| Religion played a significant role in the development of American higher education. In the twenty-first century, however, most American universities are completely secularized, their connections with their founding religious traditions rarely mentioned or celebrated. And although the connections between religious traditions and the founding of America's oldest and most prestigious institutions—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, for example—are acknowledged by historians, little attention, in general, has been given to the role that religion played in the establishment of state universities. The only state institution to have received any sustained interest on the part of scholars has been the University of Michigan.; One of the consequences of focusing on America's most prestigious private institutions of higher education has been the resulting implication that the secularization of American higher education began in those universities. Historians tend to concentrate on the years following the Civil War, when colleges began to evolve into modern universities and to secularize. Few consider that the earliest manifestations of secularization may have surfaced in state institutions. Fewer still speculate that the process might have begun before the middle of the nineteenth century. And the possibility that the nonsectarian status of state institutions played a role in the secularization of American higher education has been virtually ignored.; The study examines the connection between the nonsectarian mission of one Midwestern state institution of higher education, Indiana University, and its secularization process. Non-sectarianism, as a defining component of the founding mission of Indiana University, helped solidify the institution's relationship with its state legislature, establish its position as the first public university in the state, and shape its reputation with Indiana citizens. In addition, by ensuring that non-sectarianism was an integral component of the mission of Indiana University, its founders created an institution grounded in the democratic principle that American higher education should be open to all citizens. The nonsectarian status of the institution, however, also set the stage for its eventual secularization, which was clearly not the intention of the founding fathers of Indiana University. |
