The Christian College: A History of Protestant Higher Education in America, 2nd edition. By William C. Ringenberg. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006. 316 pp. np.

It is not widely known, other than by students of American institutional and social life, that higher education in the United States was dominated by evangelical Protestant Christianity until roughly 1900. This dominance was across the board, in private as well as in state-supported colleges and universities. In fact, only two major universities--Virginia (founded in 1819) and Johns Hopkins (founded in 1876)--were clearly outside the mainstream. Practices common to virtually all of the other schools, both ...