The British Model: Anglican Dominance

Abstract

In the history of higher education in the West, a dominant worldview has existed in almost any given place and time. Typically the balance between religious believers and seekers on one hand and doubters and skeptics on the other hand is more consistent among the general populace than in the college and university faculties. For example, in the United States the early college faculties were more religious than was society in general while in the modern period just the opposite is true. Colleges tend to institutionalize what at any given time is the majority view of their power brokers. On the eve of the founding of the American colonies and through the colonial era, the prevailing intellectual milieu in British higher education was provided by the official religion of the realm, the Anglican Confession.