The Puritan settlers who founded Harvard College in 1636 did so for religious reasons. They were convinced that the Calvinist God they worshipped wanted to be loved with the mind as well as with the heart. And so in the midst of clearing the wilderness, building houses and establishing communities, they erected a small college, dedicated to the pursuit of truth. They were buoyed in this endeavor by the serene confidence that all truth was, in one way or another, God's truth.

   The Puritans were particularly interested in the education of a learned ministry for the church. Unlike the Irish Roman Catholics who came to Boston later, they venerated the pulpit over the altar. The pulpit was for them the "throne of God" because the sermon was the principal means through which men and women heard in their own time and place the voice of the living God.

   Because preaching was such serious business for Puritans, their ministers were expected to read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew and to have mastered the fine points of dogmatic theology in Latin. Indeed, the standard Puritan compliment for a well-crafted sermon was that it had been "well studied."

   Even Harvard undergraduates who were not destined for the ministry were expected to read in Latin the classic exposition of Christian faith and morals by the great Puritan divine, William Ames. Harvard's God was no mere spectator of history, but the Calvinist God who ordered history by his mysterious providence to the ends he intended.

   Over time the Calvinist consensus at Harvard broke down, although Harvard still retains symbols of its explicitly Christian past: e.g., the Memorial Church with a full-time minister, a Divinity School, and even in places like Sanders Theater reminders of its original motto, "Truth for Christ and the Church."

   Harvard, like many other American institutions of higher learning, became increasingly secular throughout the 20th century. Which is not to say that religion disappeared entirely from the Harvard landscape. Almost every form of religion and irreligion that flourishes on American soil can be found somewhere in the great intellectual mix that is the Harvard faculty and student body.

   Still, a fairly large proportion of the members of any academic community, including Harvard, is made up of people who are not religious. Some have concluded that religion is nothing more than superstition by another name, while others have found it impossible to reconcile a scientific account of the world with the religious views of their childhood. Such people are not only disinclined to practice a religion; they are often disinclined to study it.

   Which is why the recommendation of a Harvard faculty committee that undergraduates should be required to study religion came as such a surprise. Was the committee in the grip of a nostalgia for the Puritan Harvard of Increase Mather?

   Not exactly. What the committee observed was that most Harvard graduates assume positions of responsibility in the world outside the academy. Only a relatively small group become academics.

   While it is possible for academics to avoid religion if they are not religious, it is not equally possible for non-academic graduates to imitate them. Religion is a powerful social force in the modern world, too powerful and too pervasive to be ignored by decision-makers, including decision-makers who are Harvard alumni.

   What the committee recommends is that undergraduates engage in a critical study of religion. In its view, such study belongs to the essential knowledge that defines the Harvard vision of a liberally educated man or woman, one equipped to set policy in a world more like Baghdad and Belfast than Harvard Square.

   The committee's recommendation (which has not yet been adopted) should not be misinterpreted as the thin edge of the wedge for the re-Christianization of Harvard. Nothing could be further from the truth. It expresses rather the hard-won recognition that being non-religious is no excuse, if it ever was, for being religiously illiterate.

   This is not exactly what the Puritans had in mind. The Puritans, after all, wanted Harvard undergraduates to be religious. The faculty committee only wants them to be religiously informed.

   However, if Harvard adopts the recommendation of its faculty committee (by no means a sure thing) it will send a strong signal to other institutions of higher learning in America that religious illiteracy among its graduates may have become a luxury our society can no longer afford.