Seed for a secular revolution : scholastic education in the colonial college

This thesis describes an irony in American political history. That irony is the secularizing effect of religious education in colonial America. This effect may seem insignificant to today's student of political thought yet I hope to demonstrate that it played a vital role in the successful rise of democratic values in America. The goal of the Puritans was to build a new society based on Reformation principles. Instead, a society was built based on Enlightenment principles. The colonial church college was a primary avenue by which those Enlightenment principles rose to prominence. Once in a position of prominence, they overturned the religious based doctrines that had governed many of the political institutions of Colonial America. My main thesis is that the colonial church college, while attempting to educate young men for leadership in theocratic societies, actually prepared them for leadership in a secular revolution.

In the seventeenth century tens of thousands of English Protestants sailed for the wilderness of North America. They had a dream of building a religious civilization based on Reformation principles. In the next century the great-grandchildren of these Puritans also had a dream. Their dream, however, was to build a secular society based on Enlightenment principles. The success of the Patriot's revolution meant the failure of the Puritan's dream. My question is this: how did a society founded on the most powerful of religious drives undergo such a transformation in such a short time that it became the first and foremost secular civilization in the world? A basic but neglected key to the answer lies in the Puritan educational system. Ironically, while fleeing the corrupting influences of European culture the Puritans educated their children by the same scholastic principles that had been shaping the character of European society for centuries (Rudolph, 1977, p. 28; Gummere, 1922, p. 55; Walsh, 1935). Out of that Scholastic educational system grew the Enlightenment, and out of the Enlightenment grew the Revolution.

The early Puritan founders dreamed of building a New Jerusalem that would become a beacon of light to a world in darkness. They prayed that their societies would provide a much need example for Europe to follow (Rippa, 1971, p. 18; Sterns and Brawner, 1965, pp. 14-15) and, as such, their "New" England would become the means of ushering in the long awaited millennium of peace (Miller, 1956). But they failed miserably. Instead of ushering in the millenium of peace, the descendants of the Puritans became advocates of a secular world view. They fired the shot heard around the world and ushered in the era of revolution.