ABSTRACT
It is perhaps a tribute to the present influence of academic professionalism that we have been able to postpone a discussion of the relations between America's Protestant denominations and higher education to this point. Most histories of higher education place considerable emphasis on the role of theological feuds in the birth of America's Protestant colleges. During the nineteenth century a number of other Protestant colleges gained strength from ethnic separatism, the most notable case being the many Lutheran colleges. Prior to the Revolution, American colonists almost all took it for granted that colleges should be run by clergymen. Thus the Protestant college will survive as a distinctive phenomenon, even though the shape of the future is in other hands. The interesting thing about anti-communist colleges is that they do not appear to be surviving simply by exploiting a dying social tradition.
