Photo Every Day 2024

While we were scavenging (I suppose that scavenging would be a fitting verb for participating in a scavenger hunt…) at the College of Wooster, my lovely bride noticed something I had never seen before… a prominent cross fully on display in the midst of the campus.

Very interesting.

The College of Wooster was originally founded in 1866 by the Presbyterian Church as the University of Wooster. Just over 100 years later, in 1969, the College of Wooster officially declared itself non-religiously affiliated.

Of course, something like that doesn’t happen overnight. So how did a university that was founded by an unapologetically Christian denomination become officially non-sectarian?

Apparently the beginning of the end of the College of Wooster’s religious affiliation started in the 1920s, when the college became known for teaching evolution. This was a real controversy, sparking debate between liberals and fundamentalists.

Presbyterian layman, and former United States Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, was the loudest voice of concern over what the College of Wooster was teaching. It is ironic to me that Bryan was the voice of fundamentalism, given that he was also a prominent voice in the Democratic Party. You would be hard-pressed to find a current democrat-voting student or faculty member who would be in any way offended by the teaching of evolution today. (And you would likely be even harder pressed to find a republican-voting student or faculty member on the campus today… I’m sure they exist, but they would be wildly in the minority.)

On the other side of the debate was then-president of the College of Wooster, Charles F. Wisehart. Wisehart had been teaching evolution for decades by the 1920s.

William Jennings Bryan called for the general assembly of the Presbyterian church to cut off funding to the College of Wooster, but Charles Wisehart challenged Bryan, and ultimately won the position of Moderator of the (Presbyterian) General Assembly over Bryan in 1923. The college continued to teach evolution from that point on.

I always thought it strange that the College of Wooster prominently displays an icon of the Holy Bible on campus, but the reality is that their motto is: ex uno fonte, which means, “from one source.” The longer version of the motto is: Scientia Et Religio Ex Uno Fonte, which translates to, “Science and Religion are of One Philosophy.”

Obviously this is a very secular idea.

With all of this background, perhaps you can understand why it was such a surprise for me to notice such a prominent display on campus of the most blatantly Christian symbol of all.