In 1764, a group of Baptists founded the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Two and a half centuries later, we've changed the name and have few remaining vestiges of our former religious affiliation. The location of commencement, our motto and our seal are among the benign relics from earlier, more pious times. This is for the better.
Of course, the college's name had to change. Those of you who have taken HIST 0510: "American History to 1877" will be aware of the obscure falling out between England and its American colonies. This would have made the name a bit awkward by 1777. The eventual name of Brown University just sounds much better than the College of Rhode Island (as the original name had been shortened). Of course, this is just cosmetic. The real improvement was the move toward secularism. It was not as required by circumstances, but it was necessary for Brown to reach its full potential.
Many of Brown's peers have the same dubious distinction of being founded by religious sects. Calvinists and Anglicans founded most of the other Ivy League schools. These colleges, like Brown, have since shrugged off their religious affiliations.
A religious university is conflicted on a fundamental level. On one hand, a university is an institution of learning. Its primary goal should always be to discover new, unknown things about the world. It also serves two other major purposes by teaching others to become the next generation to continue the endeavor (i.e. graduate school) and educating the public (i.e. undergraduates).
On the other hand, religions are inherently based on dogma. They already have their fundamental knowledge. Religions will adapt to new knowledge to various extents, but if some result should contradict a core element of the religion, it will be ignored or dismissed.
Religious institutions range widely in quality. The universities and colleges that allow for greater academic freedom tend to be better, and the ones that do not tend to be worse.
Liberty University is one example of an institution where religion is paramount and allowed to color everything on campus. Founded by Jerry Falwell, Liberty is the largest evangelical university in the world. Unsurprisingly, it teaches creationism and had one of the world's most prominent climate-change deniers give last year's commencement address. Reality is of no concern to them. The university wishes to promote evangelical Christianity; the rest is just incidental. An ad for open biology positions in the Chronicle of Higher Education required a "Ph.D. and compatibility with a young-earth creationist philosophy" for candidates.
Other religious schools are far less comical. Georgetown is a Jesuit university, which despite its religious affiliation, is a decent school. This is because the religious administration does not intrude into academic life as much as Liberty's does. The Catholic Church has given up its position that the sun revolves around the earth and that God created Adam a few millennia after yet-to-exist humans had already domesticated sheep. It has yet to give all of its ground to scientific evidence (what would be left?), but it has relinquished its most untenable beliefs.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that more academic institutions are free from religion's oppressive policies. They may realize that alums would be openly mocked without the separation of their religion from the academic side of the university, but they continue to interfere in the rest. For Brown students who spend their first year with a ready supply of 15-cent condoms on every RC's door, it might be a shock to learn that Georgetown gives no such consideration to students' sexual health. Outside of sub-Saharan brothels, there are few places more in need of condoms than large universities. Unfortunately for both, the Catholic Church prohibits condoms and other forms of contraceptives and protection.
Brigham Young University is another religious school, the flagship university of the Mormon Church. Over the summer, a student submitted a letter to the editor of the school's newspaper. In it, the author pointed out the disconnect between what Mormons said to garner support for California's Proposition 8 prior to the 2008 election and the evidence that proponents of the proposition gave during the trial. He called on Mormon supporters of "Prop 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment." It was at first rejected, then printed in an edited form, and finally withdrawn by the paper shortly after publication for being "offensive." I can assure you that the content of the letter was far tamer and more reverent than this column.
This is the insidious nature of religious control over universities. The religious administration might allow for academic freedom so long as it does not obviously conflict with its dogma, but if it does, you are in trouble. I am glad that Brown and its peer institutions have, over time, decided to separate themselves from religions and become proper institutions of learning.
David Sheffield '11 is a math-physics concentrator who hopes that Brunonians have thicker skin than BYU students. He can be contacted at
david_sheffield@brown.edu.
