This is a great question. In the early nineteenth century almost all higher education in the United States was run by Christian denominations. By the late nineteenth century there was still a generally Christian orientation towards education, but this declined and became relatively uncommon by the early twentieth century, with a few religious schools holding out.

Religious Colleges and Universities- the 1600s and 1700s

The first college in the United States was Harvard, which was established in 1636 with the goal of training Puritan ministers. Yale was created for the same reasons. Though it became more common for men to go to college without the intention of entering the ministry, colleges in the eighteenth century were still religious institutions run by clergy. William and Mary, for example, was Anglican, and its faculty were almost entirely ministers connected with the Anglican Church, while what would become Princeton University had a similar connection with Presbyterianism. For much of American history, attending chapel service was mandatory for students. 

There were several institutions that tried to be non-sectarian, but this almost always meant that they were the product of an alliance of denominational interests. The College of Pennsylvania (eventually University of Pennsylvania) was probably the most secular institution, and had a governing board made up of laity rather than clergy, but it was well known that Anglicans and Presbyterians fought to control the college. Still, there was an important shift in the eighteenth century as colleges began to support teaching students Christianity in general, rather than a specifically denominational form of it. This generic Christianity was often taught under the name of Moral Philosophy, usually in courses taught to graduating seniors by the college president. 

The Beginnings of Secular Education- early 1800s

The first institution I am aware of that aspired to be secular was the University of Virginia, founded in 1819. The University of Virginia was a state school, but was unique in that it reflected its founder Thomas Jefferson’s aspiration that government and religion should be separate. The university made no effort to hire a professor of divinity and did not have a divinity school, though it did allow the professor of ethics to teach proofs of God’s existence (the logic being that all reasonable people believed God existed, so there was no conflict on this point). Jefferson also thought that each denomination might establish a divinity school of its own affiliated with the university, which would remain neutral.

The University of Virginia’s efforts were mostly a failure. Critics accused the institution of being secretly Unitarian. It would eventually hire professors of divinity and start holding chapel services for students.

Yet change was occurring. Harvard began to be under the control of Unitarians in the early nineteenth century (historians usually consider the 1805 appointment of Henry Ware to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity as a key date in this takeover). Under Unitarian auspices, courses about Moral Philosophy gradually became less focused on the specifics of Christian revelation, and focused more on the existence of God and inculcating morality. This approach to Moral Philosophy would become common in many other colleges over the century. Colleges still insisted they were Christian, but this liberal religious version of Christianity increasingly was hard to separate from what we today might call education in values or citizenship. 

Secular Schools Emerge- Late 1800s

The late nineteenth century saw the creation of universities that deprioritized teaching religion. The University of California opened in 1869 and did not require students to attend chapel. Its president, Daniel Coit Gilman, however, insisted that it was dedicated to preserving “Christian civilization.”

One of the most significant developments was the opening of Johns Hopkins University in 1876 (also under the leadership of Gilman). Johns Hopkins’s governing board was mostly made up of Quakers, but it was not tied to any specific denomination.  It was a new kind of institution, primarily focused on providing graduate training and modeled on German universities. Because it did not prioritize educating undergraduates, it did not stress their moral formation through chapel or other religious training. Johns Hopkins, however, still taught a required Moral Philosophy course under the name of “Logic, Ethics, and Psychology.”

The general pattern was that theologically liberal Protestants, like Gilman, were taking control of or founded universities. These academics conflated Christianity with living morally and pursuing scientific truth. They saw no contradiction between allowing the study of controversial topics like Darwinian science or Biblical criticism, and defending Christian truth. They also felt that religion could be taught by groups like the YMCA, rather than directly as part of the curriculum. Critics, perhaps correctly, saw this as a path towards the removal of Christianity from education. 

The University of Chicago is a good example of this kind of liberal Protestantism. Founded in 1890 with the money of Baptist John D. Rockefeller, the campus was physically centered around its divinity school. Its first president, William Rainey Harper, was a Baptist minister, but was well known for his work in higher criticism of the Bible. The school was officially not a Baptist school, and it placed a high priority on academic freedom.

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