Church history, however, remained an “orphan discipline” at the Divinity School40—despite Harvard College’s establishment of the first professorship of history in the United States.41 The original plan for the School called for a position in ecclesiastical history (and four others), but no funds for this appointment were forthcoming. Some limited provision was made for instruction in the subject, but the proposed professorship languished.42 Over the years, church history was taught by Henry Ware, Charles Follen, Convers Francis, Frederic H. Hedge (1857- 187843), and Joseph Henry Allen (1878–1882).44
In 1854, the report of a Visiting Committee appointed by the Harvard College Overseers noted that the Divinity School had only two (overworked) Professors, one in “Pulpit Eloquence and the Pastoral Care” (with church history as a minor sideline45), and the other in “Hebrew and Other Oriental languages”/“Biblical Literature.” The committee recommended the establishment of two more professorships, including one in ecclesiastical history. Yet again, no professorship was forthcoming. The Visiting Committee’s report nevertheless confidently announced that divinity students were advancing from “loose and unsettled notions to a well-grounded and stable faith.” The course of study, it concluded, is “well ordered, systematic, impartial, and full.”46 “Full” might not be the word that springs to present-day readers’ minds, given the School’s inadequate staffing.
Throughout mid-century, the School remained small and somewhat lackluster. Between 1840 and 1880, Sydney Ahlstrom admits, its scholarship did not keep pace with the standards of the day.47 When Thomas Hill was sworn in as President of Harvard in 1863, he rhetorically asked in his inaugural address: “Our Divinity School prepares its scholars to take charge of parishes; but where are our young men coming simply as lovers of truth, simply as scholars, for aid in exploring the highest realms of human thought?”48 Apparently nowhere.
The Divinity School’s change of fortune came with Charles Eliot’s appointment as President of Harvard in 1869. Eliot, so an enthusiast later claimed, planned “to make this a university school of theology instead of a drill-shed for Unitarian ministers.”49 In his Annual Report for 1874–1875, Eliot scored the state of Divinity at Harvard.50 Four years later, he led a campaign to endow five new professorships for the School, to be filled by scholars trained in historical and critical methods.51 At Harvard, Eliot insisted, there should be a nondenominational theological school positioned within the university, offering courses to all students, not only to future ministers.52 This arrangement, he argued, would ensure that ministerial training upheld the “standards in truth-seeking which modern science has set up.”53 Reorganizing the Divinity School as effectively undenominational, Eliot later claimed, was one of the most important accomplishments of his forty-year presidency.54
At last, in 1877, the Divinity School received a gift for the endowment of the Winn Professorship in Ecclesiastical History;55 in 1882, it was awarded to Ephraim Emerton. Emerton, a layman who had earned his Ph.D. at Leipzig in 1876,56 was then teaching history in Harvard College. As Winn Professor, Emerton was charged with introducing new methods, including the seminar, to the study of church history, and opening church history courses to non-Divinity students.57
Others were less pleased with Eliot’s plan, including the disappointed candidate, Joseph Henry Allen, who had provided instruction in ecclesiastical history since 1878. Although gracious in public about not receiving the coveted Professorship, Allen confided to several correspondents that Eliot arranged to pay Emerton only his regular salary as instructor in history, thus saving the Winn funds (“at a stroke $2000”) for other purposes at the University.58 Moreover, Eliot’s promotion of “scientific theology” (in Allen’s view) was fatuous: he had no understanding of what that phrase meant.59
According to Harvard catalogs from the 1880s and 1890s, Emerton taught all periods of church history through the seventeenth century. Now, historical approaches to divinity subjects become standard at Harvard. In 1896, John Winthrop Platner, a graduate of Union Seminary, was also appointed to a position in church history at Harvard, but after a few years he decamped for Andover.60 Platner had little praise for Emerton’s approach. On one occasion, inviting Arthur Cushman McGiffert of Union Seminary to lecture at Harvard in order to “arouse more interest in the study of Church history here,” he commented that “they don’t even know what it means.… Regard the trip somewhat in the light of missionary work.”61
By 1886–1887, the Divinity School counted six resident graduate students among its total student population of 21; by the early twentieth century, more than half the School’s students were considered graduate students. At first, Master’s and Ph.D. degrees were awarded through agreement with the University Graduate School, but in 1914–1915 the Divinity School received permission to offer the Th.D. A Ph.D. in Religion, offered by the University, was added in 1934.62
Yale Theological Department, Yale Divinity School, and Yale University
At Yale, as at Harvard, church history was first taught within the College. In 1778, Ezra Stiles was designated “Professor of Ecclesiastical History,” a post he retained throughout his Presidency of Yale until his death in 1795.63 In the 121 years between the College’s founding in 1701 and the organization in 1822 of the “Theological Department” (which became the Divinity School), Yale emerged as a distinguished center of theological studies, with Jonathan Edwards just one of its stars.64
The creation of the Theological Department in 1822 was prompted by fifteen students’ petition to remain at Yale College after their graduation to receive further instruction. To meet their needs, churches contributed funds to secure a new professor in theology, and some members of the existing College faculty were reassigned to divinity.65 Historians of Yale credit both the disestablishment of Congregationalism in Connecticut in 1818 and the religious revival at Yale College in 1820 with fostering the desire for theological study.66 A college degree (or even college attendance) was not a strict requirement for admission, and many students did not stay three years. As at other institutions, awarding the Bachelor of Divinity degree at Yale came later: in 1867.67
The Yale Theological Department was relatively conservative in comparison to Harvard and Union.68 Its conservatism matched that of the College as portrayed in the famous Yale Report of 1828. Called “the most influential educational statement of the antebellum period” by historian Julie Reuben, the Yale Report defended the classically oriented curriculum against proposed changes. The purpose of a Yale education, the Report claimed, was to “discipline” mental faculties and to form character, not to impart knowledge or enlarge the mind’s “furniture.”69
Theological study at Yale (as at Harvard) faltered in the mid-nineteenth century. Whereas circa 1840 the enrollment in the Theological Department had stood at about 87, by 1858 it had fallen to 2270—in contrast to Princeton’s 130, Andover’s 123, and Union’s 114 in the same period.71 Professorial replacements were stalled and financial difficulties abounded;72 student interest had shifted from theology, formerly Yale’s special glory, to biblical studies, a subject not yet prominent at Yale.73 The School nearly closed after the Civil War, but was saved by the fund-raising activities of the younger Timothy Dwight.74 And with the arrival of Wünderkind William Rainey Harper at Yale in 1886, biblical studies were invigorated.75
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators alike note the neglect of church history at Yale.76 Although in the College, history had been made a separate subject in 1847 and a professorship established in 1865, the Divinity School lacked a permanent position in the subject.77 Finally, despite the hardships of the Civil War era, gifts enabled the establishment in 1867 of a chaired