People who consider themselves defenders of the faith have been known to justify theirs by pointing out all the worldly benefits of religion, from strong families to charitable giving to the work ethic, aka the Puritan ethic.
It's all enough to bring to mind what Edward Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall," said of religion in another empire: "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Man and God at Yale - William F. Buckley Jr.
I wonder if it's on the Banned Book List?
Who needs to know The Bible? I mean, not only is it the story of mankind, and presents a way to live, it is also the basis for just about all Western art and literature.
When did Harvard become Parochial?
In what way? Pertaining to a parish or limited in outlook?
"When did Harvard become Parochial?"
The nation's oldest academic institution, Harvard University, was established in 1636 and named for Puritan minister John Harvard. The university claims that it was "never formally affiliated with a specific religious denomination," though all its presidents were Puritan ministers until 1708. A 1643 college brochure identified Harvard's purpose: "To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches." The university's Charter of 1650 calls for "the education of the English and Indian youth of this Country in knowledge and godliness."
Even if one were a raving Marxist, it would be futile to try to manipulate the American populace without a good knowledge of Biblical thought, history and quotations.
Harvard was founded primarily as a religious institution.
The institution was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after its first principal donor, a young clergyman named John Harvard. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in England, John Harvard bequeathed about four hundred books in his will to form the basis of the college library collection, along with half his personal wealth worth several hundred pounds.
Harvard's founding in 1636 came in the form of an act of the colony's Great and General Court. By all accounts the chief impetus was to allow the training of home-grown clergy so the Puritan colony would not need to rely on immigrating graduates of England's Oxford and Cambridge universities for well-educated pastors, "dreading," as a 1643 brochure put it, "to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches."[citation needed] In its first year, seven of the original nine students left to fight in the English Civil War.
Harvard was also founded as a school to educate American Indians in order to train them as ministers among their tribes. Harvard's Charter of 1650 calls for "the education of the English and Indian youth of this Country in knowledge and godliness."[20] Indeed, Harvard and missionaries to the local tribes were intricately connected. The first Bible to be printed in the entire North American continent was printed at Harvard in an Indian language, Massachusett. Termed the Eliot Bible since it was translated by John Eliot, this book was used to facilitate conversion of Indians, ideally by Harvard-educated Indians themselves.
How about teaching them American History. That would cover most of it without getting into the Bible. Good Lord only knows they don't teach history in High School any more.
The universities are creating illiterates. This is the sort of introductory work which every freshman should read:
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Code-Bible-Literature/dp/0156027801
How about Leboutillier's "Harvard Hates America".
bump
In the 12th century universities were the outgrowths of cathedral schools, and centered on theology and canon law, with medicine as the only secular outlet.["seven arts", starting with grammar and arithmetics, were an undergraduate curriculum]. Civil law was added a tad later. But now it's not the 12th century but the 21st. There is Harvard University, and there is Harvard Divinity school.[ditto for Princeton U and Princeton Theological Seminary]. Those in want or need of bibling would do well to go there.
Not really a good example considering Gibbon pretty much mostly blames Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire
Fixed it for you.
Why do you think hillary and bill go to church and carry that coffee table Bible with them?
As for the 12th vs 21st Centuries, what does the marking of time have to do with anything? Such statements beg all sorts of questions without actually making a declarative statement of substance.
Doesn't it matter more the substance of the ideas rather than the date? I would submit that the ideas peddled in today's 21st century universities are riddled with illogic and blaring inconsistencies. So much so, that one might be tempted to use the term, indoctrination, to describe them, since truth and reason and rationality seem to be of little concern. For example, the most interesting assertion of the logically insane is that there are no absolutes, or equivalent sayings.
Well, and what do they do there, then?
Teach liberalism and political correctness.
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