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走进哈佛大学英语听力02-从宗教大学到非宗教大学

From a Religious College to a Secular University

Harvard College was founded in 1636 as a Puritan institution and a training ground for ministers.

In the first 200 years, however, it gradually shook off the religious control and became a secular university.

During its early years, the College offered a classic academic course based on the English university model, but consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy of the first colonists in New England.

Many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Puritan churches throughout New England.

The Puritan minister in town provided direct oversight of Harvard.

Harvard's early motto was Christo et Ecclesiae "For Christ and the Church" instead of Veritas "Truth".

The purpose of all education was to "let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning."

Obviously, this motto was preached during a period when Puritanism was in domination and when the Untied States had not yet founded.

From 1607 when the first English colony Jamestown was founded to 1776 when American Revolution broke out, almost all the English colonies in North America had established religions.

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