The Religion Teacher and the Churches

Abstract

OMETIMES college and university instructors protest against the suggestion that they have a responsibility for the public relations of their institution. Such protests arise because the concept of public relations has often assumed rather undesirable connotations, and not always without justification. To some, public relations suggests primarily the effort to keep everybody happy and further it suggests accomplishing this end by trying to tone down or eliminate any elements in the college community whose heterodoxy of ideas or of activities might be distasteful to actual or potential friends of the college. Now it is true that the goal of a public relations program might be stated in terms of the happiness and consequent loyal support on the part of an institution's various constituencies, provided the sense in which the term happiness is used is made clear. As here used, it does not refer to an easygoing, 'soporific kind of feeling. Rather it refers to a more active feeling of approval and satisfaction. This kind of feeling on the part of an institution's constituency results from a clear and intelligent grasp of the institution's aims and purposes. The role, then, of a public relations program is to interpret the program and aims of an institution in such a way that actual and potential friends of the institution will both understand them and because of this understanding enthusiastically support them. Or expressed in another way, the concern of a public relations program is to bring about as close an identification as possible between the interests and desires of an institution's constituency and the actual program and purposes of the institution. Among the more important constituencies of the church-related college are the churches themselves. Churches often have a particular interest in the religion department. This is due to the perfectly understandable feeling that the religion department is a direct ally of the church in its program of Christian education. Such a feeling is reflected in the fact that some grants from churches to colleges have been and are tied to the instructional program in religion. It is not surprising, then, that the teacher of religion is often the point of focus of the church's interest in the program of the college. For this reason, the teacher of religion occupies a strategic position so far as the institution's relations with the church are concerned. However, while recognizing the strategic nature public relations-wise of the religion teacher's position, it is essential that the responsibility for interpreting the role of the religion teacher in relation to the over-all aims of the institu* WILLIAM F. QUILLIAN, JR. became president of Randolph-Macon Woman's College in the summer of 1952. Prior to that time he had served as Professor of Philosophy at Ohio Wesleyan University and at Gettysburg College. He is author of The Moral Theory of Evolutionary Naturalism and of numerous articles. This paper was read at the 1952 Institute of Higher Education sponsored by the Board of Education of the Methodist Church.