Editing Phillips Academy (section)

=== Calvinist roots and Exeter rivalry ===
{{See also|Andover–Exeter rivalry}}
Phillips Academy's traditional rival is [[Phillips Exeter Academy]], which was established three years later in [[Exeter, New Hampshire]], by Samuel Phillips' uncle [[Dr. John Phillips|John Phillips]]. Andover and Exeter's sports teams have played each other since 1861,<ref name=":16">{{Cite web |title=History |url=https://www.andover.edu/about/history |access-date=2024-03-16 |website=Andover {{!}} An independent and inclusive coed boarding high school |language=en-US}}</ref> and the football teams have met nearly every year since 1878, making Andover-Exeter one of the nation's [[List of high school football rivalries more than 100 years old|oldest high school football rivalries]].<ref>[http://pdf.phillipian.net/ ''The Phillipian archives''], 1957–2008, [https://web.archive.org/web/20090123220020/http://pdf.phillipian.net/ archived] from the original on 23 January 2009, retrieved 21 January 2009</ref>

From 1808 to 1907, Phillips Academy shared its campus with the [[Andover Theological Seminary]], which was founded by orthodox [[Reformed Christianity|Calvinists]] who had fled [[Harvard University]] after it appointed a liberal [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] theology professor.<ref>Allis, pp. 120-28.</ref> The Phillips family financially backed the seminary, and the two institutions shared a board of directors.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Benefo |first=Roshan |date=2014-10-23 |title=Andover: A Secular School with Protestant Beginnings |url=https://phillipian.net/2014/10/23/andover-a-secular-school-with-protestant-beginnings/ |access-date=2024-03-16 |website=The Phillipian}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=McLachlan |first=James |title=American Boarding Schools: A Historical Study |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |year=1970 |location=New York |pages=228}}</ref>

Andover's commitment to orthodox theology helped fuel the Exeter rivalry. Exeter was more welcoming to Unitarians or at least less religious; for example, unlike Andover, its academy constitution did not compel Exeter to teach the doctrine of [[Sola fide|justification by faith alone]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Myron R. |title=The Story of Phillips Exeter |publisher=Phillips Exeter Academy |year=1957 |location=Exeter, NH |pages=14}}</ref><ref>McLachlan, p. 228 ("The Phillips Exeter Academy, on the other hand, while not formally Unitarian, became so latitudinarian as to be almost nonsectarian.").</ref> As such, Exeter tended to send its students to Unitarian Harvard.<ref>Allis, p. 148 (outlining that due to its closer ties to Harvard, Exeter was "less positively religious in its influence," and "concentrate[d] ... upon its special work of preparing boys for admission to college").</ref> Andover steered its students to [[Yale University|Yale]],<ref>The pattern of strongly favoring Yale began in the 1840s and continued through the 1940s. During those years, when the senior class numbered around forty, Andover graduates matriculated as follows: 1858 – 20 to Yale, 10 to Williams; 1863 – 21 to Yale, eight to Brown, five to Harvard; 1868 – 105 to Yale, 12 to Amherst, 12 to Harvard. The height of matriculation to Yale was 1937, when one freshman in ten at Yale was an Andover alumnus. That year, 74 percent of the class matriculated at Yale, Harvard, or Princeton. By 1957 onldy 47% matriculated at those institutions. Amherst consistently ranked third after Yale and Harvard for many years in this period, but declined after the 1940s when the school sought to admit more public school graduates. In 1950 for the first time in over a century, more graduates were admitted to Harvard than Yale (64 and 46, respectively) (See ''Youth From Every Quarter: A Bicentennial History of Phillips Academy, Andover'', by Frederick S. Allis Jr. (University Press of New England, 1978)).</ref> which was more hospitable to Calvinists.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kuklick |first=Bruce |date=2004 |title=Philosophy at Yale in the Century after Darwin |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27744995 |journal=History of Philosophy Quarterly |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=313–336 |jstor=27744995 |issn=0740-0675}}</ref> This was due in part to the conservative influence of the seminary (whose endowment and facilities were superior to the academy's<ref>Allis, p. 147.</ref>), and in other part to the fact that Andover's constitution explicitly required Andover to profess and teach Calvinist theology.<ref>Allis, pp. 55-57.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Phillips Academy |url=http://archive.org/details/constitutionofph00philiala |title=The constitution of Phillips Academy, in Andover |date=1828 |publisher=Flagg and Gould |location=Andover, MA |pages=11}}</ref> The constitution also required all teachers and trustees to be Protestants, although Andover no longer enforces this restriction.<ref>Allis, p. 57.</ref>

Certain New England families were drawn to Andover's reputation for theological conservatism. In the 1880s, the bulk of Andover students came from Congregationalist (mainly Calvinist) and Presbyterian households, and the academy enrolled "almost no" Unitarians or Methodists.<ref>Allis, p. 288.</ref> However, by the 1900s, Calvinism was no longer popular in New England, and Andover Theological Seminary was facing declining enrollment.<ref>Allis, pp. 146-47.</ref> In 1907, the seminary reconciled with Harvard and returned to [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Collection: Andover Theological Seminary Records {{!}} Archives at Yale |url=https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/4/resources/11196 |access-date=2024-03-16 |website=archives.yale.edu}}</ref>

Today, Andover and Exeter are now both nonsectarian institutions, and the rivalry no longer carries religious overtones.