| Higher education in America has undergone a dramatic transformation in its four hundred year history. Initially based on the Middle Ages model of education from Europe, the American university, soon after its establishment, veered from its roots and came to reflect an Enlightenment-inspired construct influenced by the revolutionary social and political thought that swept into the New World. Part of that transformation was both necessary and invigorating and is traced to the combustible relationship between religion and science and faith and reason.However, as the debate simmered and later divided academics, it was soon submerged and largely ignored. However, there was a time in this country when the secularization debate was vigorous in the Academy. Yet, over time, while the secularization debate has remained quite visible in a wide array of scholarly disciplines (sociology, history, philosophy, religious studies, etc., the issue enjoys little recognition among faculty or the decision-makers demy and rarely surfaces in national education policy debates. In addition, it is conspicuously absent whenever prescriptive ideas are offered for improving higher education. Though left unresolved, this issue remains a thorny one that stubbornly continues to confront higher education into the twenty-first century. Therefore, the premise of this research is that the lack of attention given to the impact of secularization on higher education has left us with institutions that are fractured and withered , without much common purpose, and devoid of a sense of community.The research question presented here is why the study of the secularization debate is essential to future improvements in American higher education. Through critical theory and the integrative methodology of critical reconstruction, this dissertation asserts that only by first examining the roots of the secularization debate as causal explanations for past events that have so deeply influenced American higher education, can college and university decision makers begin to recapture the essence of the Academy and transform it for the future. |
