The Sacred and the Secular University

The Sacred and the Secular University. By Jon H. Roberts and James Turner. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. xiv, 184 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-691-01556-2.)

The role of religion in higher education has received considerable attention of late, perhaps most notably in George M. Marsden's groundbreaking study, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (1994). Here, Jon H. Roberts of the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and James Turner of Notre Dame join forces to look specifically at how and why Christian concerns were marginalized in university curricula in the late nineteenth century, particularly in the sciences and the developing humanities.

This engaging volume is an expansion of lectures delivered by Roberts and Turner at Princeton University in 1996 as a part of the university's 250th anniversary celebration. The authors' argument, summarized in an introduction by John F. Wilson, dean of...