The Professor of Religion

Abstract

In the days of our grandfathers a of was a professing Christian, one who had experienced conversion and made a public profession of faith. In that sense the term is now almost obsolete, but that is not the sense in which I am here using it. I am thinking of college professors. On many a campus now you will not only find students extracting the rich juice of culture from the roots of dead languages, or distilling the clear spirit of science from the bodies of newts and scorpions; you may also perchance drop into a classroom where a puzzled student is saying, Professor, I don't quite get the difference between the ka and the bai. Did the Egyptians believe a man had two souls? Or you may hear another exclaim, This Zoroastrianism is pretty good! I didn't know there was such a common-sense Evidently the subject of instruction in this class is religion; but if that is so, what can you call the teacher but a professor of religion? In the college catalogue, of course, he appears as professor of Biblical literature, of religious education, or of the history, psychology, or philosophy of religion. The old expression, however, does very well as a general designation for all those who teach religion as a college subject. But how can religion be taught as a college subject? Can it be taught at all? And if it can, is the college classroom a proper place to teach it? As a matter of fact, is the man I am calling the professor of religion-whatever may be his particular field-really trying to teach religion, or is he simply teaching certain facts about religion? Does he treat religion as just one more object of intellectual curiosity, or does he seek to