Marsden, G. 1994. The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Non-Belief. New York: Oxford University Press.
This book is a careful look at the evolution of religion on American college campuses. According to the author, American universities today promote and protect the free exercise of religion, but resist the use of religious explanations in critical inquiry. What’s left is a secular campus culture or the “disestablishment of religion.” Marsden traces this history through case studies of “pace-setting” universities such as Harvard and Yale. He argues that universities should encourage religious pluralism on campus—allowing religious perspectives alongside other popular viewpoints such as feminism and multiculturalism—and among campuses—allowing religiously affiliated universities to be regarded on equal terms as secular institutions, and avoiding the tendency for schools to adhere to any one monolithic mold.
