[lbo-talk] religion bad for society

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>I've often been struck by how Catholics create serious universities and 
>important hospitals - what comparable things, aside from Bible colleges, do 
>American Protestants create?

[How about Harvard?  It's no Notre Dame, but stilll ...]

Harvard's foundation in 1636 came in the form of an act of the colony's 
Great and General Court. By all accounts the chief impetus was to allow the 
training of home-grown clergy so the Puritan colony would not need to rely 
on immigrating graduates of England's Oxford and Cambridge universities for 
well-educated pastors, "dreading," as a 1643 brochure put it, "to leave an 
illiterate Ministry to the Churches." In its first year, seven of the 
original nine students left to fight in the English Civil War.

Harvard was also founded as a school to educate American Indians in order to 
train them as ministers among their tribes. Harvard's Charter of 1650 calls 
for "the education of the English and Indian youth of this Country in 
knowledge and godliness".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University>

Carl