History
Bryn Athyn College has been educating undergraduates since its incorporation under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1877. Then known as the Academy of the New Church, its original purpose was (like most institutions of higher learning in those days) to train ministers. In 1890 the Academy established a separate organization: the General Church of the New Jerusalem, a religious body based on the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. A generous endowment from John Pitcairn and others enabled the Academy of the New Church to very quickly expand from a seminary into a high school and a two-year college. In 1914 it became a four-year college and by 1922 the College was conferring both Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees. In 1997, the Academy of the New Church College adopted a new name: Bryn Athyn College of the New Church.
Today, while remaining grounded in the tenets of the New Church and the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the College is growing rapidly. In August 2008 the College opened several new student residence cottages, and broke ground for a new science center and a new admissions and student life building, both of which were completed in September 2009.
Read more about this topic: Bryn Athyn College
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)