Explores the decline in religious influence in American universities, discussing why this transformation has occurred.

In every belief system spiritual entities have been labeled as good if they have acted in favor to people and as evil if they have threatened their existence. Furthermore, protective actions and dangerous actions have been classified as such based on the beholder’s level of understanding of order and chaos. Evil entities spread chaos that endangers people’s existence, while good entities create order that preserves human life.

Zola's masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death in 1902 it had come to symbolize the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted "Germinal! Germinal!"While it is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, Germinal is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigor and power in this new translation. It is also the thirteenth book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, which celebrates its centenary in October 1993 with a new film.

The story of secularization and religious disestablishment in American higher education is told from the standpoint of a lively community of professors, students, and administrators at the University of Michigan in the late nineteenth century. This campus culture--one of the most closely watched of its day--sheds new light on the personal and cultural meanings of these momentous changes in American intellectual and public life. Here we see how religion was not so much displaced or marginalized in the heyday of university reform as translated into new arenas of public service and scholarly pursuit. The main characters in this story--professors Calvin Thomas and Henry Carter Adams--underwent profound religious crises of faith accompanied by major adjustments in their interpersonal relationships. Together, with students and administrators, their lives constituted a communal biography of religious deconversion. A close examination of these private and public worlds provides a more complete understanding of the dynamics behind new academic policies and intellectual innovations in a leading public university. The non-cognitive, intersubjective, gendered, quasi-religious shadings of academic modernism and early pragmatist philosophy, in particular, come to light in vivid ways. As John Dewey later observed, Michigan became an experimental laboratory for "new meanings to unfold, new acts to propose."

The Soul of the American University is a classic and much discussed account of the changing roles of Christianity in shaping American higher education, presented here in a newly revised edition to offer insights for a modern era. As late as the World War II era, it was not unusual even for state schools to offer chapel services or for leading universities to refer to themselves as “Christian” institutions. From the 1630s through the 1950s, when Protestantism provided an informal religious establishment, colleges were expected to offer religious and moral guidance. Following reactions in the 1960s against the WASP establishment and concerns for diversity, this specifically religious heritage quickly disappeared and various secular viewpoints predominated. In this updated edition of a landmark volume, George Marsden explores the history of the changing roles of Protestantism in relation to other cultural and intellectual factors shaping American higher education. Far from a lament for a lost golden age, Marsden offers a penetrating analysis of the changing ways in which Protestantism intersected with collegiate life, intellectual inquiry, and broader cultural developments. He tells the stories of many of the nation's pace-setting universities at defining moments in their histories. By the late nineteenth-century when modern universities emerged, debates over Darwinism and higher criticism of the Bible were reshaping conceptions of Protestantism; in the twentieth century important concerns regarding diversity and inclusion were leading toward ever-broader conceptions of Christianity; then followed attacks on the traditional WASP establishment which brought dramatic disestablishment of earlier religious privilege. By the late twentieth century, exclusive secular viewpoints had become the gold standard in higher education, while our current era is arguably “post-secular”. The Soul of the American University Revisited deftly examines American higher education as it exists in the twenty-first century.

Based on extensive research at eight universities - Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford, Michigan, and California at Berkeley - Reuben examines the aims of university reformers in the context of nineteenth-century ideas about truth. She argues that these educators tried to apply new scientific standards to moral education, but that their modernization efforts ultimately failed.

Please note this is a 'Palgrave to Order' title (PTO). Stock of this book requires shipment from an overseas supplier. It will be delivered to you within 12 weeks. In this groundbreaking history of the YMCA, David Setran details its critical role on American campuses, exploring how this popular organization worked to strengthen the Protestant piety of American collegians through Bible study, service, and prayer, as well as how the organization changed after World War I, alienating itself from churches, university administrators, and even the students themselves.

Religion is a small word, but it has a huge impact on both life and death. In Religious Thoughts, author James Watson takes a look at the history of religion through the years and delves into how the various manmade religions were formed and why. Through this historical exploration of religious texts, Watson addresses a host of questions addressing religion, its origins, and its mutations. Religious Thoughts asks: - Why, in the beginning, were just three major religions formed? - Why were the minor religions-such as Protestant, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian-started? - Did these religions coincide with or cause directly or indirectly major military conflicts? - How did religion become so diverse and corrupt? - Why and how did the manmade religions evolve? Thoroughly researched, Religious Thoughts asks a wide range of thought-provoking questions and presents Watson's opinions and concerns. It presents a historical time travel through centuries of religious changes, documenting the history of the Abrahamic religions.