Three Years of the Cotton Mather Fellowship

A Year End Reflection

I have the privilege of teaching in several different capacities. I teach philosophy at a liberal arts college in California, and I teach companies how to improve their branding, operations, and manage their business cycle at the consultancy Beck & Stone. 

But my favorite part of the year is the ten weeks I spend teaching the Cotton Mather Fellowship, where we give young Protestant leaders a crash course in Political Theology, Moral Order, Christian Civic Engagement, and American History.

This year, we graduated our third cohort of fellows. Some of our alumni hold positions at Colorado Christian University, the University of Mississippi, the Claremont Institute, American Moment, and the Center for Renewing America—and every year that list is growing. Others are pastors at growing churches across the country. 

At American Reformer we see Cotton Mather, the colonial era Pastor, Politician, and Polymath, as a role model for ourselves, our fellows, and all American Protestants. We seek to gather and train a generation of young Protestant men to pursue the active life in the way that Mather did – combining religion, education, and politics to serve his community as well as God. By following his example, we hope to bring about a “reinvigorated ecumenical political Protestantism consistent with the American ethos and nomos.”

In one of Mather’s many published works, his Magnalia Christi Americana, or The Ecclesiastical History of New-England, he devoted a chapter to the founding of Harvard College, the oldest university in the American colonies. We must remember that the Puritans were practical people – for them, education always had a purpose. In the case of Harvard, it was to train ministers for the Reformed churches of New England. As Mather writes, “they foresaw that without such a provision for a sufficient ministry, the churches of New England must have been less than a business of one age, and soon have come to nothing.” 

As for importing pastors from England, “the other hemisphere of the world would never have sent us over men enough to have answered our necessities.” Indeed, “without such a nursery for such men among ourselves, darkness must have soon covered the land, and gross darkness the people.” In other words, they had to train up a cohort of men from within their community to serve the needs of their community.

The Cotton Mather Fellowship is just such an effort. Though institutions like Harvard have abandoned their legacies, programs like this will help us rebuild a culture that is capable of founding institutions like the old Harvard, as well as renewing some of those old institutions from within. We seek to forge a group of men who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a phalanx to confront the challenges of the Negative World. 

As Mather takes care to highlight, the creation of Harvard would have been impossible without its community of supporters. From the minister who donated land and money to the many normal people who donated books to the library, they had written “their good deeds in the book of God’s remembrance.” What strikes us in reading his descriptions today is how small the “startup capital” of Harvard really was. A few books, a few hundred pounds, a building – all that a small farming community could scrape together. 

At the same time, their academic standards far exceeded today’s Harvard with its $50 billion endowment. Mather states, almost casually, that: 

“When scholars had so far profited at the grammar schools that they could read any classical author into English, and readily make and speak true Latin, and write in verse as well as prose; and perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, they were judged capable of admission in Harvard college.”

Outside of our main summer fellowship, American Reformer also co-sponsors a Greek language immersion summer camp with our friends at the Ancient Language Institute. We think it is not only possible but necessary to revive the old standards for pastors. This rigorous course will give them the intellectual strength they’ll need to reinvigorate American Protestantism.

Mather goes on to say that every student “must be able to explain both the Old and New Testament, and shall also be thoroughly acquainted with the principles of natural and moral philosophy” (emphasis added). 

Mather’s inclusion of philosophy as a key part of pastoral training is yet another reason for us to adopt him as our mascot. While many Protestants today, even in the “resourcement” camp, fear the study of philosophy, we proudly engage with Plato, Aristotle, and other thinkers who were deeply influential on the Reformers, the American Founders, and generations of pastors who evangelized the American Frontier. 

Harvard is far from the only university founded by American Protestants. Indeed most of our well-known universities were once Christian. Almost invariably, they were founded by a small group, often not especially wealthy, who recognized the need for wise ministers, magistrates, and community leaders.

If you agree that our community needs courageous and well-formed leaders, please go to AmericanReformer.org/Donate today and make a gift to the Cotton Mather Fellowship. 

Though the road ahead may be long, the challenges are certainly not as daunting as those that faced the New England Puritans or the Early Church. We can reclaim our tradition of rigorous classical education for our leaders. We owe it to our forefathers and our descendants. 

Image: A Westerly View of the Colleges in Cambridge New England, Paul Revere (1768). Wikimedia Commons.

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