Teaching the Facts of Faith

Even as it banned public school and Bible reading, the Supreme Court stressed that objective teaching facts about religion was not forbidden by the First Amendment. Indeed, Justice William Brennan in his opinion on the 1963 Maryland and Pennsylvania Bible-reading decision, it "would be impossible to teach meaningfully many subjects in the social sciences or the humanities without mention of religion."

With this as a guideline, U.S. churchmen have devoted considerable attention to the problem of how objective courses on religion can and should be set up. This month Dr. Arthur Flemming, the newly elected president of the National Council of Churches, cited the court's decision in calling for a frontal attack through the schools on the "spiritual and religious illiteracy that is rampant in the country today."

Calvinist Tragedy. As it happens, a number of U.S. school systems have undertaken experiments in religious education that suggest how spiritual illiteracy can be overcome without violating church-state separation. More than 100 schools in the Midwest are using all or parts of a twelve-year program in religious teaching developed at the University of Nebraska for incorporation into the English curriculum. The reading list includes the King James Bible, which is considered primarily as a monument of literary English, and several classics with an unmistakable religious outlook, such as Paradise Lost and The Scarlet Letter. The spiritual implications of these works are not ignored. In teaching Hawthorne, teachers are expected to explain New England Puritanism and the Calvinist outlook on life that led to the tragedy of Hester Prynne.

Another widely acclaimed course in the Bible has been developed for the Newton, Mass., public school system by Thayer Warshaw, an English teacher who was appalled that even his brightest students did not know the origin of "the patience of Job" or a "doubting Thomas." In his eleventh-grade English course, Warshaw uses the King James Version to explain the Biblical echoes in Melville's Moby Dick, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck's The Pearl.

Not all schools have found the right formula. Recently the National Conference of Christians and Jews undertook a survey of the Pittsburgh public school system, which has conscientiously attempted to "teach about religion" in social studies courses since 1954. Pittsburgh relied on standard history and social-study texts, which the survey's experts labeled "superficial" and "inadequate" in their treatment of religion. American history texts, for example, had only a handful of references to the role of religion in the U.S. after 1776. While many teachers explained the meaning of religious holidays throughout the year, the survey found that relatively few had even a vague understanding of such key concepts as separation of church and state.

Continuing Concern. Educators believe that there are certain problems in teaching religion that do not arise in other subjects. Given the proper background, competent teachers can dispassionately handle events of the distant past, such as the Crusades and the Reformation. But few have the ability to explain the meaning of the Second Vatican Council or to define the living faiths of today. There is also widespread worry about parental objections. As Dr. Philip Phenix of Columbia Teachers College puts it, what happens "if Johnny is Jewish and goes home and says 'Today we learned what Catholics believe.' " Nonetheless, Phenix, like most educators, believes that in the right context such information need not be an implied inducement to conversion. Objectively taught, the facts of faith can give children vital insights into the background of their fellow students--and an understanding of what is, after all, one of mankind's great continuing concerns.

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