Harvard was founded in 1636 with the purpose of providing Puritan clergymen for the Unitarian and Congregationalist churches. The College of William and Mary was founded in 1693 as “a perpetual college of divinity” by royal charter, and therefore serving the Anglican Church.
St. John’s College in Annapolis began as King William’s School in 1696, and was upgraded to a college in 1784, receiving a new name in the process. Its founders were a diverse group of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics.
Yale was founded in 1701 to train Congregationalist ministers. The Kent County Free School, established in 1723, was recast as Washington College in 1782 by the Episcopal priest William Smith.
The same William Smith also founded the College of Philadelphia, better known as the University of Pennsylvania, was suggested by Benjamin Franklin as early as 1740, but its first classes began in 1751. (To complete his ‘hat trick,’ William Smith had also been involved in the founding of St. John’s College in Annapolis.)
The Bethlehem Female Seminary, better known as Moravian College, began in 1742, founded by the Moravian Church.
This impressive growth was dominated by only a few denominations — Anglican/Epsicopal, Roman Catholic, Unitarian, Congregationalist, and Moravian. But spiritual landscape of North America was more diverse: there were Lutherans, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, and many other groups. The next phase in founding American colleges and universities would embrace that diversity.
The University of Delaware in 1743 and Princeton University in 1746 were the first two Presbyterian institutions of higher education, as Dennis Kennedy writes:
The only clergyman who signed the Declaration of Independence was Rev. John Witherspoon, the president of the College of New Jersey, which is today Princeton University.
Although founded in 1746, the college did not move to the town of Princeton until 1756, and was not renamed until 1896. The founder’s personality shaped the institution decisively.
At that time, this college was a stalwart Presbyterian institution. Witherspoon had emigrated from Scotland. He helped to shape the political thinking of many key Americans, including James Madison, who attended Witherspoon’s college, while preparing for the ministry. Witherspoon befriended the young man and had a profound impact on Madison’s life. Obviously Madison chose a political career, but his theologian training served him well. John Eidsmoe writes: “One thing is certain: the Christian religion, particularly Rev. Witherspoon’s Calvinism, influenced Madison’s view of law and government.”
The diversity of spiritual traditions among the nation’s founders led to the incorporation of multiple perspectives into the various documents (The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights) and into the various texts (not only The Federalist Papers, but also The Anti-Federalist Papers).
This diversity included Anglicanism in George Washington, Congregationalism in Sam Adams, Roman Catholicism in Charles Carroll, and — as in the case of Princeton University — Witherspoon’s Presbyterianism.
But Madison is not the only shaper of America whose thinking Witherspoon helped shape. Eidsmoe also states: “John Witherspoon is best described as the man who shaped the men who shaped America. Although he did not attend the Constitutional Convention, his influence was multiplied many times over by those who spoke as well as by what was said.”
It is possible that the case for Presbyterianism’s influence is here overstated. The influence of Anglicanism, continuing into Episcopalianism, was also immense. The sheer numbers of Lutherans and Roman Catholics among the population meant that those two denominations were also significantly formative.
