What Is Sectarian Teaching?

Abstract

HERE is lively interest and concern for the teaching of courses on religion in American colleges and universities at the present time. In the early spring of 1950 a meeting sponsored by administrators of several state colleges and universities was held in Minneapolis to explore the whole question of feasible modes of presenting religion to students of state-supported colleges and universities. A similar meeting was held in December of 1950. Professor Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary in a recent newspaper article stated that he sees signs of an increase of interest in religion in America in the fact that many colleges and universities of this country have created departments of religious studies or have enlarged existing departments. However, the teaching of courses in religion, especially in state-supported schools, is haunted by the specter of sectarianism. This problem is brought into sharp focus by the recent supreme court decision ruling illegal the teaching of courses in religion on released time of students of the public schools of Champagne, Illinois. Administrators in certain states deem that it is