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As I looked up Mayhew’s affirmation of Locke’s influence, I was reminded that Samuel Clarke was perhaps the greatest theological influence on Mayhew (apart from politics). That, in turn, reminded me of the important gap in Mark’s thesis. In Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic (in which he makes the lengthiest argument for “Reformed” influence), Mark points out that most preachers of the period were graduates of Harvard or Yale (p 28). That works against his thesis and in favor of mine.
As early as 1701, the belief that Harvard had forsaken the fundamentals of the [Reformed] faith was a key factor in the founding of Yale. Pressure was brought to start a new college because congregations were complaining about the poor quality (in terms of orthodoxy) of ministers Harvard was producing. Many churches remained orthodox, but the graduates they received from Harvard were humanistic rationalists. Harvard had a “Satan’s bookshelf” of rationalist authors whose works were an essential part of Harvard’s intellectual milieu as early as 1723. For 40 years, Harvard’s famed Dudleian lectures taught Harvard students that reason and natural religion were the core of religion. The last such lecture in 1799 was a defense of religion against atheism spawned by rationalism.
Ministerial graduates from Harvard found their alma mater a disadvantage because of its reputation. According to Josiah Quincy’s History of Harvard University, the “most eminent” of the clergymen who “openly avowed … Arminianism, Arianism, Pelagianism, Socinianism, and Deism” were alumni from Harvard. Graduates said “the tendency of all classes was to skepticism” and testified of a prevailing “infidel and irreligious spirit.” The theology professorship was vacant for a time and Harvard came to be regarded as an appropriate training ground only for unitarian pulpits. In the 1740s, famed evangelist George Whitefield said: “As for the Universities, I believe it may be said, their Light is become Darkness” and he complained of the low state of religion among the clergy at both Harvard and Yale. When he visited Harvard, Whitefield preached on the text “We are not as many who corrupt the Word of God” and applied its conclusion as a rebuke of the professors and students. Similar descriptions and remarks were made about Yale from 1714 on by such luminaries as Samuel Johnson, Lyman Beecher, and Timothy Dwight. When Dwight became president of Yale, he reported that “European rationalistic philosophers were popular and students considered it smart to be called by the name of some infidel.”
I could go on and on with this evidence – and I do in chapter three of The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders – but perhaps most important are the well-documented attacks on Calvinism leading up to the Revolutionary era.
Graduates from Harvard and Yale in the 18th century were studying Enlightenment rationalist authors, not Calvin or Beza, etc. That is the reason they didn’t cite Beza or other Reformers; they cited what they knew – writers such as Locke.
As early as 1701, the belief that Harvard had forsaken the fundamentals of the [Reformed] faith was a key factor in the founding of Yale. Pressure was brought to start a new college because congregations were complaining about the poor quality (in terms of orthodoxy) of ministers Harvard was producing. Many churches remained orthodox, but the graduates they received from Harvard were humanistic rationalists. Harvard had a “Satan’s bookshelf” of rationalist authors whose works were an essential part of Harvard’s intellectual milieu as early as 1723. For 40 years, Harvard’s famed Dudleian lectures taught Harvard students that reason and natural religion were the core of religion. The last such lecture in 1799 was a defense of religion against atheism spawned by rationalism.
Ministerial graduates from Harvard found their alma mater a disadvantage because of its reputation. According to Josiah Quincy’s History of Harvard University, the “most eminent” of the clergymen who “openly avowed … Arminianism, Arianism, Pelagianism, Socinianism, and Deism” were alumni from Harvard. Graduates said “the tendency of all classes was to skepticism” and testified of a prevailing “infidel and irreligious spirit.” The theology professorship was vacant for a time and Harvard came to be regarded as an appropriate training ground only for unitarian pulpits. In the 1740s, famed evangelist George Whitefield said: “As for the Universities, I believe it may be said, their Light is become Darkness” and he complained of the low state of religion among the clergy at both Harvard and Yale. When he visited Harvard, Whitefield preached on the text “We are not as many who corrupt the Word of God” and applied its conclusion as a rebuke of the professors and students. Similar descriptions and remarks were made about Yale from 1714 on by such luminaries as Samuel Johnson, Lyman Beecher, and Timothy Dwight. When Dwight became president of Yale, he reported that “European rationalistic philosophers were popular and students considered it smart to be called by the name of some infidel.”
I could go on and on with this evidence – and I do in chapter three of The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders – but perhaps most important are the well-documented attacks on Calvinism leading up to the Revolutionary era.
Graduates from Harvard and Yale in the 18th century were studying Enlightenment rationalist authors, not Calvin or Beza, etc. That is the reason they didn’t cite Beza or other Reformers; they cited what they knew – writers such as Locke.
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