Harvard Yesterday and Today

Harvard University was established in 1636 to train Christian ministers. Here are two points from the Harvard “Rules and Precepts” from 1646 that express the original sentiment:

2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisedome, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seeke it of him (Prov. 2:3).

3. Every one shall so exercise himselfe in reading the Scriptures twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein, both in Theoreticall observations of Language and Logick, and in practical and spiritual truths, as his Tutor shall require, according to his ability; seeing the entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130).

Now, those are some precepts to celebrate! Unfortunately, the tendency is for institutions of higher learning to drift away from Biblicism. Here is a video of a 2014 graduate of Harvard talking about her experience.¹ I think you will notice that her experience does not align with the old rules and precepts:



The transition from teaching the Bible to teaching paraplegic porn did not occur overnight. Somewhere along the way in 380 years of Harvard history, someone took a very wrong turn. How Harvard came to this is not particularly relevant, but it is one of the most respected universities in America, so I think we can anticipate that other universities will strive to follow Harvard’s leftist example.

Christians need to have some difficult conversations about the state of higher education. How often have we seen students in youth groups who seem to be ‘on fire for the Lord,’ but then they go off to a university and twist off? This has been a problem for several decades now, but how are we responding? Is there something that we could be doing differently?

Unfortunately, I am afraid that I have more questions than answers. I hope to give some practical advice in the next blog post, but let’s see if we can get some conversations rolling in the meantime.

1. She does not actually state which university she is referring to in the video, but I think it is Harvard. She has an article with some pictures of her graduation here and it looks like Harvard, but please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.